Growing Brand Awareness For Your Company

Brand building is a critical, ongoing process for businesses in nearly every industry. You want to make sure that your brand is highly visible: that when people start looking for services in your industry, they're able to find your company. Unfortunately, all too often, brand building falls by the wayside, particularly as the company continues to grow.

Do you want to expand and grow brand awareness for your company? Make sure you're implementing these key strategies. 

1. Produce content that is genuinely relevant to your customers

Content production and marketing are key to increasing overall brand awareness. Your customers are looking for information. They need a brand they can trust to provide reliable, accurate data and insights. As you produce that content, there are several key things to keep in mind.

• Make it more than just advertising. Consumers aren't looking for ads that aggressively market specific products. They're looking for content that answers their questions or provides them with more information.

• Aim for thought leadership pieces. Get a feel for what questions are out there in your industry and provide answers, not just those provided by your competitors, but your own, genuine insights. 

• Offer levels of content for all stages of the sales funnel. Keep in mind that potential buyers may find you at all stages of the journey and that providing them with content that will help guide them through the process is essential to your overall success. 

• Pay attention to what your customers, and potential customers, are genuinely looking for. By paying attention to their needs, you can deliver content that is more likely to both attract them at the top of the sales funnel, when they're beginning their search for information, and entice them at the bottom, when they're ready to make a purchase. 

• Create different types of content. Today's viewers have the option to engage with numerous content types. Pay attention to what your customers are most likely to search for as you consider options like podcasts, videos, blogs, and images that will be likely to be shared and attract consumer interest.

• Create small, snackable content that users can consume quickly as they scroll through social media or otherwise engage with you. You may find that consumers are more likely to come in for that snackable content than they are to explore long-form blog posts or longer videos.

• Try guest blogging and other opportunities that will allow you to spread the word about your brand and link back to your business.

High-quality content creation is one of the essentials of raising brand awareness and ensuring that your customers can find you when the time comes for them to make a purchase in your industry. Make sure you produce content regularly so that your customers know when to expect it—and so that you can improve your overall search engine ranking, since regular content production and new content are more likely to help your website move up the list. 

2. Leverage storytelling as part of your brand journey

People today are surrounded by content. They may see as many as 10,000 ads per day. As a result, over time, those ads start to fade into the background, and people may simply not pay as much attention to them.

Storytelling, on the other hand, offers a deeper opportunity to get your brand and your message noticed. Storytelling is more likely to catch a customer's eye and convince them to see more of what your brand has to offer. As they scroll through social media, they're more likely to pause and reflect on what your content actually has to say.

Not only is storytelling great for capturing consumers' notice, it can help them remember that content later. Consumers may not be likely to remember specific facts and figures. They may have a hard time calling to mind exactly what you had to say about a specific product. When you tell a story, however, it's more likely to stick in their minds.

Furthermore, storytelling is more likely to create shareable content and organic traffic. When you tell a story, you engage your audience and create something that they connect to. That, in turn, gets your content shared, which means that it can reach a wider pool without further engagement or paid ads on your part. 

3. Put your brand forward for competitions and awards

You want your brand to become recognizable, for people to hear about you and think, "I've heard of that one before." Brand recognition is a powerful tool because it makes people identify with and trust your brand. By entering awards programs, you'll create a number of advantages for your brand.

• Consumers will prove more likely to recognize you. They'll remember your name from those awards.

• You create a higher degree of trust in your brand. When others recognize you and your accomplishments, potential customers are more likely to trust what you have to offer. 

• You learn more about where your brand fits in your industry. You can see how you compare to other brands in the industry and where you stack up on the list. 

As you select the right awards programs for your needs, make sure you find the categories that are most relevant to your brand. For example, if you're a startup, you may not want to compete with established businesses in your industry. Likewise, a healthcare business might want to focus on healthcare-related awards and competitions, while a tech business might want to go up against others in that specific industry. 

4. Take full advantage of seasonal marketing opportunities

In a perfect world, you would be able to send your holiday marketing efforts viral. Viral marketing means that your brand's content spreads from user to user like wildfire, quickly attracting fresh attention and bringing in more people who might be interested in everything your brand has to offer. However, even if your holiday marketing strategy doesn't go viral, it's critical to take advantage of seasonal opportunities.

Many businesses make the bulk of their sales during specific seasons. Which season sees the greatest traffic volume may depend on your specific business and the products you have to offer. For example, electronics retailers know that the back-to-school season sees a significant increase in traffic. Many small businesses note an increase in sales during the holiday shopping season. Pay attention to those critical times and leverage them to help increase awareness of your brand. Make sure you start your campaigns early to maximize awareness of your brand moving into those seasons.

5. Make sure you have a clear, established brand identity

Who are you? What do you have to offer? What is your place in the industry? If you're hoping to build brand awareness, it's critical to answer those questions in a clear, coherent way and to maintain that identity throughout your conversations with your customers. As part of your brand awareness initiatives, you need to make it clear who you are. If your brand is constantly changing, with different messaging and imagery, customers may find it more difficult to identify who you are.

Building brand awareness is a critical process for your business. By generating strong content and spreading the word about your business through contests, guest blogging, personal branding, and more, you'll find that it's easier to establish your place in the industry and help customers discover who you are.