9 Steps to Solid Brand Awareness Strategy [2024]

19 min read

What is brand awareness? It describes the level of recognition of a brand, product, or service among consumers. Strong brand awareness has a number of benefits, including increased sales, improved customer loyalty, and a strengthened competitive position. In this blog post, we’ll define everything you need to know about brand awareness. Stay tuned!

The competition is fierce, and grabbing the attention of your potential customers is vital for your business to thrive.

That’s why creating brand awareness is crucial for every start-up and company.

Brand image can be a deciding sales factor for the right target audience.

With a little help from this post, you will be able to create and build brand awareness and ultimately boost your sales!

Table of contents:

What is brand awareness? Definition

Brand awareness is the level of recognition a brand has among its target audience. Those levels answer the question – how familiar is your target market with your brand?

To make the concept more practical, think about brands such as Kleenex or Coca-Cola. Coke is often used as a synonym for a soft drink, no matter the producer.

That’s because the levels of brand awareness among its consumers are high regarding Coca-Cola.

Brand awareness is one of the major assets your brand can build. High levels of recognization can increase the value of your product or service and give your company a competitive advantage.

Also, it is one of the key components of brand equity, which refers to the value a consumer derives from a particular product or service. 

A company with high brand equity will have loyal customers willing to pay a premium for its products or services. A company with low brand equity may find it challenging to compete in its industry. 

Brand24 is an online tool that measures brand awareness. Try it during a 14-day free trial!

Brand recognition vs. brand awareness

Brand recognition and brand awareness are often used interchangeably, but they are actually two different concepts.

Brand recognition is the ability of consumers to identify a particular product or service based on its name, logo, or other distinguishing features. It’s one of many elements that make up brand awareness. 

Brand awareness goes one step further, referring to the level of consumers familiar with a particular brand.

So, which is more important for businesses? In general, brand recognition is more important in the short term, while brand awareness is more important in the long term.

Brand recognition can help businesses quickly attract attention and generate sales, but it can be difficult to maintain over time.

Brand awareness takes longer to build but can be more durable. It’s crucial to build customer loyalty.

A great marketing strategy will take both into account to maximize results.

Brand recognition vs. brand awareness
Brand recognition vs. brand awareness

Use the Brand24 tool to measure and increase the awareness of your brand. 

9 steps to brand awareness strategy

A brand awareness strategy aims to build familiarity and name recognition so that potential customers will think of the brand when they are ready to make a purchase.

Here are some tactics on how to build brand awareness from scratch. Use a mix of these tactics to reach the broadest audience possible.

Here are key tips on how to build brand awareness from scratch:

  1. Create a consistent brand image
  2. Get to know your audience
  3. Establish a tone of voice
  4. Create a Unique Selling Proposition
  5. Do your SEO
  6. Use social media wisely
  7. Create shareable content
  8. Implement remarketing campaigns
  9. Measure brand awareness
Infographic - 9 Steps to Solid Brand Awareness Strategy [2023]

01 Create a consistent brand image

Strong branding is essential if you want to stick in the memory of potential clients.

By developing a clear and recognizable brand identity, businesses can ensure that their target audience knows who they are and what they stand for.

One of the best ways to create a strong brand image is to use consistent visuals across all channels.

This means using the same colors, fonts, and logo on everything from your website to your business cards.

Consistency will help create a cohesive look that will be easily recognizable to your target audience.

It’s a great idea to develop a brand book to establish your brand style and visual identity.

02 Get to know your audience

The critical element of increasing brand awareness is knowing what your potential customers expect from your brand. Building long-lasting relationships will help your brand thrive in an extremely competitive world.

How to listen to your clients when there are so many platforms you should keep an eye on?

Well, that’s a task for your social listening tool.

It can be incredibly valuable for brand awareness, as it lets you see what people say about you in real time. You can use this information to adjust your marketing strategy and ensure that your brand is being seen positively.

When it comes to media monitoring for brand awareness, you should set up at least two projects:

  • One is for monitoring the mentions regarding your brand or products and services.
  • The second project will monitor topics concerning your industry niche.

How does it increase brand awareness?

The simple answer is that it helps you find conversations you can jump into. That way, you can sway undecided customers towards your brand, or even get your competitors’ clients to buy your product.

Just take a look at this tweet:

Tweet detected by the Brand24 tool

If I were an owner of a Mexican restaurant down in San Antonio, I would certainly invite Kimiya to visit my establishment.

Another aspect of media monitoring for brand awareness is the fact that people appreciate brands that keep their eyes on the ball and respond to all mentions, even those without a branded hashtag or an @mention.

Take a look at this tweet:

Tweet detected by the Brand24 tool

Chobani is doing a great job when it comes to building brand awareness via social media listening. This conversation is as far away from nutrition and food as it can be, and yet Chobani came up as an example.

