brand awareness for business plan

The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness

Learn how to boost your brand awareness and positively impact your marketing efforts, consumer perception, and revenue.

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Published: 07/03/24

Whenever I think about brand awareness, I think of companies like Apple, Nike, and Trader Joe’s. Have you ever heard people refer to themselves as “Apple people,” “Nike people,” or “Trader Joe’s” people?

That’s what brand awareness does. It embeds itself into consumer lifestyles and purchase habits so that they don’t have to think twice before becoming a customer — time and time again.

This guide will give you a better understanding of brand awareness so you can establish it among your audience and build campaigns that allow it to continually grow and change with your business. Let’s dive in.

What is brand awareness?

Why is brand awareness important, how to build brand awareness, brand awareness strategy, how to increase brand awareness, how to measure brand awareness, brand awareness examples.

Brand awareness is a marketing term that refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. Brands with high brand awareness are generally referred to as ‘trending,’ ‘buzzworthy,’ or simply ‘popular.’ Establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your company and products, especially in the early stages of a business.

Brand awareness might seem like a vague concept, and in truth, it is. For marketers and business owners who like to gauge success with numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers.

But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for your overall marketing goals and business success. Here’s why.

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Brand awareness fosters trust.

In a world where consumers rely on extensive research and others’ opinions before making a purchase, brand trust is everything. Once consumers bond with your brand, they’re likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought.

With this comes loyalty. Brand awareness establishes that this trust and trust creates loyalty.

When you put a proverbial face to your brand name, consumers can trust easier. Brand awareness efforts give your brand a personality and outlet to be sincere, receive feedback, and tell a story. These are ways that we, as humans, build trust with one another. The human/brand relationship isn’t any different.

Brand awareness creates associations.

When you’ve had a paper cut, I bet you’ve put on a Band-Aid. When you had a pressing question, I’m sure you’ve Googled it. When you needed to make a few copies, I’m guessing that you Xeroxed them. And when you’ve packed for a nice picnic, I’m willing to bet you grabbed a Coke to drink.

Am I correct? Most likely. But, do you notice how I capitalized the first letters of some words above? These are brands, not nouns or verbs.

In brand-less terms, Band-Aid is a bandage, Google is a search engine, and Xerox is a copier. But it’s more fun to refer to the brand itself, even if we aren’t using their specific product.

That’s what brand awareness does. It associates actions and products with particular brands, subconsciously encouraging us to replace common words with branded terms. And before you know it, simple paper cuts or picnics are doing the marketing for us.

Brand awareness builds brand equity.

Brand equity describes a brand’s value, which is determined by consumer experiences with and overall perception of the brand. Positive experiences and perception equal positive brand equity, and the same goes for negative notions.

Here are a few valuable things that come from positive brand equity:

• A higher stock price.
• Higher prices because of higher perceived value.
• Greater social impact because of brand name value.
• The ability to expand business through product or service line extensions.

How does a brand establish (and increase) brand equity? By building brand awareness and consistently promoting positive experiences with the brand. Brand awareness is the foundation of brand equity.

Once a consumer is aware of a brand, they recognize it without help, seek it out to make a purchase, prefer it over other similar brands, and establish a loyalty that spurs on other purchases and inspires recommendations to family and friends.

That is why brand awareness is so important. Brand awareness:

• Establishes trust with your customers.
• Creates positive associations.
• Builds invaluable brand equity.
• Helps your business to become a household name and consumer staple.
• Be a person, not a company.
• Tell a narrative.
• Make sharing easy.

Brand awareness among your audience and the public doesn’t happen overnight. It also doesn’t happen from a simple advertisement or marketing campaign.

Strong brand awareness results from multiple simultaneous efforts that extend beyond trying to get paying customers.

If you expect to raise awareness of your brand by running a few product advertisements on Facebook, you won’t get very far. Not only will the consumer focus on the product (not the brand), but the ad will also lack impact beyond a simple sale.

Here are some ways to establish a solid brand awareness foundation and make a lasting impact on your audience:

1. Be a person, not a company.

When you get to know a new friend, what do you like to discover about them? I like to learn about hobbies, passions, likes and dislikes, and more. I also pay attention to how they speak, what they like to talk about, and what gets them excited.

These are the traits your brand should determine and promote about itself. To leave an impact on your audience, define yourself as more than a company that sells products or services. To do this, think about the words you would you use if you had to introduce your brand to a new friend.

Pro tip: If your brand has lots of employees, your employees can help in molding how you want your audience to perceive your brand. Our 2024 State of Marketing Report shows 87% of marketers deem this practice, called social selling , effective. Dreamdata is one brand that executed this with only six employees.

2. Start socializing.

Introvert or extrovert, outgoing or quiet, all humans benefit from social contact and spending time with one another. It’s how we stay connected, learn new things, and become known by others. The same goes for your brand.

If you only attempt to connect with others when trying to make a sale or get support, you won’t be known as anything beyond a business with a singular intention (and the same goes for a person).

To raise awareness of your brand, get social . Post on social media about things unrelated to your product or services.

Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting on posts, or retweeting or sharing content you like. Treat your social accounts as if you were a person trying to make friends, not a business trying to make money.

Pro tip: If you’re a founder, take charge of socializing. I often see founders shy away from social media because they are busy. However, those who make the time to get active raise lots of awareness about their brand.

Two examples are Dharmesh Shah , with over a million followers on just LinkedIn, and Chris Walker , with 150,000+ followers.

3. Tell a narrative.

Storytelling is a powerful marketing tactic for marketing products or promoting your brand. Why? Because it gives your audience something real to latch onto.

Crafting a narrative around your brand humanizes it and gives it depth. Weaving this narrative into your marketing helps to market your brand alongside your products or services.

What should your narrative be about? Anything, as long as it’s true. It can be the narrative of your founder, the tale of how your business had its first product idea, or the story of how your business made it in this big world.

People like hearing stories about each other. Authenticity is impactful, and it can lead to an enormous boost in brand awareness.

Pro tip: When telling stories, ensure they pass the rotary 4-way test. Is your story truthful? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and make better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned (your audience)?

4. Make sharing easy.

Whatever your industry, product offering, or marketing strategies, make it easy for your audience to share your content.

These could be blog posts, sponsored content, videos, social media posts, or product pages. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s shareable.

Word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers. If someone sees a product or service recommendation from friends or family, they’ll take notice of that product and brand.

Is this a brand worth exploring? Do they have other great products I can rely on? What are their social accounts like, and what do they talk about?

If you make it easy to post about your business, consumers will raise brand awareness for you by simply clicking “Share.”

Brand awareness is about impact. It’s about interacting with your audience in ways that are not pushy.

Imagine if you met a new person who wanted to be your friend. If they instantly asked for your loyalty or money, you’d probably laugh and walk away, right?

Not only is that a shallow approach to friendship, but it also leaves no lasting impact on you.

The same goes for establishing and building brand awareness among your audience.

• Guest blog on other niche websites.
• Try co-marketing.
• Advertise everywhere.
• Hire a face or create a mascot for the company.
• Choose an image or symbol that represents you.
• Create a short, catchy slogan.

You already know how to start building your brand awareness from the ground up. Now, it’s time to use simple and effective brand awareness strategies that will keep the flywheel turning.

1. Guest blog on other niche websites.

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness with minimal effort. You can take advantage of another website’s traffic to get more eyes on your brand while offering helpful and relevant content.

In other words, you’re not just pushing out your product on people who aren’t ready to buy, but writing in your brand voice and presenting yourself as human first, company second. Another great alternative to guest blogging is publishing sponsored content on niche websites.

2. Try co-marketing.

Co-marketing is an excellent way to build brand awareness — not only because you’d be taking advantage of another brand’s audience, but because it can highlight who you are and what you offer in the marketplace.

For instance, if your company sells dog leashes and toys, you might partner with a dog-walking app.

The campaign could work in ways like creating a shared offer (“download the app and get one free leash”) or hosting an Instagram live together. No matter what, partnering with another brand could help you increase your reach.

3. Advertise everywhere.

I know that advertising may not build brand awareness so much as it builds product awareness, but still — it’s one of the best tools for people to know about your brand in a low-touch, unobtrusive way.

Consider Grammarly. It feels like just a few years ago, no one knew about Grammarly. Now, it’s one of those brands that you automatically think of when you consider online proofreading software.

That’s because they’ve launched robust social, video, and display advertising campaigns that appear nearly everywhere.

You might consider starting with online advertising , which includes paid social media and PPC . If you’re interested in truly appearing everywhere and launching more sophisticated campaigns at a mass scale, you can launch programmatic advertising campaigns .

4. Hire a face or create a mascot for the company.

This may not be doable for smaller companies, but if you do have the budget, consider hiring an actor or spokesperson to represent the company.

What do you first think of when you think of Progressive? Flo, who’s even been termed “Progressive girl” for her fun and friendly personality.

This allows you to not only humanize your brand, as mentioned in the previous section, but give a sense of the friendly and knowledgeable service customers can expect to receive.

You don’t have to use a person, either. GEICO is a great example of this. The moment you see that friendly lizard, you know it’s GEICO. Creating an animated mascot may be a cost-efficient but effective way to give a face to your brand.

5. Choose an image or symbol that represents you.

Nike is not even Nike anymore. It’s a checkmark. The moment you see that check mark, you know it’s Nike. Or how about McDonald’s yellow “M”? Or Apple’s bitten apple?

These are not just logos. They transcended to become identities. So, when working with your branding team or a freelance graphic designer, aim to create a symbol that you ubiquitously use in your marketing, advertising, and organic campaigns.

You might also consider taking a note from Apple, McDonald’s, and Nike and incorporating the symbol into your product packaging and design.

6. Create a short, catchy slogan.

Extending the Nike example, you think of the brand immediately you hear “Just do it.” Creating a short motto or slogan is a cornerstone of a strong brand awareness strategy and is an easy way to increase brand awareness.

It’s definitely tough — imagine condensing everything you’re about in one short sentence. It must explain how you’re different, what you offer, and why customers should choose you.

Consider HubSpot’s tagline, “Grow better with HubSpot.” In four simple words, you understand why our product should be your choice when considering marketing automation tools.

Learn how to write an effective business slogan with this free guide.

• Offer freemium.
• Create free content.
• Sponsor events.
• Give your brand a personality.
• Produce a podcast.

Your brand awareness is now effectively off the ground, and people talk about you with no need to see an ad.

What about expanding your established brand awareness and building on that strong foundation? What can you do as a brand to campaign for awareness and constantly increase it?

