Brand awareness is essential to attract potential prospects towards the brand. A brand awareness strategy can be described as an array of activities that a brand practices to gain exposure in front of the right audiences. The goal is to inform prospects about the products, services and objectives to build and maintain a positive image in the industry.
Branding or brand awareness ensures that the customers are able to recall or recognize the brand. This affects the purchase decision-making significantly. Traditional branding did not have access to the various digital platforms that are available now, which is why brands used other effective methods to ensure that their customers are well-aware of their products and services. Some of those classic methods for brand exposure are still prevalent in 2018, such as:
Conduct corporate events
Corporate events can be defined as a gathering organized for the employees, business partners and prospective clients. Seminars, conferences, trade shows, team building games, product launch events and many more are known as corporate events. Apart from increasing productivity and motivating employees, corporate events allow businesses to target potential customers and inform them about the brand and its products and services. It is a truly effective method to engage employees as well as customers in brand-related activities and increase brand exposure significantly.
Affiliate marketing
Reaching a more significant audience is possible with the help of affiliate marketing, where you partner with other brands or people who help you market your products and services in return for a part of your revenue. This revenue sharing model is often used for consumer products, like headphones & chargers, and services like massage parlors & food delivery services, etc. The idea is to involve the customer to help you market your brand in return to capture a larger market share quickly.
Be a part of sponsorship programs
What most businesses do is that they participate in other events as sponsors where they pay a specific amount to the event coordinators in return for valuable marketing deliverables. Such events include college fests, concerts, school shows and theatre shows, among many others. The deliverables can be outdoor hoardings, a mention in the media releases, logo on the pamphlets and what not! The sponsorship is offered to events where the target consumers are expected to visit to inform them about the brand. This could include an energy drink advertisement in a college fest or a concert that will enhance brand recall noticeably.
Invest in promotional merchandise
Promotional merchandise like keyrings, tags, bags, stationery items and mobile covers are few examples of how a brand can approach its customers by offering appealing products. These promotional products can be gifted with different purchases or as a souvenir to loyal customers to retain them with the brand. Earlier, the approach included keyrings, pens and bags while nowadays, along with the traditional products, new products like mobile cases, t-shirts, laptop skins and designer backpacks are being manufactured to have a more creative approach towards luring the customers towards the brand.
Attract loyalists
Loyalists are customers who always prefer your brand to others for specific products and services. They are your loyal customers who believe in spreading a positive image of the brand directly or indirectly. You can offer them free merchandise in return for helping you with word of mouth and positive testimonials about the brand to attract customers with genuine content. “Refer a friend” is a standard marketing approach where you get a certain amount of discount or any other offer for referring a friend. This helps in customer acquisition and reduces your CAC notably.
Utilise influencer marketing opportunities
Brand influencers are a great way to attract potential customers towards the brand because those customers are loyal to the influencer and will do anything that they are asked to. For example, if a Hollywood celebrity asks his fans to buy a specific hair wax; what do you think will happen? The sale will skyrocket immediately because his fans will believe his word without any second thoughts. Influencer marketing opportunities are endless because you can incorporate any of the other methods mentioned above with an influencer and enhance its impact significantly.
Don’t forget the age-old marketing approach
The age-old marketing approach is print advertisements, trunk calls and billboards, etc. With the advent of digital platforms, people have forgotten the effect of such methods because their entire focus is on the digital sphere. You should not forget how these traditional methods can be incorporated with digital methods to maximize results. If you are one of the forgetting ones, then you are missing out on a bunch of potential prospects that can make a significant difference to your business.
Content is king
Most of the methods mentioned above stay true to the fact that content is king, and to lure anyone towards your brand; you need to have an appealing, high-quality content which can inform, educate and entertain them. If the material is not strong enough to provide any value to the reader, then they won’t care about the brand. It might spread a negative image because if a brand cannot speak strongly about its products and services, then that means the deliverables are not worth your hard-earned money.
Startup businesses face these issues frequently because they are too busy to maintain the quality or frequency of the content that is being delivered by them. Either the frequency is too high, but the content is low-quality or vice-versa. In any case, the revenue is affected significantly because the content is not able to lure the audience towards the brand, as no measurable impact is being made on them.
With no or inefficient brand exposure, the brand will die a slow death even if the sales are consistent because not only will the consumers move on as soon as a modification of the same product or service enters the market, but the highly competitive market will subdue your brand’s growth to allow better products and services to prevail in the market.
