What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness refers to how familiar your potential customers are with your business. This may mean recalling a slogan, catchphrase, tagline, color, or simply remembering your name which is associated with a certain service or product line. Having great brand awareness sparks and builds positive feelings about your business and upcoming products/ services. For much larger companies, they may have already reached eponym status which is where your company name is associated with your product directly. This is where people refer to your products by using your company name. For example (getting a Kleenex, Band-Aid instead of Bandage, Coke instead of Soda, etc.)
When you have reached the eponym stage this is the highest point of the brand awareness spectrum and this is where you strive to be. However, for smaller companies, successful brand awareness might just mean:
- Consumers knowing what your company does and is known for
- Consumers recognizing your color scheme (red & yellow – McDonald’s, red – KFC)
- Consumers spreading your company’s name through word of mouth.
Importance of Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness is one of the most important foundations that separate a successful business from a destined-to-fail business. No matter how good your products and services are, no matter how much reach you get in social media, no matter how much you post in social media, no matter how much you spend on advertising. Some other companies with better brand awareness than you will always come out on top. Therefore, it is very important to perfect your brand. Your brand consists of multiple things such as your brand name, logo, slogan, catchphrase, offers, colors, etc. Having a good brand foundation will always set you up for success but so many other companies fail to incorporate this fundamental aspect.
Benefits of Good Brand Awareness
- It Builds Trust – In the modern world, customers rely on other people’s opinions to formulate their own opinion. This is the same story for the business world. If someone is trying to sell you something and you see that your friend’s opinion of the product being sold is good, then your opinion will most likely also be good. Therefore, before customers buy anything, they always check if they trust the brand and this is where Good Brand Awareness comes in. Good Brand Awareness means more people will trust you since the more people get familiar with something the more, they trust, and this is an instinct. If you see someone for the first time will you trust them right away? Probably not. But if you saw this person 1000 times then you will start to trust them more subconsciously.
- It Builds Association – Your goal is to reach eponym as discussed in the first paragraph of the article. The way you can do this is by creating good brand awareness! Because this ultimately results in building more trust and building more familiarity, therefore, building towards that goal of an eponym. Once customers trust you more the gap between just trusting a brand and being loyal to a brand starts getting built. This is where repeat customers and repeat purchases start pouring in.
- It Builds Value – Having good brand awareness makes you more valuable to potential investors and shareholders. Because the more brand awareness you have the bigger the audience you have and do you know what advertisers like the most? It’s how big your audience is. Because the bigger your audience is the more people will see their ads. This is a good way to build a reputation and to start gaining sponsorships and advert placement if you are a company that sells ads. This can also mean you can price your products higher just because you have more authority, trust, and loyalty over the market. Having good brand awareness is such a looked down upon factor and if you can perfect it then you are on your way to success!
How to Establish Brand Awareness
Now that we know how good brand awareness can skyrocket your business or brand. You might be asking; how do we start establishing good brand awareness? Now there are so many more opportunities to build good brand awareness with the new modern era of business. Back in the day we only had newspapers, posters, and television ads which were expensive. Now we have so many more tools at our disposal and this is where we fail! We don’t leverage these tools enough to gain an advantage over our competitors. The company that uses these tools to its full potential is the one that is going to have better brand awareness. Here are 3 tips that you can implement to build your brand awareness:
- Use Social Media – Big Social Media Platforms are changing the game for businesses since they are essentially free! All you need to do is to gain a following and if you have a budget then you can easily place ads on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Etc. Not enough businesses are using social media to advertise themselves and the ones who are gaining a lot of advantages. If you have no experience in social media, you can simply hire someone who is and let them do the work for you.
- Use a Catchphrase – Have you ever heard the catchphrase “Just Do It!”? It is so popular that when someone says it, it directly correlates to Nike! This is the power of catchphrases. Once you have an established Catchphrase then it basically lives on forever and becomes the face of your brand and when used correctly can make your business 210% more memorable.
- Use a Unique Logo – Having a unique logo is a brainer but still, a lot of companies use the same old generic logo of their name. However, this still can work but you are taking a lot of risks. But if you use a logo like Starbucks. Then it makes it seem more memorable because no other logo looks remotely like it.
Examples of Good Brand Awareness