Here are a few campaign ideas to boost your brand awareness beyond your initial strategy.

1. Offer freemium.

Freemium is a business model that offers a basic product or product line for free, only charging for any products deemed premium or enterprise-level. It’s a popular pricing strategy for software companies, like HubSpot and Trello .

Freemium options allow customers to get a taste of your brand and product before making a purchase. It’s a try-before-you-buy opportunity that can, technically, last forever (as opposed to a free trial period that some companies choose).

It’s common to offer a freemium option with the condition that the brand’s watermark will show on any public-facing parts of the product or service. This makes freemium a win-win situation: the consumer gets the product for free, and the brand gets free advertising when consumers use it.

Typeform is another great example of this. Typeform offers a freemium option of its survey software, but customers must include a thank-you page that features the Typeform logo and message.

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9 Creative Ways to Improve Your Brand Awareness

The most valuable brands are usually the most recognizable. Learn how to increase your brand awareness on social media and beyond.

9 ways to improve brand awareness

Brand awareness: It’s one of those concepts you know you need to understand, but perhaps you find it somewhat… hard to pin down? You’re not alone.

On the surface, it’s simple. Brand awareness = people being aware of your brand . But how do you measure that? And what’s the exact brand awareness definition that makes sense for your business?

We explain everything you need to know about how to create an effective brand awareness strategy below.

Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your strategy, track results, and share with your boss, teammates, and clients.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is a measure of how well people recognize your brand, including how “aware” they are that your brand exists at all. Rather than a simple individual metric, brand awareness is a concept that touches on many different KPIs, from traffic to social share of voice.

We’ll get into the details of how to measure brand awareness later in this post, but for now think of it as one indicator of brand health.

If you want to learn more about how social listening can help you monitor and improve brand awareness, we’ve got a video that just might help:

Why does brand awareness matter?

Strong brand awareness and brand recognition means your brand is top of mind when people think about the category of products or services you sell. They recognize your logo or tagline, making it easier to communicate effectively through social content, especially in images or short-form video.

Brand awareness is a required first step before building brand loyalty. After all, customers can’t love your brand until they know and recognize it.

Think about it as the difference between Coke and store-brand generic cola. No one’s wearing a T-shirt showing their love of generic cola. Sure, people buy it – usually because it’s the cheapest option. But no one is evangelizing for the generic brand.

The most valuable brands are usually the most recognizable. Nike is the most valuable apparel brand. Apple wins the consumer technology category. And, yes, Coca-Cola is tops in food and beverages.

You don’t need to reach the level of these behemoths to benefit from brand awareness, but there’s a lot you can model in the way these companies have built their brands.

How to increase brand awareness: 9 tactics

1. build a recognizable brand.

Brand building is an important first step for brand awareness. That means you need to have a clear idea of what your brand is and what it represents. What does your brand look like? Sound like? Stand for?

Some key components to a recognizable brand include:

Brand voice

What kind of tone do you use ? Are you formal or casual? Cheeky or serious? Playful or businessy?

You don’t need to use exactly the same tone in every format. Your brand voice on social media might be more light-hearted and fun than the voice you use in, say, print ads. Your voice might even shift a little from Facebook to TikTok.

But the way you speak to customers and about your product should ultimately be recognizable across channels. Choose some consistent key words and phrases and follow your style guide .

Brand aesthetic

Consistency is key to brand building and brand awareness. That’s true for your look as well as your words.

What are your brand colors? Fonts? What is your overall look on visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok?

For example, look at these Instagram posts from Old Navy and Banana Republic. Both brands are owned by the same company, but each targets a different demographic, with a social aesthetic to match.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Old Navy (@oldnavy)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Banana Republic (@bananarepublic)

Brand values

We’ve talked about defining what you look and sound like. But brand values define who you are as a brand. Having a clear set of brand values is the most important component of building a recognizable brand.

Don’t get hung up on your ideas of what values have to be. This isn’t all about doing charity work or making corporate donations (although those can certainly be aspects of how you live your brand values). This is more about defining what you stand for as a brand and how you embody that in your interactions with everyone from customers to employees.

Make sure your brand values align with those of your target audience. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer , 58% of consumers buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values, while 60% of employees use beliefs and values to choose their employer.

This is not about lip service. What you do is at least as important as what you say.

Source: 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: the New Cascade of Influence

Logo and tagline

You could argue these are part of your brand voice and aesthetic, but they’re important enough they deserve to be called out on their own. These are the instantly recognizable representations of your brand.

If you read “Just Do It” or see the iconic swoosh, you don’t need anyone to tell you you’re looking at a Nike product or ad. Red Bull gives you what? (Say it with me now: Wings .) Put some thought into these aspects of your brand, as they’ll become the currency of your brand.

Source: Nike on Facebook

2. Tell a brand story

This correlates to some of the elements we’ve already talked about, but it goes a little further than your brand values and voice. Your brand story is the narrative of your brand and how it got to be that way.

For an entrepreneur, the brand story might be that they spotted a problem in their day job and invented a solution to fix the problem.

For a larger business, your brand story might be a conglomeration of your mission statement and your history.

Every brand has a story. But the critical component for brand awareness is to tell that story. Use narrative to showcase your brand story through, for example, customer experiences, or by marking key milestones in your growth.

For example, Harley-Davidson produces The Enthusiast magazine , which showcases rider stories as well as riding tips and information about new models and gear. Rider stories also feature on their social channels:

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Harley-Davidson (@harleydavidson)

3. Create value beyond your product

A key way to build long-term brand awareness is to create value beyond your product. Think about ways you can inform, educate, or entertain.

Do you or your team have specialized expertise? Don’t keep it to yourselves! Share your knowledge through a blog, podcast, YouTube channel, or newsletter.

This shouldn’t be about making sales directly. Instead, this is a relationship-building and brand awareness practice that creates more opportunities for audiences to get to know your brand.

For example, Patagonia creates films that align with their brand values and story. Their products appear in the films, but there is no hard sell. The value is in the films themselves. The webpage where the films live says, “We are a collective of storytellers who make films on behalf of our home planet.”

4. Create shareable content

This overlaps a little bit with the last couple of points, but here we’re focused specifically on creating content that’s easy to share. While it’s not always possible to predict what will go viral, you can certainly take steps to make your content more discoverable and shareable.

First, you should follow social media optimization best practices like posting consistently and at the right time .

But also create content that your followers will want to share. This aligns with the idea of providing value in your content rather than always trying to make a sale. Try adding a call to action that suggests sharing your resources or tagging a friend.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Thuja | Swissfoodstagram 🇨🇭 (@thuja_leo)

Also make your content easy to share with social sharing buttons on your website and blog, which can help provide social proof.

5. Contribute to your community

Not all brand-building happens online. You can establish brand awareness by contributing to your community in concrete ways like sponsoring events, offering corporate donations, or facilitating employees’ participation in charity work.

This can be as big as the sponsorship of a major event, like Vancouver’s annual fireworks competition, known as the Honda Celebration of Light.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Honda Celebration of Light (@celeboflight)

Or it could be as simple as contributing an item to a silent auction for a local fundraiser.

6. Offer a freebie

Everyone loves a freebie. Offering something for free is a good way to get skeptical potential customers to try your product. It can also create buzz about your brand online.

Whether it’s a free sample, a free trial or a “freemium” business model, a free taste of what you offer helps get people in the door and spreads awareness of your brand.

What’s the difference between a free trial and freemium?

In a free trial, you offer all or a version of your regular product or service for free for a limited time – usually 7, 14, or 30 days.

With a freemium business model, you offer a basic version of your product for free indefinitely with the option to upgrade to a paid plan for more advanced features.

For example, Hootsuite offers a limited free plan and a 30-day free trial on the professional plan.

Source: Hootsuite Professional

7. Run social media contests

The point above is all about creating brand awareness by making it easy for people to try your product or service. This point also involves free stuff, but here it’s about using a giveaway to draw attention to your brand on social media.

The “tag-a-friend” entry model of social contests is a particularly good way to get new eyeballs to your social accounts and in turn raise awareness of your brand. If you collaborate with another brand or content creator , you’ll increase your potential new audience size even more.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by BlendJet® – Official (@blendjet)

8. Work with the social algorithms

Instagram may have backed off its recommended content algorithm changes for now, but it nonetheless looks like recommended content is here to stay on Meta platforms. Mark Zuckerberg emphasized this in the latest earnings call:

“Right now, about 15% of content in a person’s Facebook feed and a little more than that of their Instagram feed is recommended by our AI from people, groups, or accounts that you don’t follow. We expect these numbers to more than double by the end of next year.”

And, of course, recommended content on the FYP is the driving force on TikTok.

Recommended content increases the opportunities for discovery on social platforms, as your content is seen by users who don’t yet follow you. That extra exposure is a good way to increase brand awareness.

But as Instagram learned when it leaned too hard into recommended content, people only like what they like. Basically, having your content show up in users’ feeds is only part of the equation. To generate real brand awareness, you have to create content they actually want to see.

We’ve got full blog posts on how to work with each of the social platforms’ algorithms, if you want to dive into this social media marketing strategy:

• Instagram algorithm (TL;DR: Reels. Reels. And more Reels.)
• Facebook algorithm
• Tiktok algorithm
• Twitter algorithm

To make sure the content you create is actually valuable to your potential audience, you’ve also got to understand who that audience is. For more details, check out our post on how to find your target market .

9. Run awareness ads

The social networks all know that brand awareness is a key business goal for many brands using their tools, which is why they offer ads that specifically focus on awareness.

Which targeting option is best for achieving brand awareness? The specific label may vary by platform, but it will always be called something like Awareness, Brand Awareness, or Reach.

Source: Meta Ads Manager

Here’s how Meta describes the brand awareness objective for ads on their platforms:

“The brand awareness objective is for advertisers who want to show ads to people who are more likely to recall them.

The brand awareness objective gives you the estimated ad recall lift (people) metric, which shows how many people we estimate would remember your ad if we asked them within two days.”

LinkedIn puts it a little more simply: “Tell more people about your products, services, or organization by selecting the Brand Awareness objective for your ad campaigns.”

Meanwhile, TikTok calls its branded hashtag challenge ad format the “master of mass awareness” and one of the “biggest and best ad formats for widespread and unmissable awareness.”

In short, brand awareness ads are a straightforward way to ensure your social advertising budget goes toward building awareness for your brand.

Create. Schedule. Publish. Engage. Measure. Win.

