If a business wishes to attract new leads and retain current customers, it should focus more on raising its brand awareness.
Brand awareness can be defined as the extent to which consumers are familiar with the brand’s name.
For example, if someone talks about coke, the odds are that they mean Coca-Cola. The more renowned a brand is, the better its chances to prosper.
Think of this scenario. If someone asks for a recommendation to purchase power tools, cooking supplies, a smartphone, or another product, the person answering them will usually go with a brand name that comes to mind first.
Of course, it is not that easy to reach a point where a brand becomes the first choice. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to raise awareness.
Promote the Brand’s Merchandise
One of the first things a brand can do is promote its merchandise. It is common to see personalized water bottles, pillows, mugs, t-shirts, hoodies, and other merchandise. Someone wearing a t-shirt works as promotional content.
The question is how you can get people to use your merchandise. Perhaps the simplest solution is to give it away for free. Contests on social media and freebies as extras whenever they purchase something, could be a good approach.
Giving merchandise for free adds to your expenses, but consider this brand awareness method as an investment for the future.
Participate in Local Events
Participation in local events is another solid option to raise brand awareness, particularly if the brand makes most of its profits from local businesses.
If you were to look at some of the events around, you would notice that a lot of them have sponsors. Sports events are arguably the best examples. Brands treat an opportunity to sponsor an event as one that helps promote themselves.
Doing good for the community and being one of the or the sole reason why an event can happen in the first place should not be underestimated either.
Run Partnerships With Other Brands
It is no secret that brands treat other brands as competition. However, once in a while, it makes sense to overlook rivalries and strike a partnership deal that would be beneficial for both parties.
At the same time, you can look beyond brands in the same niche and collaborate with different companies, though it might be difficult to find suitable partners if they are not from the same industry.
The purpose of such partnerships is to expose your brand to another brand’s audience while returning the favor. This benefits both brands in terms of raising brand awareness.
Finally, you can also consider influencer marketing. Think of influencers as brands and collaborate with them to expose your brand’s name to an influencer’s audience.
Join Podcasts
For some, podcasts are a form of entertainment as it allows you to have something running in the background. For others, however, podcasts can be a great source of inspiration and education.
Listening to podcasts has become a popular pastime, mostly thanks to a variety of podcast hosts and availability on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Twitch TV, and Spotify.
As a marketing channel, podcasts might not seem like the most obvious choice, but it works. For one, podcast creators are looking for ways to monetize the content, and one of the most common methods for that is to give shoutouts to various brands sponsoring the podcast episodes.
Becoming a podcast sponsor is not the only way to raise brand awareness. Someone representing the brand could participate as a guest and talk to the host. Note, though, that the podcast and its audience should be relevant to the brand. Talking on a sports podcast when you are representing a power tools company does not make a lot of sense, right?
Build Links
The method of building links has been around for a while, but many do not treat it as a brand awareness approach. Instead, they only want to get a link on as many websites as possible and move on.
It is much better to get a couple of links from high-authority sites than hundreds of links from random websites. Quality over quantity is the right mindset for brand awareness.
In some cases, you might be able to get a paid link insertion. In others, you might need to submit a guest post. Some websites are also okay with exchanging links. They will insert a link to content on their website if you do the same on your site.
Good link building helps with search engine optimization, but direct exposure should not be underestimated either. If someone reads a blog post or an infographic that mentions your brand’s name, they will register it. In some cases, a person could become interested in a brand they just heard about and research it.
