For a small business, it can be very important to have a brand name everyone recognizes. People identify businesses in terms of the brand that the business has been able to create. You better define how your business is unique or more valuable than the competition because if you don’t do this well, your customers will not see you as being better. So what makes a brand recognizable and identifiable for people? What does it take for a brand to create high awareness among its target audience? Before answering what are the best strategies for making a success story out of your brand, here are some of the facts about brand awareness:
- Recent studies show that managing brand awareness is one of the top business priorities for more than 75 percent of companies across all kinds of industries. Over 60 percent of customers have a preference for buying from a brand they are quite familiar.
- Forbes found that the presentation of a brand across multiple platforms can improve revenue generation up to 23 percent.
- Circle Research concluded that almost 80 percent of B2B marketers emphasize branding.
- According to Bynder, a brand management software company, your brand is what sets you apart from your competition.They found that 70 percent of brand managers believe audience building is more important than conversion of leads.
- Statista found 63 percent of smartphone buyers pay attention to the brand reputation of manufacturers.
- Research from Renderforest found 33 percent of shoppers have a brand name in their mind when they shop online or offline.
Whether you look at it from the perspective of revenue, profitability, or employee engagement, small businesses should optimize their brand’s familiarity to a wider audience and create strong brand relationships. So, what are the some effective and appropriate strategies for branding?
- Rethink your brand logo
- A brand’s logo is the first impression in the physical and digital space for your business. In fact, a majority of people recognize brands from their logos.
- Think about recreating your brand’s logo keeping in mind the color scheme. Studies have shown that 33 percent of the leading global brands have the color blue in their logos. Should blue feature in your company’s logo? Forbes recommends that using an identical color palette on your brand’s logo, products, company website, and other communication platforms can optimize brand recognition by 80 percent. Brand recognition implies the ease with which customers can identify a brand through its logo and products. That implies that color is a key dimension of brand awareness.
- Focus on your marketing content
- Content has become the most crucial competitive advantage a business can have in digital space. Every branding campaign depends on the quality and uniqueness of content presented.
- Business success directly depends on the effectiveness of your content marketing strategies. Even generating leads requires great content.
- Increase your online brand visibility by incorporating actionable content marketing strategies.
- Use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to optimize your content reach. SEO helps your content rank on search engines for searches specific to keywords contained in your content. This will increase your online presence.
- Segment your audience into generations or preferences and create specific content for each segment. It is imperative that your business understand your target audience because not every target audience segment will be attracted to the same content. You need parallel content strategies for each segment.
- Keep your content strategies versatile by applying equal focus on creating blogs, podcasts, video content, infographics, and other forms of content. Brands that are regular with their blog posting are able to generate 67 percent more leads. Each type of digital content has its own significance in influencing the positioning of a brand.
- Studies show that internet users are not interested in repetitive content or anything that fails to offer new perspectives. People are attracted to brands that offer unique content.
- Here is an idea…encourage your customers to write content for your brand. Content created by your users offers greater personalization. User-generated content comes with SEO advantages and expands the outreach on social media. User generated content helps build your brands authenticity.
- Use social media to build your brands authenticity
- Brands should be recognizable and authoritative to attract attention. More than 73 percent of small businesses already allocate funds to social media marketing as a key branding strategy. Forbes says that more than 65 percent of buyers make a purchase decision after viewing a branded video on social media.
- Social media users leverage these platforms to search for new products and services. Social media is one of the most inexpensive ways for promoting your brand. I have listed below are some of the ways to create brand awareness and authority with social media:
- Enhance the credibility and authority of your brand by using third party endorsers to recommend your brand (see my blog entitled “Power of Third Party Endorsement”).
- Engage your social media audience by using polls and stories and Q&A. This can be a great way of building an audience for your product/service brand but be sure to maintain consistency across platforms.
- You can reinforce your brand’s story in multifaceted ways ranging from social media stories to advertising themes. It offers you a vast scope of ways in which you can appeal to the emotions of people to influence their loyalty and buying decisions. Studies show that 15 percent of people make an immediate decision to buy from a brand if they like its story. Besides, 44 percent of them will share the story and 55 percent will think of buying from the brand in the future.
- Have “Call To Action” buttons to make it more convenient for people in case they want to contact your business or buy directly from social media.
- Identify the platforms that are the most suitable for your brand. The idea is to engage as many people as you can across different platforms. The greater the number of people or customers you engage in a constant manner, the more extensive will be the brand awareness.
- Inflection test customer service technology
- A company’s customer service is one of the key elements of its brand reputation. Brands are only as strong as their goodwill among customers. In fact, customers are willing to pay a premium price for brands that offer excellent customer service. Some studies show, Americans pay a 17% price premium to buy from brands that are known for credible customer service.
- You might start testing state-of-the-art customer self-service portals that can boost customer retention and brand reputation. Customer self-service channels enable customers to resolve their service requests or queries on their own. Customers will not need to depend on service reps to explain when businesses employ the help of chatbots, customer tutorials, virtual assistants, and guided instructions. In fact, a large proportion of US consumers prefer automation in self-service. Several studies have shown that US consumers find chatbot interactions very effective in dealing with their service requests on their own. In the near future, automated customer self-service portals will be a big thing.
Each of the above strategies will help take your brand recognition to the next level. The end results are of course subject to your execution.
For more thoughts on branding, check out Branding Mistakes.
Copyright ©John Trenary 2022
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