How to measure brand awareness

As we said right up at the top, brand awareness is not a single metric. But there are a number of stats you can use to measure it. Here are some of the most important brand awareness metrics and how to track them.

Note that while each of the social platforms offers its own analytics tools, those give you a siloed picture of your results one account at a time. For an overall view of your brand awareness success, it’s important to look at all the platforms together.

An analytics dashboard like Hootsuite Analytics makes measuring brand awareness metrics much easier by tracking data from all your social accounts in one place with the ability to create custom graphical reports that help you see changes in brand awareness over time.

Reach indicates the number of people who see your social content. When more people see your content, more people are likely to start to recognize what differentiates you as a brand. (This is why it’s so important to have a consistent brand voice and aesthetic.

When tracking your reach as a measure of brand awareness, pay special attention to the number of followers and non-followers.

Non-followers who see your content are potentially being exposed to your brand for the first time, generating new awareness.They’re seeing your content because it was recommended to them, either by one of their social contacts or by a social algorithm.

Impressions

As noted above, reach measures the number of people who saw your content (or, more specifically, the number of accounts that saw your content). By contrast, impressions measures the number of times people saw your content.

If your number of impressions is significantly higher than your reach, people are looking at your content multiple times. This can be a great signal of brand awareness. After all, the more times someone looks at a single piece of content, the more likely they are to remember the brand behind it.

Audience growth rate

Audience growth rate measures how quickly your audience is growing. This provides great signals of brand awareness, as followers are certainly more likely to know about and recognize your brand than are people who don’t yet follow you.

To calculate audience growth rate, take your number of new followers over a certain period and divide it by your total existing followers. Then, multiple by 100 to get your audience growth rate as a percentage.

Social share of voice

Social share of voice is a good way to measure awareness of your brand compared to your competitors. It indicates how much of the social conversation in your industry is dedicated to your brand.

To calculate social share of voice:

• Tally all the mentions of your brand across social networks – both tagged and untagged. (A social listening tool like Hootsuite is extremely helpful here.)
• Do the same for your key competitors.
• Add both sets of mentions together to get a total number of mentions for your industry.
• Divide your mentions by the total.
• Multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Direct traffic

Direct traffic is an indication of how many people land on your website by typing in your website address directly. (As opposed to finding you through a search engine, social channel, and so on.)

If someone knows your URL, they’re pretty clearly aware of your brand.

Using a web analytics tool like Google Analytics , you can see how people find your website online. Look for the direct traffic information to see how many people are typing your URL directly into their browsers.

3 examples of brand awareness campaigns on social media

1. the balvenie.

The Balvenie Whisky brand awareness campaign featured a YouTube web series in partnership with Questlove. The series featured meaningful interviews with celebrity creatives and thinkers, while raising awareness for the brand.

The marketing campaign brought in 5.1 thousand new YouTube subscribers and raised key brand awareness attributes above the relevant benchmarks.

2. Naked Juice

Naked Juice used Facebook and Instagram video and photo collection format ads with the reach objective for its brand awareness campaign. The ads, which appeared in both feed and Stories, used strong imagery and large text overlay to raise brand awareness with or without sound.

Source: Facebook

The campaign saw a 3.7 point lift in brand awareness.

3. Savage X Fenty

Savage X Fenty used brand awareness ad objectives to reach new audiences on Facebook and Instagram. The awareness ads focused specifically on creating a strong sense of brand, with sales or offers as a secondary focus.

Targeting all women in France, Savage X Fenty created half the ads themselves, and partnered with a group of Instagram influencers to create the rest.

Source: Instagram

These brand awareness ads resulted in a 6.9 point increase in ad recall.

Measure brand awareness and reach your target audience with Hootsuite. Plan, publish, and analyze your results in the same, easy-to-use dashboard. Try it free today .

All your social media analytics in one place . Use Hootsuite to see what’s working and where to improve performance.

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Christina Newberry is an award-winning writer and editor whose greatest passions include food, travel, urban gardening, and the Oxford comma—not necessarily in that order.

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Brand awareness: What it is and strategies to improve it

Written by by Ronnie Gomez

Published on  October 25, 2022

Reading time  12 minutes

What does it take to build brand awareness?

In the old days, a steady drumbeat of messaging across a few audience-preferred channels might have done the trick. Today, we have brand mascots faking forbidden romances, sponsored dance challenges and internet beefs over—ironically enough—chicken sandwiches.

Building a memorable brand image takes some big swings, but you have to walk before you can run. To help, we’re breaking down the why and how behind driving and measuring brand awareness.

Table of contents

What is brand awareness?

How to measure brand awareness, 12 proven strategies to increase brand awareness with social media, take your brand awareness strategy to the next level.

Brand awareness is the extent to which audiences are familiar with your brand’s identity and its product or services. It is the bedrock of your sales funnel. After all, you need to be able to recognize a brand to trust and buy from it.

A high level of brand awareness is the competitive edge that keeps a business top of mind for consumers. Brands with high levels of consumer recognition can even become synonymous with their product. For example, when someone needs to fix a permanent writing mistake, they’re usually not asking for “correction fluid”; they’re asking for Wite-Out .

Of course, achieving that level of brand recognition is a lofty goal. Our advice? Start where you are. Focus on building awareness within targeted audiences and grow from there.

Why is brand awareness important?

Every customer journey begins with the same step. That step is brand awareness.

Jokes aside, your brand awareness strategy will set the tone for a person’s entire experience with your brand. Start things out on the right foot, and you could be sowing the seeds for your next crop of brand advocates.

If that’s not enough, don’t worry—it’s not even the best part.

As your brand awareness strategy matures, you’ll soon find that the most effective awareness drivers don’t come from your official brand channels: they come from your fans. Our research shows that the most effective purchase drivers on social media are recommendations from friends, comments and product reviews and familiarity with a brand.

Brand awareness creates a community that generates word of mouth buzz, ‘I love this product, and I know you will too.’ Your community knows what their friends and family like. Your audience becomes a pipeline to your most relevant customer in the exact moment their friends and family need your product. That is the power of brand awareness. Akeeme Hogg Social Media and Email Marketing Lead, ServiceMaster Brands

Combine positive brand sentiment with high brand recognition and you get fans. Fans beget more fans. Brand awareness truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

Connecting brand awareness to ROI can feel like trying to explain how to get from Chicago to San Francisco by foot. Sure, it’s doable but it’s pretty complicated. We’ve simplified this process by creating a brand awareness roi calculator tool to help measure the impact that employee advocacy has on your brand’s awareness.

The classic marketing funnel looks straightforward but in reality, every customer journey is different and some can be much longer than others. Trying to track and assign value to every interaction between awareness and purchase simply isn’t the best use of anyone’s time.

Just because you can’t put an exact dollar value on your awareness efforts doesn’t mean they should go untracked. There are actually quite a few ways to track your efforts as you pilot new awareness strategies. Here are some of our favorites that you can try to help you measure brand awareness .

Brand surveys

Brand surveys are routine (often biannual) surveys that assess what an audience thinks and feels about your brand. Data from brand surveys can be used to track brand perception over time, providing businesses with the insights needed to shape their brand’s image in the right direction.

Unfortunately, these surveys take weeks (if not months) to design and distribute. If you want more timely data, you’ll want to supplement a brand survey with the following options.

Website traffic

Tracking month-over-month differences in web traffic isn’t an exact measurement of brand awareness. However, it’s much easier to connect web traffic to ROI making it a management-preferred reporting metric.

As you test out new brand awareness tactics, use Google Analytics to see how those changes impact growth in new users. That will give you a rough estimate of how your efforts translated to site traffic.

Social listening

Every day, people turn to social to rant and rave about the companies they love—and the ones they don’t. The right social listening tool can help you synthesize that chatter into timely, actionable brand insights.

If you use Sprout’s social listening tool , here are just a few of the metrics you can pull to understand how conversations are trending around your brand:

• Total message volume tracks the total amount of messages shared around your brand.
• Sentiment summary measures how people are feeling about your brand and whether or not it’s trending positively.
• Share of voice compares your brand’s market share on social to its top competitors.

Social is a go-to channel for raising brand awareness. But how do you become a familiar face within your followers’ feeds versus someone they just scroll past?

There’s no one correct answer to that question. The truth is, the options are as limitless as your creativity.  If you want to use social media for brand awareness, use these 12 ideas to jumpstart your efforts. From fine-tuning your profile to experimenting with your content, any combination of these tips will help you rise above the noise.

1. Give your social presence some personality

First things first: your social media presence shouldn’t look like everyone else’s.

One of the most persistent social media marketing myths is that only certain industries can have a “fun” social presence. Fast food, retail, sports—those brands can get experimental. Everyone else has to play it safe.

That couldn’t be more wrong.

If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s social strategy.

Side effects include -rough hair -dry skin -broken friendships -crop and habitat damage — Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) October 13, 2022

It would be easy for them to just share some cute animal pictures every now and then. However, it’s their off-the-wall personality that’s made them so endearing to followers.

And “personal” is the keyword here. Followers want to see more than promos and links: they want personal, human-centric content. Maybe that’s why the “man on the street” style interviews are exploding on TikTok.

@triplewhale Out of all the options… these are their favorite??🤔 #publicinterview #digitalmarketing #triplewhale ♬ Blue Blood – Heinz Kiessling

The social team at Triple Whale took notice of the trend and made it work for their brand. Now, they’ve amassed over 2 million views on TikTok.

Marketers are told time and time again to create “unique” content. It might sound corny, but the person behind your social presence represents a one-of-a-kind voice.

Before you hit “post,” make a point to ask yourself: “Does this sound like something a bot would say?”

2. Fine-tune your profiles

Recognition is a key element of building brand awareness.

When followers glance at your social profiles, they should be able to understand the basics of your brand, its purpose and its personality.

From social bios to profile images, how you set up your profile determines whether or not people recognize you. For example, check out how Hinge has their Twitter profile set up.

Brands only get a few seconds to grab someone’s attention and tell a quick story. By using their cover photo as a chance to reinforce their purpose and tagline, Hinge gets their message across quickly.

If you can’t sum up your brand ethos in a few characters and 1500×500 pixels, don’t worry. A clean, well-optimized profile and photo are enough to establish your brand with new audiences.

3. Make your posts pop

Here’s a common thread between most of our brand awareness tips: a bit of creativity can score you major brownie points with followers.

For example, check out how Bloom Nutrition makes use of their signature pink and green across a variety of post formats on Instagram.

Don’t have eye-popping images featuring your products? No problem. The principle of making your posts pop rings true in content marketing, too.

