While many companies tend to focus on lead generation for getting faster and more tangible results that will drive profit on a shorter term, they often forget about one really important thing: and that is, brand awareness. Although brand awareness is not always easy to measure, and the efforts you put now may take longer time to show results, there is no doubt that it should be a key part of any company’s Marketing and Business strategy.
So today, we will see some of the best ways to increase brand awareness online without having to spend a ton of money on it. And, most importantly, in a way that actually drive results for your business.
What is brand awareness?
Before we dive into some of the best ways to increase brand awareness online, it is really important to clear out what exactly it is, what makes it so important, and why it should play a key role in your business strategy.
Put simply, brand awareness is the extent to which people are able to recall or recognize your brand under different conditions – for example, when they see a particular combination of colours, a logo or only a part of the logo, or something else that is tightly associated to that brand. Think of The Coca Cola Company and their most iconic beverage – the Coca Cola. In fact, let’s take a look at this image:
When you see it, you immediately think of Coca Cola, right? You can’t see the logo of the company anywhere on the image; nor the name or label or the details of the package. All you see is a combination of two colours – red and white, and the silhouette of a bottle which could be anything. And yet, the first thing that will come to most people’s minds is Coca Cola.
Incredible, right?
In fact, According to the Brandmarketingblog, Coca Cola is the company with the highest brand awareness in the world, with over 7.1 billion people being to recognize its logo if you showed it to them – which is 94% of the world population!
This is what happens when a company consistently invests in different ways to increase brand awareness online and offline. However, the truth is that it doesn’t happen overnight – you need to establish a clear, long-term strategy, and stick to it over a long period of time.
Why is brand awareness so important?
Nowadays, and especially with the rise of the Internet, people have more choice than ever when it comes to purchasing a product or a service. Independently from what your niche is, the Internet has made it extremely easy to connect companies with customers from all around the globe. Which means that you are now competing with other businesses not only locally, but also worldwide with competitors from other countries.
This means that putting efforts to increase brand awareness online should be one of the top priorities for your business. For example, imagine that you are a clothing company that specializes in wedding dresses – people might not be looking for a wedding dress when they first see your campaign. However, if they see enough brand campaigns and online actions, they will recall the name of your company when the time for purchasing a wedding dress comes.
And this is why it’s so important to increase brand awareness online for your business.
Because when customers already know and recognize your brand, they are much more likely to purchase from you rather than go with a competitor’s business which is not as familiar as yours.
And now that we’ve cleared these questions out, let’s dive into our strategies to increase brand awareness online!
1. Drive traffic through Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is one of the most effective ways to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website and blog. The more people visit your website (especially if they visit multiple times), the more they are likely to remember your brand for the next time they need to purchase a product like yours.
Additionally, if you offer valuable and insightful content to your web visitors through your blog, and you manage to answer their queries, they will remember your brand in a positive way. For example, let’s say that someone went on Google, searched for “how to do email marketing successfully”, and stumble across your highly practical, full of tips article that has given them the exact solution to their query.
They will immediately start associating your brand with an authority figure on email marketing, and will think of you the next time they want to hire an email marketing service (or want to purchase an email marketing software tool). And that’s how brand awareness works online – slowly but surely, you start establishing yourself as an authoritative business, and people will trust you because you’ve already helped them by providing valuable and helpful content.
2. Establish your mobile presence with an app
In today’s highly digital era, having a mobile-friendly website is no longer enough to provide an outstanding mobile experience for your audience. Considering the fact that there are more than 5.22 billion unique mobile phone users in the world today, it is really important to adapt to your customers and deliver a delightful and satisfactory experience from any mobile device.
Having said this, the second strategy on our list of tips to increase brand awareness online is to establish your mobile presence with an app. Having an app:
- Helps you build a direct communication with your customers;
- Allows you to leverage the power of geo-targeting marketing;
- Helps you build customer loyalty through increased brand recognition;
- Is a great tool for enhancing customer engagement;
- Gives you more visibility online, with better mobile experience;
- And helps you stand out from the crowd in today’s highly competitive era.
However, not all types of apps were made equal. Nowadays, online customers are no longer excited about having to download heavy and slow native apps from the app store just to find out that they don’t have the space on their mobile device – they want to access the application’s content directly and without any extra steps.
