There are multiple ways to build your brand and make it a household name. However, the problem faced by marketers is that of deciding how to increase brand awareness. As a marketer, you need to decide where you should invest to get maximum returns.
While many old brand awareness strategies are getting scrapped, new ones are becoming more effective. This is why, as a marketer, you need to be aware of these strategies and act on them, quickly.
If you’re looking for some great ideas, check out some of these quirky ways to increase brand awareness.
Influencer marketing is one of the best marketing strategies today to increase brand awareness. Not just that. Collaborating with influencers in your niche who have truly engaged followers exposes your brand to relevant audiences – people who are likely to buy from you. This access to an audience gives you better quality leads, which can result in more conversions.
Studies have shown that recommendations from influencers can increase purchase intent by 5.2X when combined with tweets from brands. Influencer marketing is an amazing way to give your campaign a personal touch. It gives you a way to speak directly to your target audiences. When influencers recommend your products, you are seen by newer audiences, and they start trusting you too.
Referral programs are great at spreading the word about your brand and products. In referral programs, you give existing users a chance to get some freebies by referring their friends. This gets your brand more users, greater visibility, and increases brand awareness too.
For example, Dropbox gives 500 MB of space to every user for every new user they refer, up to a maximum of 16 GB. This helped them get traction early on when they were still a new brand and generated a lot of traffic too. It also helped them save thousands of dollars on advertising as their users did most of the job for them.
Image via Dropbox
With over a third of the world’s population on social media, it works as a great place to increase brand awareness. You can promote your business, with even a shoestring budget, and gather a fan following. Of course, if you have a bigger budget, you can do paid promotions and reach wider audiences too.
While it is quite challenging to remain active on social media and continually engage with your followers, it can be equally rewarding. Make sure that when you post on social media, you use a lot of engaging images, videos, or infographics. Content that’s appealing and informative can increase brand awareness and engagement too.
Running social media contests is another great way to increase brand awareness. You could run a contest in which users can submit their creations and others can vote on them. When the contestants share the links with their friends to get more votes, your brand can get more eyeballs.
Writing about your business on your own website and social media profiles is great and helps increase brand awareness. However, guest posting on other high-authority blogs and websites is an amazing way of boosting your brand’s name. These high-authority websites get a lot of traffic and can get your name noticed in your industry.
The only catch here is that the content has to be of high quality and needs to adhere to the guest posting guidelines of the target website. Content that is not well written won’t be received well by the readers and can be detrimental. On the other hand, high-quality content can win you new customers and even create lasting impressions.
One of the best ways to increase brand awareness is to distribute useful promotional products with your branding. Things like USBs, pens, and water bottles, which are used by people on a daily basis, are great options.
While they aren’t paid heed to much, if they are given as promotional products, people will notice them. With your brand’s name on them, you can make your brand stand out even more. You can distribute these freebies at networking or social events that you participate in. Three out of four people have changed their perception of a brand positively after receiving promotional products.
If you have a digital product, you can offer a freemium version of your product. The free version of the product can have your brand’s watermark or credit line. You can give users the option to remove the watermark if they purchase the paid version. While many users may purchase your product, those who don’t will see your brand every time they use it.
When they show this product to others, they will indirectly be promoting your brand name. Some of those who see it may even end up purchasing it. Freemium versions provide a great opportunity to help your product grab more eyeballs.
A great way to increase your brand’s visibility is by joining forces with another business. The idea is to find another business with which you can target the same customer without competing. This can help both businesses target the consumers with more resources. It can mutually benefit both businesses as well.
For example, if you’re a cake company, you can partner with a restaurant that delivers food. If you send a sample of your cake with the orders, the customers will be able to see your brand. Similarly, the restaurant will benefit by getting more orders as they are giving free cakes.
While marketing involves getting in touch with a large number of consumers, personalization is a must. Personalized communication helps build the legitimacy of your brand and makes it feel more authentic. Customers these days want brands that communicate on a personal level with them.
You can personalize emails or other marketing materials that you send to your customers. By this method, your customers will find that the content is addressed directly to them and personalized based on their preferences or previous behavior. This gives a personal touch and shows that you care for them.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of procedures that are used to rank higher in search engines. Everyone on the internet uses search engines to find information. If SEO is done well, your brand will rank well for your targeted keywords. This can get you on the first page of results when someone searches for those keywords.
If your brand’s name is easily visible on the first page of search results, people will notice it more. This increases your brand awareness. Moreover, your presence on the first page means your website will get high traffic for the searches performed. This can also result in more conversions.
While SEO is a great way to get more eyeballs, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can help too. If you’re finding it hard to implement SEO, you can use PPC advertising and be visible above other results. Whenever anyone searches using your targeted keyword, your website will appear in the first few paid (ad) results.
This higher visibility can increase brand awareness and can also result in more users clicking on your link. This can give you valuable traffic and can result in more conversions as well.
Remarketing campaigns are a great strategy to increase brand awareness. Before we get to the why, let’s answer the what. Remarketing involves showing users ads of products they may have viewed on your website or added to their cart but never actually purchased.
These ads can be placed all around the web on whichever sites your customers visit. They’ll see your business pretty much everywhere – when shopping online, reading their favorite blog, and on their social media feeds.
This gives customers an impression that your brand is bigger and more popular than it actually is. Your brand visibility and conversion rates will also benefit a lot from this.
A remarketing campaign pairs really well with email marketing and PPC marketing, so you might want to look into those as well.
Another effective strategy you can employ to increase brand awareness is to develop a unique brand identity for yourself. Do some introspection and try to understand your brand persona, voice, and identity. Ask yourself, what do you stand for or how you want people to see you.
Think of the words consumers generally associate with your brand or your customers. This brand persona should be reflected in everything you do – your products, logo, tagline, campaigns, and communication.
Harley Davidson, for instance, has a strong “Rebel” persona going on for them.
You can also try to inject some humor into your brand persona and promotion as Old Spice has done. Their hilarious ads have left a great impression on their audiences. The fact that they went viral (8.5 million views) definitely helped their sales and brand visibility.
Last but not least, we’re going to look at how expert roundup posts can help you increase brand awareness for your business. The benefits of regular rounds are three-fold.
Firstly, you get exposed to the audiences of your experts. Secondly, with backlinks from high DA sites, your search rankings will improve. And thirdly, you show people you’re well-connected in the industry. It goes a long way to establish your own authority and expertise in your industry.
Here’s how to conduct an expert roundup. Reach out to multiple industry experts with a pertinent industry-related question and ask their take on it. Compile all of the answers into a single post and share them on your blog. You should also encourage your experts to share the post with their own audiences.
There are many ways to increase brand awareness. The above-mentioned methods are tried and tested by many prominent brands and marketers. They can help increase not only your brand’s visibility but also improve your chances of conversions.
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