Notice how Sprout’s blog posts are all coupled with these colorful illustrations instead of generic stock photos?

After almost 20 years of #pumpkinspice frenzy, is the trend finally slowing down? 👀 We used Listening to find the answer. https://t.co/Fy7pp3HkhE — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) October 4, 2022

Or how brands like Hubspot couple important announcements with graphics instead of just using text?

For the second year in a row, HubSpot is named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms for its offering, Marketing Hub. 🎉 Learn more: https://t.co/XgRKRxsaCN pic.twitter.com/TSolp5Lvnr — HubSpot (@HubSpot) September 21, 2022

Anything you can do aesthetically to make your posts stand out is a point in your favor. Even if you’re not a design master, there are plenty of social media post templates to help you whip up some eye-catching imagery.

4. Collaborate with other brands

You know what they say: Teamwork makes the dream work. When brands collaborate on new releases or campaign ideas, both parties get a chance to introduce themselves to new audiences.

Both co-marketing and co-branding campaigns bring engagement from the jump. Not only that, but collaboration is a surefire way to make positive impressions on other players in your industry.

WAKE UP & MAKEUP 🍩💄☕️ e.l.f. runs on @dunkindonuts drops 3/31/22 on our site, exclusively available to our Beauty Squad loyalty program members 🤩 Coming to @ultabeauty 4/3/22 online & in-stores. Sign up for Beauty Squad to be the first to shop: https://t.co/TPi9urZdRU pic.twitter.com/dIagOxL3Pm — e.l.f. Cosmetics (@elfcosmetics) March 30, 2022

Keep an eye out for strategic partnerships as you watch over your industry’s content landscape. You never know who could be the best fit for your dream team.

5. Harness the power of hashtags

Do hashtags work anymore? According to 72% of our LinkedIn community , the answer is yes.

Every now and then a viral hot take will try to force hashtagging into an early grave. Fret not, my fellow marketers, the hashtag is alive and well. If you’re choosing relevant, brand-applicable hashtags, they’re a surefire way to increase impressions on your posts.

When choosing which hashtags to include in your posts, consider both the network you’re posting on and the trends that are driving conversations at the moment. Take this Halloween-themed TikTok from Heinz , for example:

@heinz_us Tag yourself #heinzhalloween ♬ The Heinz Halloween Beat #3 – Ricky Desktop

This video uses two different hashtag strategies. First, they came up with a hashtag campaign (#VegetarianVampire) to introduce their new spooky season character. Then, they used a hashtag that’s almost constantly trending on TikTok (#WhatIEatInADay) to push the video to a wider audience. These hashtags work together to establish and amplify the Heinz brand.

6. Take it to the comments

As more networks experiment with algorithmically ranked comment sections, marketers are gaining new territory to make their brands known.

@emilyzugay Reply to @mcdonalds easy ♬ original sound – Emily’sTikTok.edu

Take this viral content series from creator Emily Zugay. Her hilarious redesigns of famous logos had brands rushing to her comments for their turn in the spotlight.

The top comments on her most popular post have over a hundred thousand likes each. On top of that, this video has been liked over 6 million times. That’s some seriously valuable brand exposure for every brand that’s secured a top spot in the comment section.

As you scroll through your social feed, keep an eye out for viral posts that relate to your brand or industry. When it comes to brand awareness, there’s no shame in riding on coattails.

7. Repurpose your content

If you’re like most marketers, you’re probably trying to boost brand awareness across multiple networks.

In that case, it’s important to repurpose your content to fit in with the best practices of each platform. After all, what works best on Instagram might not be prime for Facebook or Twitter.

Check out these two posts from You Need a Budget to see what we mean.

Hey Nashville, YNABers! Busy this weekend? 😉 We'd love to see you at our first ever YNAB Gathering!! 🥳We'll have special guests, games, prizes and swag! Oh, and did I mention it's free to attend? 🤩 Tickets are limited so don't wait to claim yours! https://t.co/Y4pZUkd0cZ — YNAB (@ynab) October 13, 2022

Both posts drive to the same call to action. However, the Tweet is much shorter and to the point. The Facebook post, on the other hand, relies on an eye-catching visual and emojis to stand out in newsfeeds.

It just goes to show that one-size-fits-all content and captions aren’t going to win your brand much attention.

Photos. Videos. Blogs. Your stuff. Other people’s stuff.

To keep your feed from growing stale, you should always have new social media ideas on the back burner to keep your feed fresh.

8. Share a distinct point of view

Stats. Case studies. Surveys.

If your brand is conducting any sort of original research, it can be a huge authority booster that does wonders for brand awareness, too.

How much does it pay??? 🤔 We picked a few popular job titles and looked up their base pay figures on Glassdoor (tips and bonuses aren't included in the total). What jobs would you like to see data for next? Let us know ↓ #salarytransparency #corporatelife #fairwages pic.twitter.com/eCnQp5b19M — Glassdoor (@Glassdoor) September 26, 2022

And if you’re not in a position where such research is possible, don’t panic.

Consider how you can comment on industry trends and happenings from your point of view. For example, our social team put their own spin on third-party data from AdWeek by adding a specific call to action for B2B marketers.

If you walk away with one thing, remember that working with creators will only become more important for all brands. We're talking to you too, B2B brands. via @thisiskis , @Adweek https://t.co/cgdLe8wycf — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) August 14, 2022

The takeaway here is that you should be contributing to the ongoing conversation of your industry at large versus just sitting on the sidelines.

9. Experiment with social copy

We’ve talked a lot about visuals, but text is yet another opportunity to showcase your brand’s social persona . Use your copy to pique people’s interest and encourage engagement, giving a sort of taste to readers before they click through.

You can look to The Cut for inspiration on this one. Their Tweets always pair perfectly with article link previews, creating a post you can’t help but click.

Fashion month may have finally come to an end this week, but we’ve already got a different sort of street style to look forward to: Carrie Bradshaw and the girls are back https://t.co/NXY5uYpWXr — The Cut (@TheCut) October 16, 2022

Don’t count out the power of a well-crafted text post. Once you find your brand voice, it can be a prime opportunity for connecting with followers and letting them know exactly who you are.

10. Use social as a teaching tool

Educational and “how-to” content is widely sought after on just about every social network. We surveyed consumers for The Sprout Social Index™ 2023 and found the content they like to see the most from brands are posts that highlight a product or service and real customer demos.

@charlottetilbury Replying to @mikkelsenkaren YES YOU CAN! ✨ Let @SOFIA TILBURY & @harris_reed show you how! 💎 #CharlotteTilbury ♬ original sound – Charlotte Tilbury

Posting such content regularly positions you both as a positive resource and a thought leader. The more opportunities to show off your brand’s product or know-how, the better.

11. Partner with creators

The creator economy is thriving. A new crop of trendsetters and thought leaders rises up every other week. No matter what industry you work in, there’s probably a social media content creator making waves with your target audience.

That’s probably why marketers rank connecting with new audiences as the second most popular reason for collaborating with creators. When you think about it, it’s kind of like the online equivalent of getting introduced to someone through a mutual friend.

12. Show up consistently

Finally, consider that nobody can truly be aware of your brand if you don’t post consistently.

According to The Sprout Social Index, 74% of consumers think brands should post 1-2 times per day. To help you save time and to make the process of showing up easier, having a scheduling tool such as Sprout on deck can be a game-changer.

The more ground you and your brand can cover, the better. It all comes down to having a specific strategy which makes the most out of the time you spend on social media.

And with that, we conclude our list!

Building buzz around your brand takes an eye for both experimentation and data. Try new things, report on what works, rinse, repeat.

And when the workload gets too high, try automating some of your routine responsibilities. Sprout’s scheduling and analytics tools can remove bulky, manual processes from your day-to-day so you can focus on creating new brand awareness strategies that gain and retain loyal followers.

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• Brand Image

9 Steps to Solid Brand Awareness Strategy [2024]

Table of contents.

If your product or service has a high level of brand awareness, it will generate more sales. Why? Brand awareness puts your brand on everyone’s minds. So how aware is the society of your brand? Thanks to this article, you’ll know everything. Stay tuned!

Brand awareness describes the level of brand, product, or service recognition among consumers. Strong brand awareness has several benefits, including increased sales, improved customer loyalty, and a strengthened competitive position.

The competition is fierce, and grabbing the attention of your potential customers is vital for your business to thrive.

That’s why creating brand awareness is crucial for every start-up and company.

Brand image can be a deciding sales factor for the right target audience.

With a little help from this post, you will be able to create and build brand awareness and ultimately boost your sales!

Table of contents:

What is brand awareness? Definition

Brand recognition vs. brand awareness.

• Brand awareness strategy

Why is brand awareness important

Examples of brand awareness.

Brand awareness is the level of recognition a brand has among its target audience. Those levels answer the question – how familiar is your target market with your brand?

To make the concept more practical, think about brands such as Kleenex or Coca-Cola. Coke is often used as a synonym for a soft drink, no matter the producer.

That’s because the levels of brand awareness among its consumers are high regarding Coca-Cola.

Brand awareness is one of the major assets your brand can build. High levels of recognization can increase the value of your product or service and give your company a competitive advantage.

Also, it is one of the key components of brand equity, which refers to the value a consumer derives from a particular product or service. 

A company with high brand equity will have loyal customers willing to pay a premium for its products or services. A company with low brand equity may find it challenging to compete in its industry. 

Start measuring your brand awareness!

Brand recognition and brand awareness are often used interchangeably, but they are actually two different concepts.

Brand recognition is the ability of consumers to identify a particular product or service based on its name, logo, or other distinguishing features. It’s one of many elements that make up brand awareness. 

Brand awareness goes one step further, referring to the level of consumers familiar with a particular brand.

So, which is more important for businesses? In general, brand recognition is more important in the short term, while brand awareness is more important in the long term.

Brand recognition can help businesses quickly attract attention and generate sales, but it can be difficult to maintain over time.

Brand awareness takes longer to build but can be more durable. It’s crucial to build customer loyalty.

A great marketing strategy will take both into account to maximize results.

Use Brand24 to measure and increase the awareness of your brand!

9 steps to brand awareness strategy

A brand awareness strategy aims to build familiarity and name recognition so that potential customers will think of the brand when they are ready to make a purchase.

Here are some tactics on how to build brand awareness from scratch. Use a mix of these tactics to reach the broadest audience possible.

Here are key tips on how to build brand awareness from scratch:

• Create a consistent brand image
• Get to know your audience
• Establish a tone of voice
• Create a Unique Selling Proposition
• Do your SEO
• Use social media wisely
• Create shareable content
• Implement remarketing campaigns
• Measure brand awareness

01 Create a consistent brand image

Strong branding is essential if you want to stick in the memory of potential clients.