For this reason, one type of app that has been slowly, but steadily growing in popularity over the last few years is the progressive web app. Progressive web apps are essentially websites with the look and feel of a native app – they can be accessed with a single URL, just like a regular website, and can also be indexed by search engines. They are fast, extremely light, and have the ability to work offline even if you don’t have a stable Internet connection.
And the best part is – you don’t have to spend a ton of money to build one! You can use a no-code, Drag and Drop progressive web app builder to develop your PWA for just a few dollars per month. You will have your app up and running in the matter of minutes!
3. Have a Referral Program
Another way in which you can increase brand awareness online is to implement a referral program within your business strategy. Referral programs are a growth marketing tactic (often called word-of-mouth marketing) designed to encourage existing customers to recommend a brand to a friend, family, or colleagues.
If you already have happy customers, the chances are that they will be delighted to spread the word around, especially if they are being rewarded or incentivized in some way. For example, Dropbox gives customers 500 MB of space for each friend that they refer to Dropbox. Another example of an excellent referral program is Paypal – they give you $10 for recommending Paypal to a friend, and your friend will get $10 too!
If you want more information on how to build and implement a referral program, you can check this article from Hubspot.
4. Leverage the power of infographics
Next on our list of strategies to increase brand awareness online is to leverage the power of infographics. Infographics are one of the most shared pieces of content on the Internet and especially on social media – according to Venngage, they receive 3x more shares than any other type of content. On top of that, articles with infographics receive 170% more links than regular articles.
All of this means that companies that know how to use them have the tool to generate a lot of brand awareness online without having to spend their whole Marketing budget on it. And the best part is – you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to create beautiful infographics. You can use Canva’s free infographics templates to create beautiful visuals in the matter of minutes.
5. Guest blogging
Another way you can increase brand awareness online is through guest blogging. This method works in two different ways:
- Invite guest bloggers to your company’s blog – you can invite other bloggers and content publishers to write an article for your blog. This way, you open the doors to new audiences by establishing a connection with the blogger and reaching his own community of followers with your brand. Of course, you should research bloggers that write in the same industry as you, and make sure that you partner in a way that the collaboration ends up being a win-win.
- You can be the guest blogger – another way in which you can leverage guest blogging to generate brand awareness is that you write articles for other blogs or websites in a similar niche. By doing this, you can build your industry network, spread the word about your brand, and reach new audiences that could potentially convert to customers.
6. Make video ads
One of the best ways to increase brand awareness online is by promoting your videos across different platforms, including YouTube (through Google Ads), LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. According to Optinmonster, people watch an average of 16 hours of online video per week – and more than 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.
Videos are one of the best types of content to increase brand awareness online because they are extremely visual, interactive, and can portray a point in a way simple text can’t. While they are not always the best marketing tool for direct lead generation, especially on social media – people don’t expect to purchase a product immediately after watching the video – they work by helping the customer discover the brand, learn its name, and recall it at a later moment when the product comes to the customer’s mind.
So, in the long run, videos are a very important part of the shopping experience, and help companies establish their online presence.
7. Create an Affiliate Marketing program
Another way to increase brand awareness online for your business is to create an Affiliate Marketing program. In a similar manner to referral programs, they work by generating awareness and driving results through word of mouth. However, there are some important differences.
In other words, Referral Marketing implies that there is a close relationship between the person who is referring the product and the person to whom the product is being recommended to. In Affiliate Marketing, on another hand, there is no existing relationship between the affiliate and the referred person.
Put simply, having an Affiliate Marketing program allows you to connect with bloggers, influencers, content publishers and other people who are willing to sell your product for you in exchange for a commission on each sell. This way, you not only generate leads and drive more tangible results for your business, but you also increase brand awareness online. After all, all these content publishers already have huge communities of potential customers – and when they talk about you, they get your brand in front of new people.
Thank you for taking the time to read our article on the best ways to increase brand awareness online! If you are ready to take the next step and establish your mobile presence today, check out Beezer – an awesome no-code, Drag and Drop Builder that will help you create your own app in the matter of minutes.
