The Power of Recognition: Why Brand Awareness Still Reigns Supreme

 In the constantly changing world of marketing, where new trends come and go quickly, one important idea stays the same: brand awareness. Brand awareness means how well people know and remember your brand. It's the base for all your marketing work.

Some might think that using popular people to promote your brand or doing fancy social media campaigns is the best way to succeed. But if you don't focus on brand awareness, your marketing won't work well. Here's why focusing on brand awareness is still very important in 2024, and how you can use it to make your brand more well-known.

The Advantages of Building Brand Awareness

There are other reasons than features to spend money on marketing marketing to increase brand awareness. Its numerous beneficial characteristics have the potential to significantly boost your business's earnings. Some notable ones are as follows:

More Sales and a Bigger Part of the Market: Customers usually pick brands they know and trust. If your brand is well-known, it's more likely to be chosen when people shop, resulting in increased sales and a bigger portion of the market for your business.

Making Your Brand More Valuable: Being known is a big part of what makes your brand valuable. This value is more than just what your products or services are worth. A strong brand can charge more, get the best workers, and easily move into new areas.

Keeping Customers and Building Trust: People trust what they know. The more they see your brand, the more they trust it. This makes them want to buy from you again and tell others about your brand, which helps bring in more customers.

Better Brand Image: Smart campaigns to make people know your brand can change how they think about it. By always showing what your brand stands for, what it aims to do, and what makes it special, you can create a good brand image that people like.

More Effective Marketing: Making people aware of your brand helps your marketing work better. If people already know your brand, they're more likely to listen to your messages, which means more people will act on them in your marketing efforts.

Brand Awareness Strategies for 2024

The great thing is, that you don't have to spend a lot on ads to make your brand known. Here are a few easy ways to do it in 2024:

Content Marketing: Make helpful and entertaining content that your audience will like. This could be articles, informative pictures, videos, or podcasts. Share your content where it's most likely to be seen by people interested in your expertise.

Social Media Marketing: Social media is still a fantastic tool for making your brand known. Be active on the social media platforms where your audience is most active. Share quality content, engage with your followers, and use social media ads to reach a wider audience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Make sure your website shows up near the top of search results for important words related to your business. Use good SEO methods like finding the right words to use, making your website better for search engines, and getting other websites to link to yours. This will bring more people to your website and make more people aware of your brand.

Public Relations (PR): Create a good plan for how your business talks to the public to get good news stories. This might mean telling interesting stories to reporters, joining events in your industry, or even supporting events that fit with your business.

Influencer Marketing: Working with people who have a big following can help you reach new customers. Pick people who share your brand's beliefs and who your customers like.

Community Involvement: Join in activities in your local area and make connections with nearby businesses and groups. Support local events, join in charitable activities, or provide free services. This shows that your brand cares about being socially responsible and helps more people in your area know about your brand.

Customer Experience: Whenever a customer interacts with your brand, it's a chance to teach them more about it. Give them great service so they feel good about your brand and want to stay loyal to it.

Measuring Brand Awareness Success

Even though knowing how well-known your brand is matters, it can be tricky to measure its success. Here are key things to check:

Website Visitors: If your website gets more visits, it means your efforts to get your brand known are effective and attract new visitors.

Social Media Interaction: Check likes, shares, comments, and new followers to see how your brand is engaging with people on social media.

Brand Talk: Watch how often your brand is mentioned online, no matter if it's positive or negative.

Brand Searches: Use tools like Google Trends to see how frequently people search for your brand name on the internet.

Here are 3 ways to boost your brand's visibility and attract new customers through social media.

1. Be real and honest

Customers today like and stick with companies that are open and genuine.

How your business earns money is becoming more important to customers.

So, be genuine in your interactions. Here's how to do it...

Understand your brand

Before you can promote your brand on social media or anywhere else, you need to know what your brand is.

Start by thinking deeply about your business.

You might have already done this when you created your business plan. If you're just starting out and haven't done this yet, take the time to do it now.

Think about these questions...

Why did you start (or why are you starting) your business?

What is your main goal?

How do you plan to achieve it?

What principles guide your business?

Which of these principles are most important to you?

What kind of personality does your business have?

What issue do you help your customers solve?

How does your solution compare to others, or is it better?