By developing a clear and recognizable brand identity, businesses can ensure that their target audience knows who they are and what they stand for.

One of the best ways to create a strong brand image is to use consistent visuals across all channels.

This means using the same colors, fonts, and logo on everything from your website to your business cards.

Consistency will help create a cohesive look that will be easily recognizable to your target audience.

It’s a great idea to develop a brand book to establish your brand style and visual identity.

02 Get to know your audience

The critical element of increasing brand awareness is knowing what your potential customers expect from your brand. Building long-lasting relationships will help your brand thrive in an extremely competitive world.

How to listen to your clients when there are so many platforms you should keep an eye on?

Well, that’s a task for your social listening tool .

It can be incredibly valuable for brand awareness, as it lets you see what people say about you in real time. You can use this information to adjust your marketing strategy and ensure that your brand is being seen positively.

When it comes to media monitoring for brand awareness, you should set up at least two projects:

• One is for monitoring the mentions regarding your brand or products and services.
• The second project will monitor topics concerning your industry niche.

How does it increase brand awareness?

The simple answer is that it helps you find conversations you can jump into. That way, you can sway undecided customers towards your brand, or even get your competitors’ clients to buy your product.

Just take a look at this tweet:

If I were an owner of a Mexican restaurant down in San Antonio, I would certainly invite Kimiya to visit my establishment.

Another aspect of media monitoring for brand awareness is the fact that people appreciate brands that keep their eyes on the ball and respond to all mentions, even those without a branded hashtag or an @mention.

Take a look at this tweet:

Chobani is doing a great job when it comes to building brand awareness via social media listening. This conversation is as far away from nutrition and food as it can be, and yet Chobani came up as an example.

Additionally, social listening can help you to identify online influencers, trending hashtags, conduct sentiment analysis , track reach, and many other metrics.

What is your brand awareness? Check it out now!

03 Establish a tone of voice

A consistent tone of voice will help customers quickly recognize your brand and differentiate it from others in the marketplace.

When choosing a tone of voice for your brand, consider what personality you want to convey and what will resonate with your target audience.

Once you’ve settled on a tone, be sure to maintain it across all channels, from your website and social media to print materials and customer service interactions.

Establishing a clear and consistent tone of voice will create a strong foundation for brand awareness and customer loyalty.

04 Create a Unique Selling Proposition

A unique selling proposition is crucial. It sets you apart from your competition and tells your customers who you are, what you stand for, and why they should buy from you. 

So it’s essential to ensure your brand delivers the right message and resonates with your target audience. 

A USP should be clear, concise, and memorable. Most importantly, it should be relevant to your audience and aligned with your brand messaging.

Creating a catchy slogan that will resonate with your audience is a great idea.

At Brand24, we say: Get instant access to brand mentions across social, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews, and more.

That’s because you can sign up and discover all mentions about your brand within a few minutes. We do not require your phone number, company name, or calls to give you access to social listening, as competitors do. Our initial clients appreciate it.

05 Do your SEO research

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A well-optimized website will rank high on Google, making users more likely to visit it.

According to Search Engine Watch, the top listing on Google’s organic search receives 33% of the traffic, the second position gets 18%, and it only degrades from there.

If you want to build brand awareness via SEO, you need to know what people are looking for. Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs will help you find the right keywords you should rank your website for.

SEO keyword research is essential to raise brand awareness and marketing efforts. By understanding what keywords people are searching for, you can ensure that your brand appears in front of potential customers when they’re looking for products or services like yours. Pick your strategic keywords and start content marketing . 

SEO is not only about doing keyword research for your website or blog. You should also think about the technical aspects of your website, such as loading speed. The faster the page loads, the better. It all impacts your position in Google or any other search engine.

Take your brand to new heights with Brand24!

06 Use social media wisely

Well-optimized social media channels can do wonders.

Claiming that almost everyone is now on social media is not an exaggeration. Instagram alone has more than one billion active users, and that number is still growing. That’s a market you can’t miss.

On the one hand, the popularity of social media is a blessing because you can get your message to new audiences relatively easily and at little cost. Social channels make it easy to share content, which means one person can show your content to their friends and family. You are reaching a new audience almost effortlessly.

But on the other hand, it means that the competition is fierce. Your message needs to stand out from the crowd to get recognition from your potential customers and existing audience.

What’s the right approach to increasing brand awareness on social media?

Choose the right social media platform

The great thing about social media is that they give you a well-functioning platform to broadcast your message. All you have to do is send the right message to the right people at the right time.

Let’s start with identifying the right social media platform for your brand awareness campaign.

The right platform for your business is the platform where your customers are present. You don’t have to set up a Facebook account if you know your demographic isn’t active on Facebook. Similarly, you don’t have to spend time figuring out Instagram Stories if no one is watching them.

Think about the content you can offer. A B2B company is usually most active on LinkedIn and X (Twitter). Brands that can produce engaging visual content, for example, jewelry producers or cosmetics brands, have a loyal following on Instagram and TikTok. For some, building an active group on Facebook is the best option.

Social media tactics to build brand awareness

Once you establish a platform you want to be active on, it’s time to get right to business.

Start with promoting your branded hashtag. A branded hashtag is a hashtag that is only used to relate to your products or company, for example, #adidas or #justdoit.

There’re two benefits to using the branded hashtag.

Firstly, you can use dedicated software to see how your content spreads on social media. A social media monitoring tool will help you:

• Spot the social media platforms where your audience is present
• Analyze the sentiment around your company or product
• Estimate the social media reach of your hashtag

Using these insights will let you tailor your future messages to the right audience. That will certainly boost your brand awareness as social media users will engage with your content . You should promote your products and services on the platforms your consumers are present.

Secondly, a branded hashtag helps to find and repost user-generated content. 

User-generated content serves as social proof – a way to reassure other social media users about the quality of your products. Nothing can compare to recommendations from other social media users.

Creating a lot of high-quality content can be quite an overwhelming task. UGC can help you with that! Just remember to ask the author for permission to repost their work.

07 Create shareable content

One of the best ways to get people talking about your brand is to create interesting and informative articles and social media posts. If you can provide valuable information that helps solve a problem or answer a question, people will be more likely to share your content.

You can also include social sharing buttons on your blog, so it’s easy for readers to share your posts with their followers.

Here you can see the tweet posted by Madalyn Sklar, who has over 112.7k followers on X (Twitter):

By creating shareable content, you can reach a wider audience and establish yourself as an authority in your field.

08 Implement remarketing campaigns

Remarketing campaigns are paid marketing campaigns where your target audience has already visited your website but left before converting.

This is a pro approach to building brand awareness. What is the premise behind this technique? It’s easier to boost your awareness among the people who have already heard about your brand.

A remarketing campaign for brand awareness aims not to broadcast your message to new audiences but to strengthen your message among your existing potential client base.

It takes several touchpoints to convert a client, and a remarketing ad is a perfect one.

09 Measure brand awareness

Building brand awareness can’t happen without tracking your efforts. Measuring brand awareness can be tricky, but getting an accurate idea of how well your marketing efforts are paying off is important.

To efficiently measure awareness of your brand, you need to:

• Pick tactics to measure brand awareness – You can increase brand visibility and awareness through various digital marketing areas, such as influencer marketing, brand advertising, SEO, content marketing, social media, brand partnership, etc. That’s why there is no one method for measuring awareness. By tracking brand awareness using multiple methods, you’ll get a more well-rounded picture of how your brand resonates with consumers. So first, set up your KIPs and choose tactics to measure them.
• Track key brand awareness metrics – We can track a lot of data, that’s for sure. What’s crucial, metrics should be related to your KPIs and marketing goals. For example, you can measure the volume of mentions. If this number is growing, it means that more and more people are talking about you, and you are reaching new target audiences. One of the most important metrics is the Presence Score . It helps you understand awareness around your company, competitors, or any topic of your interest.

• Use brand awareness tools – You can use many useful tools for measuring and increasing brand awareness campaigns. You will need to use analytics, social listening, and SEO tools to track your efforts.

The tips above are a great start. Fortunately, there are many ways to raise brand awareness you can implement right away. Check: How to increase brand awareness

How long does it take to build brand awareness?

It depends on a number of factors, including the size and scope of your target audience, your marketing budget, and the type of marketing activities you undertake.

However, with a well-planned and executed brand awareness campaign, you can start to see results within a few months .

Brand awareness is a process. The thing is to build it day by day consequently.

What are you waiting for? Check your brand awareness. 

Strong brand awareness can have tangible effects on your business performance.

The benefits of brand awareness will impact different layers of your organization, starting with marketing to ending with design and customer service.

Take a look at the advantages:

• Increasing customers’ trust
• Growing brand equity
• Making marketing easy
• Helping reach the target group
• Influencing consumer purchase decisions
• Leading to brand loyalty
• Helping businesses to compete more effectively

01 Increasing customers’ trust

When was the last time you bought something from a brand you didn’t trust? Probably a long time ago or never.

Trust is the currency of the 21st century. Consumers rely on family and friends’ recommendations. 

They read reviews and opinions about a brand, product, or service, and base their decisions on the research.

Brand awareness campaigns help you build consumers’ trust because they will be familiar with the values and mission of the company.

A high level of brand awareness will ensure your customers will return to you. 

In other words, awareness of the brand bonds customers to your brand. Customer loyalty has a direct impact on your revenue.

02 Growing brand equity

Brand equity measures a brand’s value. Brand equity directly correlates with brand awareness.

That’s because brand equity is the value of a brand, and brand awareness drives that value. Customers who are aware of a brand are more likely to interact with it. And the more often they interact with it, the more they trust it.

Brand equity is not only determined by the number of tangible assets the company has. You also have to take into account brand reputation . Positive associations can raise your brand equity. That’s why it’s essential to build a positive brand image.

03 Making marketing easy

Or easier, at least.

Brand awareness builds associations with certain product categories. For example, a lot of people use brand names as generic terms: kleenex for a handkerchief, coke for soda, and so on. Consumers tend to use top-of-the-mind brand names, and not always differentiate between brands.

Brand awareness connects actions or events with certain products. And that’s how part of marketing is done for marketers. Once the brand enters the language, it builds valuable word-of-mouth brand awareness.

04 Helping reach the target audience

Reaching the right people at the right time is key. Brand awareness is an essential factor in brand building and in increasing your consumer base. 

Well-known brands can spend less on marketing and still make sales and increase the number of consumers.

