By When you dissect the strategies of successful brands, it’s clear that most cleverly utilize psychological tactics, such as classical conditioning, to build their brand awareness. A color, tagline, logo, jingle, or even the packaging – the correct branding remains consistent across all media. “Hotels? Trivago.” “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.” The list is endless and somehow hardwired in our brains! But why are these associations so valuable? Moreover, what are some ways in which you can implement them in your very own brand awareness strategy?
In this blog, we’ll give you a Simplified crash course on everything you need to know to get started, including key terms, unique ideas, creative examples, and tactics to measure your results. So let’s get started!
Brand Recognition Vs Brand Awareness: What’s the difference?
While recognizing someone may sound similar to being aware of who they are, these terms may not necessarily be the same in branding:
Brand Recognition
Put simply, brand recognition refers to how well and to what degree a person can identify your brand through cues like symbols or the products themselves. The best example of strong brand recognition is through original typography: while the words may read something else, anyone can recognize the Walt Disney font style!
Brand Awareness
Now, let’s take this recognition up a notch. Your brand awareness is the depth of information someone has about your brand. This includes your brand values, product information, reputation, culture, and values. So when someone mentions your brand or notices a logo, they should feel all emotions and ideas related to the brand you’ve created!
Related: Top Ways To Build Brand Loyalty
Basics of shaping a strategy that actually works
Showcase your human-side
“86% of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support.” – Stackla, 2019
It’s undeniable that the end goal of every established brand is to market its products, reach its target audience, and make enough profit to survive and flourish. However, the downside of such capitalizing in today’s world is losing empathy and genuine connections with your community.
Our Simplified tip? Find out what you strongly believe in (authentic brand values), make it your central trait to connect with a specific audience, and build a community of like-minded people!
Related: Unique Ways To Use Video Marketing In Building Your Brand
Make your audience feel exclusive!
When brands you’re interested in offering you a taste of their services for free, it makes you feel special. In the same way, making your new customers eligible for premium services can significantly boost your brand appeal and establish trust with potential customers.
Starbucks employs this brand awareness strategy perfectly through its rewards program for anyone who wishes to opt-in for free! In return for a certain number of stars (one star per a fixed amount of spend), you get a level upgrade. Furthermore, you can use these to claim rewards like free birthday drinks, size upgrades, and customizations.
Some ideas to get started
- Building a podcast (check out Ebay for some inspiration)
- Sponsored events (branded t-shirts and merch for invitees)
- Guest features (influencer brand awareness marketing on social media and blogs)
- Branded hashtags (great way for people to take notice and hop on the trend)
Related: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Creating A Branding Strategy
How to Measure Brand Awareness
Now that you have implemented your brand awareness strategy, it’s time to analyze what’s working and what could be improved. This stage is crucial since, without concrete data, you could be investing your resources in the right tactics but executing them on all the wrong channels. Here’s our checklist for carrying out this process for your brand:
- Conduct Surveys: Online surveys can be a great tool to obtain customer opinions while offering them discounts for responding. Offline surveys, on the other hand, are excellent for one-on-one interactions and in-market customer interviews.
- Track Your Website Traffic: While respecting privacy and user data, you can efficiently analyze audience trends towards branded keywords and identify the brand awareness marketing campaigns gaining the most traffic. You’ll also be able to answer questions like: “Which channels do my target audience use to reach my landing page?” and “What is the average bounce rate?”
- Analyze Your Social Media: Built-in analytics tools like ‘Facebook for Business’ and ‘Instagram Insights’ are perfect for finding out what your social media followers are like and what interests them. Data like engagement rates, reach, percentage of views from hashtags used, active hours, and demographics can help you optimize your brand awareness strategy!
- Gather your Search Rates: Apart from the media revenue from your advertisements across channels, you need to note the number of mentions and search volume data. Undoubtedly, effective brand recognition will get people talking!
Testing Your Brand Recognition
Feel confident about your brand awareness strategy? Do your metrics and analytics support it? Try minimizing unnecessary “plugs” and see if your audience has good brand recall skills! For instance, let’s look at the MasterCard logo rebrand and notice how recognizable it remains without the typography.
What about these? How many can you recognize from this picture? Maybe ask your colleagues and see which brand’s recognition strategy didn’t work on you!
Simplified Tip: Did you know Simplified offers a brand kit feature right on your workspace? Now you can upload your logo, brand colors, and typography for a faster and more convenient design experience! Here’s our guide to getting started.