These questions can help you decide how your brand should look and talk to people.

Find and use your brand's special way of speaking

Your brand's voice is how it talks to customers. It can be serious or fun, young or old.

But your brand's voice should always show what it believes in and what kind of character it has.

Keep your brand's voice the same in your best ads and in all your social media posts and stories.

It's okay for your tone to change depending on the topic – it should. Think about how your brand would talk about each topic and change the tone to match.

Reply

It's obvious, but remember to reply when someone contacts you on social media. Talking with others can lead to real friendships.

2. Create your brand's look

The way your brand looks (all the visuals related to your brand) is very important for your business.

Let's see how you can change your brand's visuals to make it more recognizable on social media.

A Your profile picture on social media is an important part of your brand. It helps other people, like your customers and those who might become customers, recognize you.

Many companies choose to use their logo as their profile picture.

This is a good idea.

Your company logo is a picture that shows what your business is about. People recognize Nike because of their Swoosh symbol. They also recognize your business by your logo.

Make sure your logo is special and easy to remember before you put it on all your social media pages and start spending time on social media advertising. If your logo looks like everyone else's and isn't easy to remember, now might be a good time to create a new brand image.

Brand colors

Color plays a big role in how we understand things, and using certain colors for your brand helps people remember your business.

Choose colors for your brand that match your logo. This helps everything look consistent and gives people a quick way to spot your business.

Make sure to include your brand colors in your social media profiles and posts.

Optimize your bio

Social media sites have a spot for a bio where you can share a bit about yourself.

You don't have room to write a long essay about your main goals, your brand's values, and what makes your product special. Instead, use your brand's style of talking to give people a good idea of who you are in your bio.

Profile banner

Many social media sites give you more than just a small picture to show who you are. You can use a larger image, called a banner, to tell people more about your brand. Make sure it looks nice and fits your brand.

Some companies show their best items on their main sign. Some add photos of their staff to make the brand seem more welcoming. Others choose a plain, professional sign with their brand's colors and logo to keep a uniform appearance.

3. Post the right content at the right time

What should I share online?

Figuring out what to share online can be tough when you're new to it. Luckily, there are ways to plan your posts that make it easier.

Think about who you're talking to

Who are the people buying from you?

What do they like the most? Does what they enjoy match with what your brand believes in and promotes?

What type of content do they like to see? Do they enjoy funny pictures or do they prefer detailed articles?

Knowing this information will help you decide what kind of content to make and what subjects to include.

Take a look at what your competitors are doing

You shouldn't copy your competitors, but you can learn from them.

What subjects are they covering?

What type of content are they posting? (Just text, shared articles, pictures, charts, etc.)

And, the most important thing, which posts are getting people to comment and like them?

Promote your business on social media, but don't just focus on that.

Just like in any relationship, both sides need to give and take.

Spend time building real connections by sharing content that your followers find useful.

The value you offer can be different things. The important part is to understand what your audience will appreciate.

Your followers might enjoy funny posts, or they might like learning new things from your content or hearing a fresh take on topics they're interested in. Some might just want to see adorable cat photos.

It could be any or all of these things.

Make sure you give more value than just promotion to keep your audience interested.

Stay steady.

After you discover the kind of content your audience enjoys, keep sharing similar content regularly. If your audience usually likes what you share, they'll begin to notice and even look for your content.

Best time to share?

Find out which days and times your audience is active on social media. Posting when no one is around won't help your brand get noticed.

There might already be studies on the ideal posting times for your field. However, you'll probably need to do some experiments to find out.

Plan your posts

After deciding when and how often to post, make a content calendar. It can be stressful to need to post something soon and not know what to post.

To avoid that stress, make a content calendar that shows what you plan to post and when.

Post regularly

Some experts say that the day and time you post don't matter as much as posting regularly.

A good plan is to post at the best time and stay consistent. But, if you have to pick one, keep a regular posting schedule. Your audience can only get to know you through seeing your posts often.

Be patient

Social media success takes time. Your social media plan should allow for trying different things, learning, and making changes.

If you want people to know your brand, you need to be active on social media.

Conclusion

Having people know and remember your brand is very important for a good marketing plan. By using smart ways to make people aware of your brand and keeping an eye on the right things, you can make your brand very well-known by 2024 and set the stage for success.