After setting up a business, the next thing most entrepreneurs ask is, “how can I spread the word?” With hundreds of new brands popping up each minute, building brand awareness is easier said than done. Promoting customer brand recall is even harder.
So what’s a business owner or marketer got to do to promote their brand without sounding too aggressive or annoying? This article highlights the best “sneaky” strategies that build solid brand awareness over time.
1. Promote Strong, Consistent Branding
The key to a memorable brand is building a good one. But what makes a good brand?
A good brand has a clear focus on who its target audience is, what its principles are, and how it differs from its competitors. These elements ultimately define its brand identity.
What Is Brand Identity?
A solid brand identity is crucial for brand awareness and recognition. It consists of a brand’s personality, promise, and values. When these factors are clearly defined, it’s easier for customers to understand and relate to a brand.
Some exceptional brands that have built a strong brand identity over time include Coca-Cola, Apple, Nike, and Starbucks.
Good Branding Package
Of course, how a brand packages itself is also key to capturing the audience’s eye. This pertains to the following creative elements:
- Logo – Serves as a brand’s visual anchor.
- Color palette – Different fonts and colors evoke different emotions from customers.
- Font style – The right typeface will attract the right audience
Once the branding is set, it’s essential to use the same branding across a business’s platforms, from their website and social media to their print ads and product packaging.
2. Consider Paid Advertising
Having a great brand is no use if customers don’t know about them. This rings especially true for businesses that are still starting. With the tight competition, building awareness fast is essential to gain momentum for their business. With this, marketers bolster their campaigns with paid advertising methods.
What Is Paid Advertising?
Paid advertising involves online methods that allow businesses to pay for an ad on a platform to drive more views and clicks to their website or page. Marketers place their ads on different channels, such as search engines (like Google), social media, and other websites.
While paid ads can guarantee more traffic, they can get expensive quickly, especially when businesses fail to monitor their campaigns and reevaluate their paid ad strategy.
Not everyone has the time to do all that, which is why many marketers and entrepreneurs rely on Google paid ads agencies to create and manage their campaigns. These agencies have the right experience and knowledge in the pay-per-click (PPC) business to guarantee great results.
3. Build a Social Presence
According to a Datareportal report, more than half the world’s population are on social media. That means if a business does not have a social account, it doesn’t exist for a whole lot of people that may turn out to be potential customers. This shows how important having a social presence is for brand awareness.
Businesses often sign up on multiple social media platforms to widen their reach. But not all brands are built for every social network out there. Here are some of the most popular social media platforms today:
- Facebook – has the largest audience, which makes competition tougher.
- Twitter – is a great way to build awareness by using trending hashtags.
- YouTube – is considered one of the biggest search engines, especially for “how-to” topics.
- Instagram – relies on photos and videos to create engagement among users.
- TikTok – relies on short-form videos and caters to the Gen Z demographic.
- Pinterest – is a visual-based platform, which makes it a great platform for retail businesses.
Brands don’t need to sign up for every social platform out there. They only need to figure out where their target audience is and establish a presence there.
4. Do Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO involves applying different techniques and methods to a business’s website to make it appear and rank high on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Unlike paid advertising, SEO leverages organic means to drive traffic to a webpage.
Marketers and SEO specialists apply different methods on-page (within the website) or off-page (outside a website) to enhance their SEO strategy. These involve the following:
- Doing keyword research, which aims to figure out commonly used, relevant terms or phrases that users enter on Google.
- Inserting keywords within the website so Google and users can easily find its contents.
- Inserting keywords on title tags, meta descriptions, and alt texts.
- Using header tags for proper content structure and promote Google indexing.
- Inserting external and internal links to other relevant web pages.
- Optimizing site speed to align with Google’s Core Web Vitals, which is a crucial ranking factor.
- Optimizing images to improve website speed.
It’s important to remember that SEO is an ongoing process that can span months and years. Furthermore, results don’t happen overnight. However, it’s a sustainable, effective, and cost-efficient way to drive brand awareness and establish a long-lasting online presence.
5. Tap Influencer Marketing
Influencers are individuals on the Internet who have developed a relationship with their audience due to their experience or expertise in a certain area. They have built a solid following over the months or years, usually on social media, making them great brand ambassadors for businesses.
Collaborating with influencers in their industry is another effective way brands can create buzz online. After all, people are more likely to believe someone they can relate to than a famous Hollywood celebrity. For businesses, tapping on influencers helps them save on talent fees and production costs.
6. Contribute Guest Posts
Guest blogging is an off-page SEO method that helps build a strong backlink portfolio for a business. A business submits a guest post on another website—ideally within the same niche—to reach a wider audience and establish industry authority.
In turn, the website accepting the guest post will have a new value-filled post to share with its visitors.
Aside from spreading the word about a brand, guest posting also expands its network. By having a byline and links to its website on the blog post, the brand starts getting more requests for collaborations and partnerships.
A word to the wise, though. Finding the right website to submit a guest post can require a lot of research. The rule of thumb is to only post on sites with higher or equal domain authority (DA).
This ensures the website is legit and trusted by users and search engines.
7. Leverage Customer Testimonials
Nearly nine out of ten consumers browse for product reviews before making a purchase. As a popular marketing saying goes, “Show, don’t tell.”
Customers are more likely to believe another customer’s testimonial than a brand’s marketing creative. Because of this, marketers need to show social proof of their products or services to gain their audience’s trust.
There are many ways to do this, including adding testimonials to their website, posting them on social media, or sharing user-generated content (UGC) on their online channels. Social proof can be in the form of reviews, images, videos, or even podcasts.
Be a Buzzworthy Brand
While all these tips can help create noise for a brand, establishing brand awareness is even harder for businesses that take branding for granted.
In today’s competitive online sphere, new brands must step up to ensure they make a name for themselves. That can be achieved by upholding their values and creating a genuine relationship with their audience.
