Marketing can be very overwhelming, especially for small business owners with limited time and resources to invest in such a vital business activity. But once you are aware of the most important marketing goal and the simple steps you can put in place to work towards that goal, it puts everything into perspective. Now I am sure you're wondering, what is this all important goal? Well, it is brand awareness, and we are going to break down everything you need to know about brand awareness for your small business. Firstly, let's discuss the concept of brand awareness. Brand awareness is the extent that your target audience is aware of your brand and the goods or services that you offer. Realistically, unless people have a positive impression of your brand, they won't be taking up your services or purchasing your products, so it is really important to get your brand out there and build a reputation that encourages people to trust in your brand offering. When a company has strong brand awareness, they can achieve what is called top-of-mind awareness. This is measured by asking someone within their target market to name a brand from a specific category, for instance if I asked you to name fast food restaurants you are likely to say McDonald's or KFC as they have achieved top-of-mind awareness. Now most small businesses can only dream of this exposure, but there are other types of brand awareness that are important to develop for small businesses called brand recognition and visual branding.
Brand recognition is where a consumer can be shown the name of your brand and recall what your market offering is, such as if I said Cadbury, they would know they sell chocolate. Where as visual branding is when customers can look at advertisements, packaging and colours and identify your market offering but may not necessarily remember the brand name. For example, if I showed you an image of a blue box with a white ribbon you may identify they sell jewellery but not be aware that the brand is Tiffany & Co.
Both of these types of brand awareness are important to small businesses, and ideally you want people to be able to develop brand recognition, but it definitely helps strengthen your brand awareness by giving visual cues to your customers which helps them identify with your brand through the use of visual branding.
Now that we have covered brand awareness and established the overall goal, we will cover a few helpful steps you can make to help build and strengthen your brand.
1. Branding - having clear and consistent branding across all aspects of your business to ensure people can identify your brand however they choose to interact with it. Sit down and really flesh out what your brand stands for, personify your brand with characteristics that you wish to portray to your customers, such as trustworthy, reliable and fun, and then figure out how you plan to convey those messages. 2. Maximise your organic social media presence - posting relevant and engaging content across all social media platforms gives your customers more opportunity to develop a relationship with your brand. These relationships are vital to your brands success, and social media platforms are the perfect way for you to nurture and expand your customer base.
3. Encourage engagement and run competitions - improve your social media voice by giving your followers an incentive for engaging with you online. Reward them for giving feedback and telling you how you can better service their needs.
4. Run social media advertisements - it's an easy and affordable way for to expand your current audience and reach further into your target market. 5. Collaborate with other businesses or influencers - work together with people and businesses who align with your brand image to build mutually beneficial relationships. These are just a few quick and easy tips to get you started towards building your brand awareness, remember the key message here is to quite simply make people remember you! Build relationships, be consistent and always put your name out there, if you do it enough it people will remember you. We hope this helped shed some light on brand awareness for you all, if you have any further questions about brand awareness or need help executing any of these tips we are here to help! HER Social provides a number of services including social media management, content creation, and developing paid social media campaigns, get in contact with us today via the chat symbol or any of the below platforms. Facebook - www.fb.com/hersocial
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Email - hellohersocial@gmail.com
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