Creating a Brand Awareness Strategy: A Guide for Small Businesses
It can be hard for small businesses to build their brand without a solid brand awareness strategy. Read on to find out how to promote your brand the right way.
Do consumers know who you are and what your business can do to help them? Is your brand standing apart from the competition? Why should consumers choose you over your competitors?
Without a brand awareness strategy, you could fail to stand out from the crowd. An inconsistent brand, on the other hand, can confuse consumers. Instead of building brand awareness and recognition, you’ll lose potential sales.
It can take between five and seven impressions before you begin developing brand awareness. Meanwhile, it only takes 10 seconds for someone to form an impression of your brand. If you want to build a strong firm impression, you need to strategize.
Discover the eight brand awareness tips you need to succeed with this helpful guide!
1. Know Your Goals
First, take the time to determine your business goals. You’ll want your brand awareness strategy to align with these objectives. Otherwise, your brand will fail to accomplish your long-term goals.
For example, you might want to increase sales by a certain percentage. You might also want to increase online engagement. If you’ve recently merged companies, you might want to recreate your brand to present both entities.
Is your brand old and outdated? When was the last time you updated your branding? If your brand was last updated 20 years ago, it’s time for an upgrade.
You can make it your goal to create a brand that’s unique and appeals to a younger target audience. Maybe you want to modernize your existing brand.
Either way, try using SMART goals when setting these goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, results-driven, and timely. Setting SMART goals will help you stay on track as you develop your brand awareness strategy.
2. Find Your Audience
Who are your customers? What are they looking for as they search for your product or service? What do they expect from your brand?
The more you learn about your audience, the easier it is to create a brand awareness campaign that appeals to that audience.
Distinguish your target audience based on demographics like age, gender, and location. You might want to consider their household income, education, and marital status, too. Try to create a niche for yourself.
Once you pinpoint your audience, you can craft a targeted message that appeals to their interests.
3. Determine a Competitive Advantage
Before you can continue developing your brand awareness strategy, you need to research your competition. Otherwise, you might unintentionally mimic some of their brand elements.
What repeat elements are you noticing in their brands? Consider visual elements like their logo and color scheme. Then, take a look at their mission statement and core values.
What competitive advantage do you have in the industry? What can you offer that no one else can?
Make that competitive advantage the heart of your brand awareness campaign to ensure you stand out.
4. Create a Style Guide
It’s important that your brand remains consistent throughout every small business marketing strategy you create.
Remember, an inconsistent brand might confuse consumers. If they travel from your social media to your website and see a different brand, they might think you’re a different company.
Consistent brand presentation across all platforms can increase your revenue by up to 23%.
In order to maintain a consistent brand awareness strategy, create a style guide for your brand. Any member of your team can use the style guide to keep different elements of your brand the same across all marketing channels.
Once you’ve completed the research steps above, you can develop your:
- Logo
- Color scheme
- Font styles and sizes
- Imagery and photography style
- Voice
- Tone
- Messaging
- Mission statement
- Vision statement
These components should remain consistent as you begin marketing your business.
5. Update Your Website
Once you’ve updated your website, take a look at your website. If you want to learn how to promote a small business, you need to start with your site.
About 70 to 80% of consumers research a business online before visiting in person or buying. If you want your brand to speak for your business, updating your site is essential. Remember, you want to keep your branding consistent.
Make sure your website features the fonts, color scheme, and language outlined in your brand’s style guide.
Your website will represent your business even when you’re closed for the day.
6. Stay Social
As part of your brand awareness campaign, you’ll want to start engaging with potential customers. Spreading the word about your business will build awareness and recognition.
As you start gathering customers, you can build brand trust and loyalty, too. Once consumers are loyal to your brand, you can use retention to generate repeat sales. Repeat customers mean a better ROI!
Make sure your branding is consistent across all social media channels. As you post images and graphics, make sure the content suits your brand. Once people start commenting on your posts, comment back to boost engagement.
7. Use SEO and PPC
Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising are two search marketing strategies that can help you build brand awareness.
First, start using SEO to create engaging, informative content on your website’s blog. You can create articles, infographics, videos, and ebooks to attract consumers to your website. Don’t forget to share your content on social media, too.
SEO will help you demonstrate your experience and expertise. As you rank higher on search engines like Google, you’ll build awareness and credibility.
PPC ads will also appear on search engines like Google. You can also create ads for social media. Make sure your visual ads fit your style guide.
As you use PPC, don’t forget to create a remarketing campaign. Remarketing allows you to reappear in front of previous website visitors. With repeat exposure, you can build brand awareness and recognition.
8. Develop a Thought Leadership Campaign
If you want to build your brand’s credibility, create a thought leadership campaign. Create content like webinars, case studies, and interviews. Collaborate with other experts in your industry, too.
A thought leadership campaign will help you build your brand’s credibility, which can help new customers trust you.
Creating a Brand Awareness Strategy: 8 Tips to Success
With a strong brand awareness strategy, you can stand out from the competition and attract new customers. Don’t forget to follow your style guide and keep it consistent. Use these tips to develop an effective brand awareness campaign today!
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