Once you gain sufficient brand awareness levels, you can work on brand loyalty or brand associations.

05 Influencing consumer purchase decisions

Brand awareness plays a significant role in consumer purchase decisions. In fact, it is often one of the key factors that consumers use to evaluate and choose between different products.

For example, when presented with two similar products, consumers are more likely to purchase the product from a familiar brand. This is because brand awareness can act as a proxy for quality, giving consumers a quick way to assess the relative merits of different products.

Try the tool that measures brand awareness for free!

06 Leading to brand loyalty

Brand awareness is an essential driver of brand loyalty. Customers need to be aware of a brand to consider it when making a purchase, and they need to be loyal to continue buying from it. 

But how exactly does brand awareness lead to brand loyalty? 

• First, awareness creates familiarity, which helps customers feel comfortable with a brand. They know what to expect from it and can trust that it will deliver on its promises. 
• Second, awareness helps to build an emotional connection with customers. They begin to see the brand as more than just a product or service – it becomes a part of their identity. 
• Finally, brand loyalty is also about convenience. Once customers are familiar with a brand and have developed a relationship with it, they are more likely to stick with it, even if another option becomes available.

07 Helping businesses to compete more effectively

A brand is more than just a name or a logo. It’s the emotional connection consumers feel with a product or service. And that connection can be incredibly powerful.

Consumers who are aware of and engaged with a brand are more likely to make purchases and develop loyalty to the brand over time.

That loyalty can give businesses a significant competitive advantage. Brand awareness also allows businesses to charge premium prices because consumers are willing to pay more for products and services they feel good about. In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, brand awareness is more important than ever.

I’m sure that you are curious about how big brands build awareness. Lots of them run hashtag campaigns. That’s because it’s relatively easy to measure such a campaign. 

Furthermore, because social media users willingly use hashtags, they easily become viral and spread across the internet.

Here are some great examples of brand awareness campaigns:

#ASICSFrontRunner by Asics

#givesyouwiiings by red bull, #spotifywrapped by spotify, #oreohorrorstories by oreo.

Asics is a Japanese sportswear company that designs and manufactures shoes, apparel, and accessories for various sports, including running, tennis, and cricket.

In recent years, the company has been working to increase its brand awareness. They created the ASICS FrontRunner program that brings together runners from all over the World. They take part in running competitions wearing Asics running shoes and clothes.

ASICS FrontRunners willingly share their results and experiences on social media using the hashtag #ASICSFrontRunner.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 886 times. Instagram is the main source of mentions.

Red Bull’s slogan “Gives You Wiiings” is all about their product giving you the energy and boost you need to reach new heights.

The brand is well known for its inventive marketing campaigns, which often involve extreme sports. This focus on adrenaline and excitement helps to create a strong brand identity that resonates with Red Bull’s target audience.

As a result, Red Bull has become one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Thanks to its clever marketing, Red Bull has been able to build a loyal following of customers who are passionate about the brand.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 641 times. TikTok is the main source of mentions.

#SpotifyWrapped by Spotify is an annual event that provides users with a personalized overview of the music they listened to during the year.

The event encourages users to continue using the Spotify service. #SpotifyWrapped typically runs for two weeks, during which users are encouraged to share their results on social media.

Users who participate can see how many hours they spent listening to music, their most-played artists, and their top genres. They will also be able to compare their results with their friends. #SpotifyWrapped is a great way for Spotify to generate brand awareness and keep users engaged with their service.

In the last 30 days, the hashtag was used 510 times. X (Twitter) is the main source of mentions.

The iconic cookie Oreo has posted spooky stories on social media with the hashtag #OreoHorrorStories. The brand encourages fans to share their scary tales.

The stories are often humorous, but they also remind readers that Oreos are the perfect treat for any occasion – even a horror movie marathon.

By tapping into our love of all creepy things, Oreo is raising brand awareness and reminding us that their cookies are always a delicious option.

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Why is brand awareness important? Because if no one knows about your product or service, you will not make any money. It doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if no one knows about it.

You need to make sure that people are aware of your brand before they can become customers or clients.

A bulletproof brand awareness strategy has many benefits:

• It encourages consumers’ decisions making process when they have to choose between various companies,
• It drives repeat purchases,
• It contributes to an increase in market share and conversions,
• It allows you to show your products and services to a new audience.

Once you increase brand awareness, you will increase your brand’s core business metrics.

So if you’re not already focusing on building a brand awareness strategy for your business, now is the time to start. Try the Brand24 tool for free!

Related articles

The 9 Best Brand Awareness Tools to Grow Your Business

How to Increase Brand Awareness: 15 Ways [Complete List]

9 Key Brand Awareness Metrics You Need to Measure

What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand recognition, brand recall, brand dominance, the benefits of strong brand awareness, social media reach and engagement, website traffic, surveys and feedback, tools for measurement, craft your brand identity, create shareable content, engage with your community, boost public relations and media coverage, invest in advertising, leverage digital asset management tools, inconsistency in branding, neglecting online reputation management, ignoring social media engagement, focusing solely on sales promotion, continuous analysis and reporting, adapting to market trends, reassessing and refining your brand identity, competitive analysis, customer feedback, manage your brand with brandfolder.

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The Ultimate Guide to Brand Awareness Strategies

October 30, 2023

Today’s consumers have access to practically anything they want with the touch of a button — but along with the overwhelming number of options comes a lot of marketing noise.

This is where the power of brand awareness comes in, guiding consumers through the tumultuous sea of choices. It’s the reason you reach for a particular soda brand or immediately recognize a tech giant’s logo. It's the intangible force that compels us to trust, engage with, and advocate for a brand.

In this post, we’ll explore what brand awareness is, how to measure and increase brand awareness, and ways to monitor your brand awareness strategies. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or you’re just embarking on your branding journey, this guide can help enhance your brand's recognition and resonance.

Brand awareness is the extent to which people are familiar with or recognize a brand. This means people can recall a brand’s name, logo, visual elements, and, more importantly, the feelings and perceptions associated with it. Brand awareness serves as a foundational element in a brand’s journey, as it creates a sense of recognition and trust among its audience.

Strong brand awareness is like a magnet, pulling in potential customers and making them more likely to choose your products or services over competitors. It establishes your brand’s credibility and positions it as a familiar, reliable choice in the market. Effective marketing campaigns aim to not only promote products or services but also create and reinforce brand awareness, helping the brand remain top of mind when the need for a product or service arises.

Types of Brand Awareness

Brand awareness can be split into three types: Brand recognition, brand recall, and brand dominance. Each type offers unique insights into how people perceive and engage with a brand.

Brand recognition refers to a person’s ability to recognize a brand when presented with visual or audio cues, such as its logo, slogan, or other brand elements, even if they are not actively seeking the brand.

Take McDonald’s, for example, with its iconic golden arches logo. The logo is so widely recognized that most people would be able to instantly identify it as McDonald’s without needing to read the brand name.

Brand recall reflects a person’s ability to remember and name a brand when prompted with a product category or a specific need. So, if someone were asked to name soft drinks and their first answer was Coca-Cola, that would mean the company has a high brand recall.

Brand dominance occurs when a brand is so strongly associated with a particular product category that it becomes the primary choice for consumers, often without considering alternatives.

For example, many people might automatically think of Kleenex when they need facial tissues, to the extent that Kleenex has become synonymous with the product itself.

Brand awareness can significantly impact a business’s success by fostering trust, attracting customers, and maintaining a competitive edge in the marketplace. There are many benefits of brand awareness, including:

• Competitive Advantage: Strong brand awareness sets you apart from competitors, making it easier to attract and retain customers in a competitive market.
• Increased Customer Trust and Loyalty: When consumers are familiar with your brand, they are more likely to trust it and choose it over competitors, often leading to long-term customer loyalty.
• Enhanced Marketing Efficiency: Since brand awareness increases familiarity, it’s easier to engage consumers with marketing for new products or promotions.
• Increased Sales: Recognizable brands tend to attract more customers, which can translate to increased sales and revenue.
• Ease of Expansion: Expanding into new markets or product lines is smoother when you have a well-known brand, as you already have a customer base and reputation that you can leverage.

How To Measure Brand Awareness

Measuring brand awareness is essential to understanding how well your target audience recognizes and perceives your brand. Here are twelve ways to measure brand awareness using social media reach and engagement, website traffic, surveys and feedback, and other measurement tools.

Social media is more than just a platform for sharing vacation photos and reconnecting with old friends — it serves as a dynamic space where people and brands can ignite discussions and interact.

Globally, people allocate around 38 percent of their daily online activity to social media , so it presents an ideal place for connecting with both existing and prospective customers. By reviewing performance metrics and engaging in social listening, you can transform these observations into actionable insights. Here are several metrics for gauging your brand’s awareness on social media:

• Follower Growth: Monitor the increase in your social media followers over time. A growing follower base indicates a broader brand reach.
• Impressions: Track the number of times your social media posts are displayed to users. More impressions suggest increased brand exposure.
• Engagement Rate: Analyze likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates on your social media content. A higher engagement rate indicates more heightened brand awareness in your audience.

Website traffic serves as an important measurement of brand awareness because it reflects how many people are actively seeking out or engaging with your brand online. For example, an increase in branded keyword searches after you drop a new marketing campaign suggests that consumers are becoming increasingly aware of your brand, indicating that your marketing campaign was successful.

Analyzing website traffic patterns can give you valuable insights into how sought-after and recognized your brand is, making it an essential metric for measuring brand awareness in the digital landscape. Here are a few metrics you can use to help you measure brand awareness through website traffic:

• Direct Traffic: Measure the number of visitors who directly type your website URL into their browsers. This can signify strong brand recall.
• Referral Traffic: Analyze traffic from other websites or platforms mentioning or linking to your brand. Referral traffic indicates external brand recognition.
• Branded Keyword Searches: Use tools like Google Analytics to track keyword searches for your brand name. An increase in these searches signifies higher brand awareness.

Surveys are great tools for measuring brand awareness because they directly capture your target audience’s perceptions and recognition level. By posing questions about your brand or asking participants to name brands within a particular category, you can gauge unaided brand recall.

These insights provide a clear picture of how well your audience knows and can recall your brand — and this picture can help you fine-tune your brand awareness strategies and strengthen your brand’s position. Here are a few ways you can gather insights on your brand awareness through surveys and feedback:

• Brand Awareness Questions: Conduct surveys among your target audience to assess their recognition and knowledge of your brand. Include questions like, “Have you heard of our brand?” or “Are you familiar with any of the following brands? Please select all that apply.”
• Brand Recall Questions: Ask survey respondents to name brands within specific product categories to gauge unaided brand recall. Some examples include, “Can you name any brands that offer (product/service)?” or “Which brand comes to mind when you think of (industry)?”
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Assess customer loyalty and advocacy, as higher NPS scores often correlate with stronger brand awareness.

