Increase Brand Awareness of Your Small Business

It doesn’t matter how great your product is if no one knows it exists.

Gone are the days of if you build it, they will come. There are just too many options. In order for your small business to succeed, you need to stand out to potential customers. You need brand recognition and awareness.

But knowing how to increase awareness of a brand in a world full of ever changing technologies and shortening attention spans is one hell of a challenge, isn’t it?

Well, it doesn’t have to be. Here are some tried-and-true tips and tricks to build a solid brand awareness strategy for your small business.

Why Is Brand Recognition and Brand Awareness So Important?

People trust what they know, and they’re more likely to buy from those they trust. In fact, 60% of consumers say they prefer buying from a familiar brand rather than a new one.

To really boost conversions, you need to reach new audiences, and once those new audiences become new customers, you need them to remember your brand so they return, and return, and return again. A strong brand identity can keep you top of mind when potential customers are in need of your small business’s product or service.

So, obviously, brand building needs to be step one of your marketing strategy. But how do you do it?

Developing a Brand Awareness Strategy

Does your brand have an established brand voice? Brand logo? What about a set of brand guidelines?

The first step in building awareness of your brand is to have a strong brand identity. Your brand should have a set brand message – a story of why your small business does what it does. While this seems like a small detail you could likely pass over, having a purpose actually helps drive profits. A purpose and brand narrative help your company appear relatable, trustworthy, and ultimately make your brand memorable.

After you develop your brand’s why, then it’s time to develop (or redevelop if need be) your brand identity. Your brand guidelines should be directed by this purpose. A high-quality logo, brand color scheme, and company name should all work together to build the same brand identity.

After all, only once you truly know yourself can others truly know you.

Examples of Brand Identity Done Well

Think of household names for any given product – Coca-Cola, Apple, Nike, Google. These companies have strong brand awareness – heck, Coca-Cola and Google are so strong, they’re brand names have become synonyms for the products they produce.

They all have strong brand guidelines – Google, Nike, and Apple have iconic but simple logos; while Coke has a clean color scheme and easily recognizable typography. When designing your brand identity, you want to aim to do the same – something unique, but with a simplicity that makes it memorable.

Effective Brand Awareness Campaigns

Once your small business’s brand identity is settled, you’re ready to make your social debut. You’ve got a strong why, a strong logo, a strong sense of self – now all you need to become a household name is to reach your target audience.

Great – but where are they?

Well, seeing as it’s 2023 – they’re probably on the internet.

Now, we’re not saying the art of word-of-mouth marketing and referral programs are completely dead but we are going to say there’s no bigger mouth than search engines and social media platforms. If you want to build awareness of your brand, then your best bet now is to get yourself on the web. Not only that – you want to do it in a way that places your brand at the top of the heap.

Here are some brand awareness strategies that can get you noticed by potential customers both local and worldwide.

SEO

SEO means search engine optimization, and it’s a pretty important digital marketing strategy that can get you the brand recognition you need to succeed in 2023. First thing’s first here – you’re going to need a website. And that website is going to need to be search engine algorithm friendly. There are a few tactics you can use to do so.

Having an SEO website will push your brand up the list of search engine query results, which will help your small business reach more potential customers. It also helps build trust among your target audience because people tend to trust the brands that Google trusts.

Blogs and Podcasts

Building trust is essential to brand value and recognition. You want potential customers to see you as an expert in what you do. A good way to prove you have the know-how is to engage in content marketing. Content marketing is when you produce different types of content related to your small business.

Blog posts and podcasts are two of the best types of content you can produce to expand brand awareness. For these marketing campaigns you can address common pain points of your target audience to help guide them on their buying journey, while increasing your brand value by showing just how much you really know.

Social Media Marketing

No matter what customer demographics you’re targeting, they’re likely on some kind of social media platform.

Social media posts are a great way to drive traffic to your website and increase brand awareness. Developing content that is shareable will help increase the number of people who know of your brand – and interacting with your followers helps build brand loyalty.

Becoming a master of picking the right hashtags can also help your brand show up on social media platforms whenever a potential customer searches for related content.

Influencer Partnerships

If you don’t have much of a social network to share your social media posts and content marketing – never fear. You can always borrow someone else’s for the time being.

A great idea for building brand awareness is to use influencer marketing. Contact influencers on social media platforms who regularly engage with products and services relevant to your brand. Partnering with the right influencer can put your small business’s brand name in front of thousands of potential customers.

Measuring Brand Awareness

You’ve got your website, you’re writing blogs, you’re on TikTok, Linkedin, and more. Great. But how do you know that all your brand awareness efforts are paying off?

Luckily, these digital marketing campaigns come with pretty clear-cut metrics that help you gauge what level of brand awareness your marketing efforts are producing. You can watch as your brand building pays off in the following ways:

Check how many social media followers you have
Track brand name mentions
Use Google Analytics to check website traffic
Check your number of impressions

Digital marketing makes it easier than ever to see just how many people are engaging with your brand, which can give you a clear picture of just how strong your brand awareness is.

Lift Your Brand Awareness Strategy

Hashtags, and influencers, and blog posts – oh, my!

If these digital marketing strategies leave you feeling like you’re lost in a deep, dark forest – well, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to go it alone!

We here at Lift Marketing are skilled experts in brand building – from logo design to how to increase awareness of a brand to measuring brand recognition metrics, we can help guide your company through the deep dark digital woods to your target audience’s door. Reach out today and we’ll help your small business meet all its brand awareness benchmarks.