As the world changes, the need for an online presence has never been more vital. Your online presence is critical to keep your business alive and generate revenue. If no one knows about you, you can’t make a sale. Awareness is key to developing a pipeline of leads who buy from you.
Top benefits of brand awareness
Before we get into helpful tips for brand awareness, let’s go over some of the key benefits that come from more people learning about your business:
Greater trust: More visibility gives your target audience a chance to be familiar with who you are and what you have to offer. Think about how you develop relationships with people in real life. It takes time and different shared experiences to create trust between parties. By increasing your brand awareness, you provide more opportunities for people to interact with you online. These interactions can happen on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and other platforms.
Higher perceived value: It’s easier for consumers to understand why you’re worth what you charge when they know about you. People will know how you can help them solve the problems they’re dealing with. Consumers are less likely to complain when you increase prices due to higher perceived value.
Target audience engagement: As more people learn about your brand, more people will be able to engage with your brand from liking your posts to sharing your content. You can always expect engagement to go up with greater brand awareness.
More sales: A higher level of brand awareness results in more web traffic which leads to more sales. You can’t increase revenue if no one knows about you. As you grow your online presence, you create more opportunities to earn trust and win fans for life.
All of the benefits listed above can be yours with more brand awareness.
Use these 10 tips to have greater brand awareness online
Your brand awareness is dependent on the consistent actions you take over time to gain more exposure. These tips will help you get in front of your target audience so you they can learn more about what you have to offer.
Stay true to your brand: One major way brands fail miserably is they don’t stick to their story and who they truly are. Deviating from your core is a fast way to lose followers and reduce your ability to generate sales. Staying consistent to your story will help people recognize who you are every time they see one of your posts, emails, videos etc. You always want to follow your brand guidelines when creating content. This includes using your company colors, lingo, and more.
Be consistent on social media: If you want to communicate the message that you can be counted on, keep showing up online. Use a social media scheduler to plan out your posts and save you time. With the right scheduling tool, you can be more strategic and count on auto-posting to make sure your content is distributed across your social channels.
What does it mean to be consistent? Depending on your bandwidth, you can post 3x a week, 5x a week or daily. The main thing is you become a reliable source of info for people to learn more about what you can do for them. Create a social media schedule you can sustain and maintain over time.
Reply to comments, messages, reviews: It’s difficult to earn brand loyalty if you don’t show that you’re listening. Most negative reviews a business might receive can be prevented if business owners reply to comments and messages. When businesses are on top of the comments and messages they receive, they’re able to understand how their brand is perceived.
You can often find out which issues customers are dealing with by tracking what they’re talking about on social media. You can also figure what you’re doing well as a business when you’re responding to comments, reviews, and messages.
Collaborate with mutually beneficial brands: Are you struggling to reach more of your target audience? One of the best ways to gain more exposure is to partner with brands in other industries who have the same ideal customer. Here are some examples of brands who could team up but don’t compete with each other:
Gen Z market potential partnership - Netflix and Fortnite, Nike and Apple
Millennial market potential partnership - Peloton and Freshly Picked, Starbucks and eBay
Baby Boomer market potential partnership - Amazon and Macy’s, USPS and Lowe’s
As you can see above, the brands don’t compete with each other but could work together to tap into each other’s markets. Joint campaigns make it possible to widen your reach and gain credibility. For example, if a Millennial loves Freshly Picked but has never heard of Peloton, it can be a win for Peloton. Peloton can rely on the trust Freshly Picked as earned with its Millennial consumer base and quickly demonstrate how it provides value.
Content marketing: Content marketing is used by the top-performing brands all around the world. By sharing valuable content through blog posts, infographics, videos, newsletters etc., brands can demonstrate how they help their target audience. Content marketing is so effective that 68% of marketers are increasing their content marketing budget in 2021.
There are many benefits of content marketing from more web traffic to cost savings in your marketing plan. This is due to the ability to repurpose and redistribute marketing content in different ways from Facebook posts to brochures. You are able to consistently share your expertise and demonstrate brand consistency. Content marketing gives you the chance to keep customers coming back and share your content.
Influencer marketing: Remember tip #4 above? Influencer marketing helps you find niche audiences through individual brands. From mommy bloggers to Instagram fitness models, influencer marketing continues to be a great way to expand your reach. You can increase web traffic and sales when using this strategy. Depending on who you’re working with, you may need to exchange product/services for coverage or pay influencers plus providing product/services.
Look to other industries for inspiration: How are industries who have the same target audience as you connecting with their consumers? You can find inspiration from such businesses through what they’re doing both online and in-person. Take time each week to see how they earn trust and gain online exposure.
Make your content shareable: The most effective way to make your content shareable is to focus on providing value for both education and entertainment. Give people a reason to put their personal brand behind whatever you post on social media. You can do this by appealing to your audience’s values, telling stories, and helping your audience solve the problems they regularly deal with. If there’s no value provided then no one will want to share what you produce.
Run giveaways: Giveaways on social media is a great way to get people involved with your brand. Using this marketing tactic is easier than you think. You can quickly gain more exposure and get people excited about what you’re offering. Check out this link for pointers on how to run a social media giveaway: https://jamiascreative.com/blog/how-to-run-a-social-media-giveaway
Share user-generated content: User-generated content is anything created by customers for social media such as Instagram posts and YouTube videos. When you find ways to share them to your social platforms, you show that you’re listening. You’re paying attention to your biggest fans. They know that you’re recognizing their loyalty to your brand when you share everything from Stories to re-pinning their Pinterest posts.
The 10 tips shared above are always tips you can implement in your overall marketing strategy. They’re practical and will help you do everything from widen your online reach to getting people to keep engaging with your brand on social media.
It’s important to give yourself time as you work to improve your online presence. You won’t know which marketing tactics are the most effective for your business until you’ve consistently used them over time. We recommend giving yourself at least 3 months of sticking to a strategy. This will give you quality data to work with and making better decisions. You’ll be able to see any trends related to your digital marketing plan from the best posting times to which social platforms generate the most web traffic.
Are you stuck when it comes to trying to improve your online presence? Do you need help with strengthening your content marketing plan and putting social media to work for you? Let us know by filling out the form below!
