10 Tips for a Successful Brand Awareness Campaign

A well-planned brand awareness campaign can do two things that every business needs to survive. It can build customer loyalty and attract quality employee candidates.

With customer evangelists and quality talent, the sky is the limit. In the following article, we’re going to cover the 10 best ways to do this. But first, let’s start with an important question.

What Is Brand Awareness and Why Do It?

Hear the phrase, “brand awareness marketing,” and your mind likely jumps to the concept of selling. But branding and selling are two different things.

With selling, you’re just concerned about numbers. With branding, you want storytelling.

One (sales) is about the bottom line from month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, and year-to-year. That does little for answering the question of why your customers love you and your employees want to work for you.

That’s where branding comes into play. You want to put time, energy, and resources into building your brand for the following reasons.

To Build Trust

Customers are more likely to buy from companies they trust. They’re also more willing to forgive those companies when they make mistakes. In both, transparency is key.

To Connect

To really increase brand awareness, you have to connect with people. We’ll discuss this more in-depth in a minute. But let’s just say the connection is about more than, “Hi, how are you doing?”

It’s about connecting your product or service to the need for it. And the need for any product or service depends on the customer’s specific pain point.

To Establish Value

Any effective brand awareness strategy should establish value in the company, from both a customer’s eyes and the viewpoint of quality talent. The two feed each other.

How else do you expect your customers to help spread the word if you don’t give them the best customer experience? Your people are a big part of that. Now that we know what branding is, let’s take a look at how we can pull it off effectively.

1. Speak the Language

One big problem with building a brand is that too many brand-builders think and rethink what they’re putting out to the world without being conversational. Branding is about trust, and people aren’t going to trust a brand that sounds like it was created by committee.

2. Connect with Your Audience

Connection with your audience starts with knowing their pain points. It then moves to connect your product or service to what those pain points are.

After you bridge that gap, you need a conveyance. In other words, what channels do you use to touch base?

Social media is a no-brainer. But use your website or blog strategically as well. Respond to comments and messages, even the critical ones, and do it professionally.

And keep up with current events. You should be posting consistently on all channels and using the current trends to get into the conversation.

3. Be Storytellers

Branding is storytelling. What are you about, and why do you need to continue to exist? Think like a reporter here.

You might even reach out to a few whenever you have a special release, event, or development. Getting a well-placed bit of traditional media can go a long way in elevating your brand with the public.

4. Add Shareability

Share everything about your brand in every way you can think of. We’ve already covered some of that with social and traditional media. Make sure anything that involves your brand gets blasted out to your followers.

But don’t forsake traditional advertising either. If something has drawn some positive interest in your company, throw some advertising dollars at it.

5. Remove Barriers to Entry

No brand should make it too difficult for someone to get involved. From a customer perspective, have a free or moderately-priced offering that can get them invested. For talent, create internships or other opportunities even when you’re not actively hiring.

Effective branding is about creating a pipeline. Build yours to ensure you’re properly managing how everyone is engaging with you.

6. Get Involved in Your Community

Firstly, who is your community? Are they all online, geo-specific, or a hybrid of the two?

Once you know who they are, consider throwing an event they would dig. If one already exists, seriously consider becoming a sponsor for it. That’s always an efficient way of getting your name out there.

7. Produce Ongoing Content with a Purpose

Focused content is important when it comes to growing your brand. People crave it, and they have to know it’ll be there.

That means consistency is key. Consider doing a weekly video series or podcast.

And if weekly is too much, make it monthly. Just choose a time when your audience can expect it, and don’t leave them hanging without a good reason and timely communication.

8. Measure All Traffic Sources

As your brand is getting out there to the public, you need to know where the audience is coming from. For customers, that means tracking your organic posts and paid traffic sources. For talent, that could mean measuring your qualified leads versus the places where you’re getting them (i.e., recruiting events, job boards, social media, etc.).

9. Make Sure Marketing Efforts Are Not About Sales Only

Email campaigns are terrific for separating your branding mission from the desire for sales because they’re content-based. This allows you to segment your audience’s wants and pains based on where they are in the sales funnel. You know that based on whatever landing page they used when providing their email addresses.

In each message, you can convey the story of your brand in a way relative to how they’re engaging with you. People do not care about your balance sheet. They care about their pain points and how you can help.

10. Focus

You cannot please everyone. A strong brand won’t even attempt it. They will value their targets as the unique people they are.

That means you need to be very specific with the messages you share. Don’t try to do too much. You can always phase in another branding effort down the road.

Your Brand Awareness Campaign Will Show People Who You Are

The number one purpose of your brand awareness campaign is to show people what you’re all about. Don’t forget the dual purpose your branding serves: customer loyalty and recruiting talent.

Keep these at the core of what you do, and you’ll be a cut above the competition. And if you’re ready to boost your brand, contact us today.