Measurement tools play a crucial role in quantifying brand awareness as they provide organized and data-backed insights into your brand's presence and reputation. You have a range of tools at your fingertips, including Google Analytics, ad and social media analytics, and even DAM solutions like Brandfolder by Smartsheet.

For instance, Brand Intelligence provides insights into your assets, answering questions about how much, where, and by whom they are used. This data-driven approach enables a smarter and more effective brand strategy .

These tools enable you to efficiently assess the outcomes of your brand awareness initiatives, pinpoint areas that need refinement, and adjust your strategies accordingly.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

Increasing brand awareness requires a multifaceted approach. Here are some top strategies to help your business boost brand awareness.

Crafting your brand identity is the foundation of building brand awareness. Think about your brand’s unique value proposition, mission, and core values. Defining these brand pillars will guide your brand's personality and positioning.

Next, create a memorable logo, tagline, and visual identity — these will authentically convey your brand's essence and resonate with your target audience. Consistency is key, so make sure your branding remains uniform across all touchpoints, whether it’s your website, social media profiles, or marketing materials.

A cohesive brand identity not only fosters recognition but also communicates a sense of trust and reliability to your audience, ultimately strengthening your brand’s presence in the market.

Creating shareable content is a great brand communication strategy that can help your brand gain more traction on the internet, ultimately increasing your brand awareness. You’ll need to develop high-quality, relevant content that genuinely connects with your target audience’s interests and needs.

The type of content that resonates most effectively can vary based on factors like your target audience, chosen platform, and brand identity. However, video marketing stands out as a highly engaging and widely shareable format. Studies found that 91 percent of consumers want more video content from brands online.

Shareable content not only expands your brand’s reach as it circulates through social networks, but also boosts your brand’s reputation as a trusted source of valuable information and entertainment within your industry or niche.

Many consumers want to feel more connected with brands, and engaging with them is a great way to make that happen. High engagement establishes your brand as an approachable company, increasing your visibility with your target audience.

For example, if you run a travel brand , think about hosting an Instagram contest where you ask your followers to like a post, share it on their story, and tag a friend for a chance to win a free weekend getaway. It's a fun way to spread the word and increase brand awareness.

Additionally, it’s essential to quickly respond to comments, messages, brand mentions, and reviews across social media and review platforms. Remaining actively involved on these channels demonstrates your dedication to nurturing positive connections with your audience.

A well-executed PR strategy and media presence can significantly elevate your brand’s recognition and reputation, making it a powerful tool for expanding your brand awareness.

It involves actively building relationships with media outlets, influencers, and industry stakeholders to increase your brand’s visibility in the public eye. By effectively telling your brand’s story and sharing valuable insights or news, you establish credibility and trust. Media coverage in reputable outlets reinforces your brand’s authority and expands its reach to a broader audience.

You can also consider brand partnerships with influencers in your industry to create user-generated content and gather testimonials. With 50 percent of millennials trusting product recommendations from influencers, these real-life stories expand your brand’s reach and also build trust with potential customers.

Advertising — whether you use Google, Facebook, YouTube, or another platform — is a great tool for increasing your brand awareness. While advertising typically comes at an upfront cost, it can help you expand your reach and gain insight into your campaigns’ impact on brand awareness.

With paid ads, you’ll also have the ability to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring they reach people who are likely to be invested in your products or services.

Leveraging digital asset management (DAM) tools enhances the efficiency, consistency, and performance of brand assets, ultimately leading to more effective and coordinated marketing efforts. By maintaining a strong brand presence across various channels and responding promptly to market demands, a brand can increase its visibility and awareness among its target audience.

Brand Awareness Mistakes To Avoid

In pursuing brand awareness, it's important to navigate the landscape carefully, avoiding common pitfalls that can hinder your progress. Here are some common mistakes to avoid when building your brand awareness.

Maintaining brand consistency plays a pivotal role in reinforcing brand recognition and fostering trust among your audience. Nevertheless, in the dynamic world of marketing and creative collaboration, it can be quite challenging.

For instance, our State of Digital Asset Management report revealed that a significant 60 percent of participants continue to use incorrect versions of their company logo. This inconsistency can blur your brand’s distinct identity, so it’s important to ensure that your entire team is equipped with the right branding assets to keep your image sharp and unmistakable.

Neglecting online reputation management can be a significant mistake when it comes to building brand awareness. In today’s digital age, consumers often turn to online sources, including reviews and social media, to form opinions about brands. Negative comments or reviews, or misleading information, can spread quickly and damage your brand’s image.

For instance, a restaurant with a few negative reviews on popular review platforms may deter potential customers, even if the majority of customer experiences are positive. Proactive online reputation management involves monitoring online conversations, addressing negative feedback promptly, and promoting positive interactions. This ensures your brand’s online reputation remains favorable and trustworthy, and increases credibility and positive brand awareness.

Social media platforms are vibrant hubs where consumers actively engage with brands and their content. By ignoring social media engagement, you miss out on valuable opportunities to connect authentically with your audience, build relationships, and showcase your brand’s personality.

For instance, brands like Wendy’s have gained attention and increased brand awareness by engaging humorously with their followers on X (formerly Twitter). These interactions not only foster a positive brand image but also encourage users to share the brand’s content, extending its reach and influence. In today’s digital landscape, active social media engagement is key to elevating brand awareness and staying relevant to your target audience.

While sales promotions can drive short-term revenue spikes, they often lack the depth required to establish a lasting brand presence. Brand awareness is a long-term strategy that involves cultivating recognition, trust, and loyalty among consumers over time.

For instance, Apple’s brand awareness is rooted in its innovative technology and design, not just discounts or promotions. Relying solely on sales promotion can undermine your brand’s perceived value and longevity, potentially alienating customers who seek a more profound connection with your brand. Balancing sales promotion with broader brand-building efforts is crucial for achieving sustained brand awareness and continued success in the marketplace.

Monitoring Your Brand Awareness Strategy

Creating a brand awareness strategy is just the beginning; the key to long-term success lies in continuously monitoring and fine-tuning your efforts. Here are essential components of monitoring your brand awareness strategy.

To gauge the effectiveness of your brand awareness efforts, regularly collect and analyze relevant data and metrics. Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, social media engagement, brand mentions, and sentiment analysis. Comprehensive reporting allows you to measure your strategy’s impact and identify areas for improvement.

Consumer behavior and the digital landscape are constantly evolving. Be aware of emerging market trends, technological advancements, and shifts in consumer preferences. Flexibility and adaptability are crucial to ensuring your brand awareness strategy remains relevant and effective.

Brand identity isn’t static; it can evolve with time. Periodically revisit your brand’s unique value proposition, mission, and core values . Assess whether they align with your target audience’s evolving needs and expectations. If necessary, refine your brand identity to maintain resonance with your audience.

Keep an eye on your competitors and their brand awareness efforts. Analyze what strategies are working for them and identify gaps or opportunities you can leverage. Understanding your competitive landscape can help you stay ahead in the race for brand recognition.

Actively seek and listen to customer feedback. Customers’ insights and opinions can provide valuable information about how your brand is perceived and where improvements may be needed. Online surveys, reviews, and social media interactions are excellent channels for gathering customer input.

In the ever-evolving landscape of brand awareness, monitoring is the linchpin that allows you to adapt, refine, and optimize your strategy over time. By staying agile and data-driven, you can ensure your brand remains visible and relevant to your target audience.

If you’re searching for a tool to assist you in managing your brand and enhancing your brand awareness strategy, Brandfolder could be your solution. Our DAM software allows you to centralize and streamline all your brand assets, ensuring consistent and trustworthy branding. Our collaborative features extend your brand’s reach and responsiveness. At the same time, analytics facilitate data-driven enhancements to your strategy for building and monitoring brand awareness, ultimately fortifying your brand’s presence and resonance.

Reach out to our team and discover how Brandfolder can help you manage and improve your brand today.

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How to increase brand awareness: top 10 strategies.

17 min read What tactics make up the core of a great brand awareness strategy? And how can you ensure that your target audience not only knows who you are, but what you stand for, what your brand voice sounds like, and why? Here’s everything you need to know about increasing brand awareness.

When you build brand awareness, you build your brand value . And when you build your brand value, you find new audiences. But why is that important? And, crucially, what are the practical steps you can take to proactively raise brand awareness?

Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.

– Sir Richard Branson

A quick scenario for you: imagine if we set two identical-looking pairs of sneakers down in front of you and asked you to choose one to run a 5K in. At first glance, they look exactly the same, with the same amount of foam, arch support, and weight.

It would be a tough choice, right?

Ok, now imagine that one of them has a big black swoosh on the side. You’re probably going to go with the Nikes, right? The black swoosh represents more than just Nike but the brand identity . The identity behind the logo shows, courage, athleticism and so much more. That’s the power of brand awareness.

Let’s look at what it can do for you…

Get started with our free brand awareness survey template

Why is brand awareness important?

The example above is a good starting point in recognizing the importance of building brand awareness, but there are a bunch of business benefits that come from raising your profile in the public eye. For a start, here are a few eye-opening stats:

Three killer stats about strong brand awareness:

• 46 percent of consumers would pay more to purchase from brands they trust
• Brands with consistent presentation increase revenue by as much as 33 percent
• Brand awareness takes 5-7 impressions to create.

But let’s dive a little deeper. Here are four reasons to care about your brand awareness campaigns and brand-building activities:

Brand awareness gives you a competitive edge

People are drawn to things they know and understand and we’re naturally adverse to change. In a sales environment, that translates to people sticking to brands they’re already aware of.

Imagine searching for a product on Amazon, as an example. If you were to type in ‘smartphone’, you’d be presented with hundreds of options from a range of manufacturers. But you’d probably be drawn more towards an Apple or a Samsung device than something from a brand you’ve never heard of – even if they’re much more expensive than competitor brands. The same applies to your brand. If you can get people to recognize and remember your brand among a list of competitors, you’re much more likely to win their business.

Brand awareness builds brand loyalty and trust

We mentioned in the statistics above that people are willing to pay more for products from brands they trust. Well, brand trust is a direct result of having strong brand awareness – as is brand loyalty.