Additionally, social listening can help you to identify online influencers, trending hashtags, conduct sentiment analysis, track reach, and many other metrics.

Use the Brand24 tool to measure and increase the awareness of your brand. 

03 Establish a tone of voice

A consistent tone of voice will help customers quickly recognize your brand and differentiate it from others in the marketplace.

When choosing a tone of voice for your brand, consider what personality you want to convey and what will resonate with your target audience.

Once you’ve settled on a tone, be sure to maintain it across all channels, from your website and social media to print materials and customer service interactions.

Establishing a clear and consistent tone of voice will create a strong foundation for brand awareness and customer loyalty.

04 Create a Unique Selling Proposition

A unique selling proposition is crucial. It sets you apart from your competition and tells your customers who you are, what you stand for, and why they should buy from you. 

So it’s essential to ensure your brand delivers the right message and resonates with your target audience. 

A USP should be clear, concise, and memorable. Most importantly, it should be relevant to your audience and aligned with your brand messaging.

Creating a catchy slogan that will resonate with your audience is a great idea.

At Brand24, we say Get instant access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews and more.

That’s because you can sign up and discover all mentions about your brand within a few minutes. We do not require your phone number, company name, or calls to give you access to social listening, as competitors do. Our initial clients appreciate it.

05 Do your SEO research

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A well-optimized website will rank high on Google, making users more likely to visit it.

According to Search Engine Watch, the top listing on Google’s organic search receives 33% of the traffic, the second position gets 18%, and it only degrades from there.

If you want to build brand awareness via SEO, you need to know what people are looking for. Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs will help you find the right keywords you should rank your website for.

SEO keyword research is essential to raise brand awareness and marketing efforts. By understanding what keywords people are searching for, you can ensure that your brand appears in front of potential customers when they’re looking for products or services like yours. Pick your strategic keywords and start content marketing

Keyword research using Semrush
Keyword research using Semrush

SEO is not only about doing keyword research for your website or blog. You should also think about the technical aspects of your website, such as loading speed. The faster the page loads, the better. It all impacts your position in Google or any other search engine.

Use the Brand24 tool to measure and increase the awareness of your brand. 

06 Use social media wisely

Well-optimized social media channels can do wonders.

Claiming that almost everyone is now on social media is not an exaggeration. Instagram alone has more than one billion active users, and that number is still growing. That’s a market you can’t miss.

On the one hand, the popularity of social media is a blessing because you can get your message to new audiences relatively easily and at little cost. Social channels make it easy to share content, which means one person can show your content to their friends and family. You are reaching a new audience almost effortlessly.

But on the other hand, it means that the competition is fierce. Your message needs to stand out from the crowd to get recognition from your potential customers and existing audience.

What’s the right approach to increasing brand awareness on social media?

Choose the right social media platform

The great thing about social media is that they give you a well-functioning platform to broadcast your message. All you have to do is send the right message to the right people at the right time.

Let’s start with identifying the right social media platform for your brand awareness campaign.

The right platform for your business is the platform where your customers are present. You don’t have to set up a Facebook account if you know your demographic isn’t active on Facebook. Similarly, you don’t have to spend time figuring out Instagram Stories if no one is watching them.

Think about the content you can offer. A B2B company is usually most active on Twitter. Brands that can produce engaging visual content, for example, jewelry producers or cosmetics brands, have a loyal following on Instagram and Pinterest. For some, building an active group on Facebook is the best option.

Mentions of Pepsi, sorted by category, detected by the Brand24 tool
Mentions of Pepsi, sorted by category, detected by the Brand24 tool

Social media tactics to build brand awareness

Once you establish a platform you want to be active on, it’s time to get right to business.

Start with promoting your branded hashtag. A branded hashtag is a hashtag that is only used to relate to your products or company, for example, #adidas or #justdoit.

There’re two benefits to using the branded hashtag.

Firstly, you can use dedicated software to see how your content spreads on social media.A social media monitoring tool will help you:

  • Spot the social media platforms where your audience is present
  • Analyze the sentiment around your company or product
  • Estimate the social media reach of your hashtag

Using these insights will let you tailor your future messages to the right audience. That will certainly boost your brand awareness as social media users will engage with your content. You should promote your products and services on the platforms your consumers are present.

Secondly, a branded hashtag helps to find and repost user-generated content. 

User-generated content serves as social proof – a way to reassure other social media users about the quality of your products. Nothing can compare to recommendations from other social media users.

Creating a lot of high-quality content can be quite an overwhelming task. UGC can help you with that! Just remember to ask the author for permission to repost their work.

07 Create shareable content

One of the best ways to get people talking about your brand is to create interesting and informative articles and social media posts. If you can provide valuable information that helps solve a problem or answer a question, people will be more likely to share your content.

