The degree to which customers are familiar with a business’s products, services, qualities, and identity is known as brand awareness. Many people confuse brand awareness with brand recognition, however, the two are different in their respective rights. Recognition is the simple knowledge of a brand’s existence, whereas awareness is being able to identify the company from thousands of others, by the use of a particular color scheme or icon. Brand awareness cannot be achieved without brand recognition.
Driving company growth is at the forefront of any marketing campaign and rightly so. The overarching reason that brand awareness is so vital is to ensure that the company’s name is always on the customer’s mind. This creates a sense of trustworthiness with a brand, but the reasons extend far beyond this.
Direct Association To Everyday Items
Association to a particular product or service is the positive side of brand awareness, whereby a customer automatically or at least, subconsciously, connects with a company. There are many examples of businesses that have been able to create brand awareness to replace the original title with something simplistic. Take Play-Doh or Band-Aid, for example. People naturally recall these items as though it was the given name for a product. In fact, these two are name brands. Play-Doh is the commercial name for a brand of playing dough, and Band-Aid for that of a bandage.
These brands became so popular that over time people referred to common items with the branded names as though they were the original terms. This is how brand awareness directly drives company growth. Through positive experiences for customers, a brand can be associated with everyday items, and become the only thing on their mind when they need a fun toy for kids or a bandage.
Market to Costs Ratios
As a brand defines itself in the market, they become well-known and more popular with the ideal marketing strategies. Brand awareness can build up a reputation, to the point that the cost of marketing compared to the output produced decreases. In other words, the brand has to invest less into a marketing strategy to see positive benefits. Even in market disruptions where it can be expected that a company’s brand will fall away, the right degree of brand awareness can weather the worst of economic storms.
If there are any market fluctuations, brand awareness will be the difference between a company that everyone trusts and one that isn’t as well-positioned with loyalty among customers. The brand Coca-Cola is an exceptional example of brand awareness where the marketing works for itself. Coke is commonly used in advertisements of other brands and appears on social media and television all the time. These are low-cost marketing strategies that drive company growth through brand awareness.
Content Driven Through Data
By employing other avenues to increase brand awareness, driving content through statistical data is paramount. Brand awareness is about targeting the right customer with the perfect marketing approach that builds on the company’s reputation. Research for specific words and phrases can lead to interesting data that improves brand awareness. By identifying how topics are discussed online and the most searched terms on the internet, a brand can learn how to specifically target a set demographic.
Content is then created that leverages those relevant keywords and phrases to aim at a specific group of customers. This increases brands recognition in the market, which subsequently increases brand awareness by default. Information in business is vital to drive and improve the growth of a brand by knowing the specifics that need to be targeted in brand awareness. It requires outlining the customers and their personalities by recognizing patterns in the most popular internet searches.
Long-Term Acquisitions
The goal for many business owners is to sell at a profit that is commensurate to the business brand. To achieve this, the brand has to be strong in the market, otherwise, financial offers from potential buyers won’t be as grand. The stronger the brand’s awareness, the more bids at greater amounts will be offered. Brand awareness can drive company growth by acquiring mergers with relevant partners that can innovate and enhance a brand’s recognition.
A major aspect in the current market is maintaining innovation through times of change, and always being ahead of the rest. Acquisition by other brands can further skyrocket the original company if it is affiliated with the right provider. Over time this solidifies the brand’s awareness in the market, and rather than fall away or be absorbed, the brand evolves. The greater the brand awareness, the more likely it is that other successful businesses will propose long-term mergers and acquisitions.
Through Narrative and Storytelling
Brand awareness is achieved by connecting with customers in a manner that will make them remember the business. Generally, the story does not matter, so long as it is honest, transparent, and the content is marketed to a specific audience. Narratives such as talking about how the business started are effective. Google started out in the garage of its creators, and everyone knows that story.
Nike is the same, by telling the backstories of famous athletes that support the brand. It cements an emotional response in the customer that remains with them for years to come. These businesses have increased brand awareness by humanizing the business to give it more depth for customers to relate to. Anytime a similar narrative is told with marketing strategies, a brand is instinctively associated with certain products and services.
Brand awareness has for a long time been considered a vague term that is difficult to understand. The importance is that a brand builds awareness through a loyal audience that will easily distinguish a specific brand over other competitors in the market. Brand awareness drives business growth because customers will choose that product or service over and over again when the reputation of a business is one that can be trusted above all others. If customers are not engaged, a business will not be able to establish the foundations for brand recognition because they will not hear what the business has to say. Recognizing the key values of a business is how brand awareness is achieved through loyal customers that will drive that company’s growth.