You can also include social sharing buttons on your blog, so it’s easy for readers to share your posts with their followers.

Here you can see the tweet posted by Madalyn Sklar, who has over 103k followers on Twitter:

Tweet posted by Madalyn Sklar

By creating shareable content, you can reach a wider audience and establish yourself as an authority in your field.

08 Implement remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns are paid marketing campaigns where your target audience has already visited your website but left before converting.

This is a pro approach to building brand awareness. What is the premise behind this technique? It’s easier to boost your awareness among the people who have already heard about your brand.

A remarketing campaign for brand awareness aims not to broadcast your message to new audiences but to strengthen your message among your existing potential client base.

It takes several touchpoints to convert a client, and a remarketing ad is a perfect one.

09 Measure brand awareness

Building brand awareness can’t happen without tracking your efforts. Measuring brand awareness can be tricky, but getting an accurate idea of how well your marketing efforts are paying off is important.

To efficiently measure awareness of your brand, you need to:

  • Pick tactics to measure brand awareness – You can increase brand visibility and awareness through various digital marketing areas, such as influencer marketing, brand advertising, SEO, content marketing, social media, brand partnership, etc. That’s why there is no one method for measuring awareness. By tracking brand awareness using multiple methods, you’ll get a more well-rounded picture of how your brand resonates with consumers. So first, set up your KIPs and choose tactics to measure them.
  • Track key brand awareness metrics – We can track a lot of data, that’s for sure. What’s crucial, metrics should be related to your KPIs and marketing goals. For example, you can measure the volume of mentions. If this number is growing, it means that more and more people are talking about you, and you are reaching new target audiences. One of the most important metrics is the Presence Score. It helps you understand awareness around your company, competitors, or any topic of your interest.
Presence Score metrics
Presence Score metrics
  • Use brand awareness tools – You can use many useful tools for measuring and increasing brand awareness campaigns. You will need to use analytics, social listening, and SEO tools to track your efforts.

The tips above are a great start. Fortunately, there are many ways to raise brand awareness you can implement right away. Check: How to increase brand awareness

How long does it take to build brand awareness?

It depends on a number of factors, including the size and scope of your target audience, your marketing budget, and the type of marketing activities you undertake.

However, with a well-planned and executed brand awareness campaign, you can start to see results within a few months.

Brand awareness is a process. The thing is to build it day by day consequently.

Use the Brand24 tool to measure and increase the awareness of your brand. 

Why is brand awareness important

Strong brand awareness can have tangible effects on your business performance.

The benefits of brand awareness will impact different layers of your organization, starting with marketing to ending with design and customer service.

Take a look at the advantages:

  1. Increasing customers’ trust
  2. Growing brand equity
  3. Making marketing easy
  4. Helping reach the target group
  5. Influencing consumer purchase decisions
  6. Leading to brand loyalty
  7. Helping businesses to compete more effectively

01 Increasing customers’ trust

When was the last time you bought something from a brand you didn’t trust? Probably a long time ago or never.

Trust is the currency of the 21st century. Consumers rely on family and friends’ recommendations. 

They read reviews and opinions about a brand, product, or service, and base their decisions on the research.

Brand awareness campaigns help you build consumers’ trust because they will be familiar with the values and mission of the company.

A high level of brand awareness will ensure your customers will return to you. 

In other words, awareness of the brand bonds customers to your brand. Customer loyalty has a direct impact on your revenue.

02 Growing brand equity

Brand equity measures a brand’s value. Brand equity directly correlates with brand awareness.

That’s because brand equity is the value of a brand, and brand awareness drives that value. Customers who are aware of a brand are more likely to interact with it. And the more often they interact with it, the more they trust it.

Brand equity is not only determined by the number of tangible assets the company has. You also have to take into account brand reputation. Positive associations can raise your brand equity. That’s why it’s essential to build a positive brand image.

03 Making marketing easy

Or easier, at least.

Brand awareness builds associations with certain product categories. For example, a lot of people use brand names as generic terms: kleenex for a handkerchief, coke for soda, and so on. Consumers tend to use top-of-the-mind brand names, and not always differentiate between brands.

Brand awareness connects actions or events with certain products. And that’s how part of marketing is done for marketers. Once the brand enters the language, it builds valuable word-of-mouth brand awareness.

04 Helping reach the target audience

Reaching the right people at the right time is key. Brand awareness is an essential factor in brand building and in increasing your consumer base. 

Well-known brands can spend less on marketing and still make sales and increase the number of consumers.

Once you gain sufficient brand awareness levels, you can work on brand loyalty or brand associations.

05 Influencing consumer purchase decisions

Brand awareness plays a significant role in consumer purchase decisions. In fact, it is often one of the key factors that consumers use to evaluate and choose between different products.

For example, when presented with two similar products, consumers are more likely to purchase the product from a familiar brand. This is because brand awareness can act as a proxy for quality, giving consumers a quick way to assess the relative merits of different products.

Brand24 is an online tool that measures brand awareness. Try it during a 14-day free trial!

06 Leading to brand loyalty

Brand awareness is an essential driver of brand loyalty. Customers need to be aware of a brand to consider it when making a purchase, and they need to be loyal to continue buying from it. 

But how exactly does brand awareness lead to brand loyalty? 

  • First, awareness creates familiarity, which helps customers feel comfortable with a brand. They know what to expect from it and can trust that it will deliver on its promises. 
  • Second, awareness helps to build an emotional connection with customers. They begin to see the brand as more than just a product or service – it becomes a part of their identity. 
  • Finally, brand loyalty is also about convenience. Once customers are familiar with a brand and have developed a relationship with it, they are more likely to stick with it, even if another option becomes available.

07 Helping businesses to compete more effectively

A brand is more than just a name or a logo. It’s the emotional connection consumers feel with a product or service. And that connection can be incredibly powerful.

Consumers who are aware of and engaged with a brand are more likely to make purchases and develop loyalty to the brand over time.

That loyalty can give businesses a significant competitive advantage. Brand awareness also allows businesses to charge premium prices because consumers are willing to pay more for products and services they feel good about. In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, brand awareness is more important than ever.

Comparison of KFC and McDonalds
Comparison of KFC and McDonalds

Examples of brand awareness

I’m sure that you are curious about how big brands build awareness. Lots of them run hashtag campaigns. That’s because it’s relatively easy to measure such a campaign. 

Furthermore, because social media users willingly use hashtags, they easily become viral and spread across the internet.

Here are some great examples of brand awareness campaigns:

#ASICSFrontRunner by Asics

Asics is a Japanese sportswear company that designs and manufactures shoes, apparel, and accessories for various sports, including running, tennis, and cricket.

In recent years, the company has been working to increase its brand awareness. They created the ASICS FrontRunner program that brings together runners from all over the World. They take part in running competitions wearing Asics running shoes and clothes.

ASICS FrontRunners willingly share their results and experiences on social media using the hashtag #ASICSFrontRunner.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 886 times. Instagram is the main source of mentions.

Statistics of #ASICSFrontRunner campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days
Statistics of #ASICSFrontRunner campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days

#GivesYouWiiings by Red Bull

Red Bull’s slogan “Gives You Wiiings” is all about their product giving you the energy and boost you need to reach new heights.

The brand is well known for its inventive marketing campaigns, which often involve extreme sports. This focus on adrenaline and excitement helps to create a strong brand identity that resonates with Red Bull’s target audience.

As a result, Red Bull has become one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Thanks to its clever marketing, Red Bull has been able to build a loyal following of customers who are passionate about the brand.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 641 times. TikTok is the main source of mentions.

Statistics of #GivesYouWiiings campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days
Statistics of #GivesYouWiiings campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days

#SpotifyWrapped by Spotify

#SpotifyWrapped by Spotify is an annual event that provides users with a personalized overview of the music they listened to during the year.

The event encourages users to continue using the Spotify service. #SpotifyWrapped typically runs for two weeks, during which users are encouraged to share their results on social media.

Users who participate can see how many hours they spent listening to music, their most-played artists, and their top genres. They will also be able to compare their results with their friends. #SpotifyWrapped is a great way for Spotify to generate brand awareness and keep users engaged with their service.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 510 times. Twitter is the main source of mentions.

Statistics of #SpotifyWrapped campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days
Statistics of #SpotifyWrapped campaign developed by Brand24 tool – the last 30 days

#OreoHorrorStories by Oreo

The iconic cookie Oreo has posted spooky stories on social media with the hashtag #OreoHorrorStories. The brand encourages fans to share their scary tales.

The stories are often humorous, but they also remind readers that Oreos are the perfect treat for any occasion – even a horror movie marathon.

By tapping into our love of all creepy things, Oreo is raising brand awareness and reminding us that their cookies are always a delicious option.

Brand24 is an online tool that measures brand awareness. Try it during a 14-day free trial!

Conclusion

Why is brand awareness important? Because if no one knows about your product or service, you will not make any money. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if no one knows about it.

You need to make sure that people are aware of your brand before they can become customers or clients.

A bulletproof brand awareness strategy has many benefits:

  • It encourages consumers’ decisions making process when they have to choose between various companies,
  • It drives repeat purchases,
  • It contributes to an increase in market share and conversions,
  • It allows you to show your products and services to a new audience.

Once you increase brand awareness, you will increase your brand’s core business metrics.

So if you’re not already focusing on building a brand awareness strategy for your business, now is the time to start. Try the Brand24 tool for free!

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