Having a name and logo that people already know is like standing on an island above a sea of your less well-known competitors. Rightly, consumers hate not getting the product or service they expected when they hit ‘purchase’ – so they trust that there’ll be fewer surprises from well-known brands.

That naturally fosters a sense of loyalty. After all, if you know a certain brand will meet your needs, why risk trying something new?

Brand awareness affects who you can employ

It’s not just about consumers. People also prefer to work for brands they know, understand, and respect. In fact, LinkedIn states that companies with strong branding often see 50% more applicants for jobs than their rivals. That’s tied to findings in the same research that 75% of applicants consider the brand before throwing their hat into the ring.

Brand awareness shows things are working

An important part of any brand awareness campaign or brand-building strategy is being able to measure its results, but – really – every pillar of your company goes towards brand awareness.

In that sense, measuring an increase in brand awareness shows that everything you’re doing, from your digital presence to your customer support, is going well. And if it isn’t, then the right brand tracking software will show you where you’re going wrong.

But we’ll get to that shortly. First, let’s dive into the strategies and best practices behind creating brand awareness.

10 strategies to increase brand awareness

Need some help making your brand as recognizable as some of the world’s biggest household names? Spoilers: they’re all doing the same things, just with a relentless focus and frequency. Here’s what building brand awareness takes…

10 strategic ways to increase brand awareness:

• Prioritize consistency
• Be about more than just your products
• Think omnichannel
• Partner with like-minded influencers
• Run a thought leadership program
• Advertise with intelligence
• Become a sponsor
• Be memorable with your output
• Measure brand awareness to increase it

1. Prioritize consistency

Consistency is a wide-reaching term when it comes to how you convey your brand. But what is consistency?

You might take it to mean keeping your visual identity uniform and recognizable across platforms, for one thing. And, sure, that’s definitely a key way to raise brand awareness. In fact, color can boost brand recognition by up to 80% , while consumers are 81% more likely to remember your company colors than your name.

But consistency goes beyond just the look and feel of your brand. We’re also talking about consistency in your tone of voice and digital output. You want everything you put out there to feel like it came from the same source, with the same values.

Consistency in your products – via rock-solid quality assurance – is also a big part of any brand awareness strategy, as is working on consistently great customer support. That can build a reputation, which promotes word-of-mouth growth, which ultimately builds brand equity and awareness.

2. Be about more than just your products

Whatever the demographic of your target audience, chances are they’re conscientious consumers who want their favorite brands to be about more than just the nuts and bolts of the business.

In other words, it pays to stand for something. Developing, publishing, and promoting your values can help you stand out from the pack, and can help form associations that build brand awareness.

Sure, great products or services are key, but if customers can remember you as also being the brand that stands for sustainability, worker rights, or supporting your local community, that’ll go a long way in terms of raising brand awareness.

3. Give back

On that score, what are you doing for your local community? What are you doing to help the world at large? It’s no longer viable to simply exist as a company that makes a great product. Consumers demand that their brands not only stand for something but actually participate in something philanthropic, too.

Our only advice here is that you’ll need to balance carefully on the tightrope suspended over pitfalls like greenwashing. The best way to do that is to be demonstrably good – and mean it. Make being altruistic part of your brand’s culture, rather than a series of PR opportunities.

4. Think omnichannel

Are you putting your best foot forward? Any brand awareness campaign must touch as many people from your target audience as possible by meeting them where they are. That means adopting an omnichannel approach to your marketing efforts.

Are your social media posts being planned for every relevant channel? Is your publishing cadence consistent across every touchpoint? And is your brand voice landing everywhere it could?

You might want to explore podcasts, for example, alongside expanding into some of the typically underserviced platforms like TikTok, Reddit, and Quora. The important thing is to strike a balance where your output is relevant and you’re not spreading your content marketing efforts too thinly.

Omnichannel also refers to your reactive strategies. Namely: customer support and forming actionable insight. It pays to be listening to what customers are saying, where they’re saying it, and that you can respond promptly.

Today, that means employing the right software to listen for you – at scale and with natural language processing designed to gather everything (from every channel) together under one roof.

5. Partner with like-minded influencers

Sometimes it pays to stand on the shoulders of giants. Influencers with enormous followings already have awareness, trust, and loyalty locked in, so why not partner with them to borrow a bit of all that brand-building goodness?

It’s a good idea to find influencers on social media platforms relevant to your business who share your values, and whose audiences would be naturally interested in your products or services. Try and avoid one-and-done deals, as there’s little to be learned or tracked from that kind of activity. Instead, adopt a ‘test and learn’ approach with partnered content on their channel that you can tweak over time.

6. Run a thought leadership program

Increasing brand awareness means not only ensuring that your target audience knows who you are, but – ideally – that they also respect you. A great way to tick both boxes is to build out a thought leadership program that positions the people behind your brand as experts in their field.

The best way to do this is to ladder up a few separate tactics that combine to form an overall package across a year (or more). Start by ensuring that your experts are posting regular industry-specific opinion pieces on LinkedIn, and cross-promote these on any other relevant owned and third-party channels.

An annual whitepaper or industry report that B2B or B2C readers will deem to be a must-read is another fantastic way to cement your brand’s place as an industry voice. Around this, see if your expert executives can appear on panels, give trade show keynotes, run events, or make podcast appearances peppered throughout the year.

As a concerted brand awareness campaign, the goal here is to put your brand’s voice at the center of the discourse – and to have all the answers to burning industry questions.

7. Advertise with intelligence

Advertising may be an age-old way to establish brand awareness, but how your adverts make their way into people’s eyeballs is ever-evolving. Digital advertising platforms are getting smarter and more targeted all the time, meaning that your brand awareness campaigns can be tailored to do exactly that: build brand awareness.

If you’re using Meta/Facebook’s advertising platform, for example, there’s a specific setting and advertising style for a brand awareness campaign, which differs from those designed to generate clicks or drive purchases.

The important thing when running campaigns is to trial various approaches using A/B testing where possible, then use all the reporting data these platforms make available to you and learn from the results to fine-tune your next run of ads.

8. Become a sponsor

Some timeless practices stick around for a reason. It’s tempting to think that simply slapping your logo on a banner here, a sportscar there, or a jersey there won’t amount to much in the way of brand recognition , but you’d be surprised.

While it’s always been tough to track direct ROI on sponsorships, it’s a marketing industry that only ever grows in size year on year, with some impressive results.

Forbes, writing about UK mobile operator O2, shows the power of leveraging a sponsorship with a clear strategy: “O2 telecommunications generated a 6X return on their entertainment sponsorship investment in the O2 Dome venue by maximizing the unique brand, activation, and customer loyalty economics the music venue offered them.

“They generated outsized returns by finding creative but financially powerful ways to leverage the unique assets of the O2 property – cultural relevance, excitement, influence – to improve brand preference, perceptions , cultural relevancy, differentiation, and awareness. They leveraged proprietary assets of the property – tickets, seating, and artist access – to gain #1 market share by improving customer loyalty 10%, willingness to refer 25%, and new customer activations by over 10%.”

Need some further reading on a smaller scale? Exhibitor Online has some eye-opening stats on the figures behind successful expo sponsorships.

9. Be memorable with your output

You want your target audience and new audiences to know who you are, but what do you want them to think about you? Presumably, not that you’re just like everyone else. Brand recognition is all well and good but what really drives brand awareness is standing out.

To that end, being different is a good thing and being disruptive in your market is even better. There’s no silver bullet for this, obviously. Instead, take a step back, track what your competitors are doing, and try and curate campaigns that can boost brand awareness simply by being memorable.

We all know examples of brilliant advertising campaigns, stunts, and slogans that stick in the mind – and they all came from brands that became household names as a result

Just remember: if you’re going to take swipes at your rivals, punching up is ok, but punching down isn’t.

10. Measuring brand awareness can help increase it

You’ll only know that your brand awareness strategy is paying off if you can measure where things stand now and compare that to how things look after your brand awareness efforts have changed. And that means measuring.

Customer surveys – including those with questions aimed at pinpointing aided and unaided brand recall – are a great way to monitor brand awareness, but if you want to get really scientific, you’ll need software that can scour social media platform interactions and keep tabs on reach and share of voice across every digital touchpoint.

In other words, you need to measure brand awareness to grow it.

And this leads us on to the most important part of the puzzle:

Build brand awareness the smart way

If you got here by searching ‘how to increase brand awareness’, then there’s really only one thing you need to remember: your efforts to increase any business metric are redundant if you don’t monitor them intelligently.

But what actually is ‘brand awareness’ in that sense? What does it look like as a metric?

Well, it’s the summation of a whole lot of individual data points – too many for any one person to stay on top of. And that’s exactly where the right software, powered by AI and machine learning, can help.

With today’s top brand tracking technology, you’ll be able to stop the guesswork and start finding answers. That’s because the best, most inter-connected software in this space can scoop up all the millions of informational gold nuggets that go into defining brand awareness and turn it into meaningful insight – insight that you can use to fuel further action.

Qualtrics’ Brand Tracker tool offers that holistic insight into your brand’s overall presence, both in real-time and over longer periods.

It automatically uncovers the key drivers that attract people to your brand, bridges the gap between external sources like social and search, uses natural language processing to analyze text for changing sentiment and trends, and makes powerful predictions about consumer behavior.

Related resources

How to measure brand awareness 14 min read, brand recognition 14 min read, brand awareness 31 min read, how to build a brand 14 min read.

Brand Management

Brand Extension Strategies 11 min read

Ideal customer profile 10 min read.

Brand Equity

Brand Research 14 min read

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9 Steps To Solid Brand Awareness Strategy[2024]

• by Sweta Panigrahi
• February 17, 2023
• 11 minutes read

Table of Contents

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“A brand is a name a company uses to represent a specific product or business for marketing purposes.”

Promoting your business with a brand identity helps you to attract customers more conveniently.

You must plan and execute a proper strategy to succeed in your brand awareness goals.

This article will guide you through nine tried and true practices to develop a solid brand awareness strategy.

So, let’s get started.

1. Develop a memorable brand image

Each company must  create a distinctive brand identity  for audiences to recognize it instantly. 

First, you must think of a name that connects with your business and is easily recognizable to your audience.

For example, in 1975, computer programmers Bill Gates and Paul Allen started their company designing software for microcomputers. So, they simply named it Microsoft.

Create a logo that reflects your brand image

A logo is the best way to capture the essence of a brand in a visual representation. 

Companies tend to use logos that correspond with their business name or brand name, which clearly portrays the brand. 

If you name your brand after a sport, an animal, or a fruit, you can use that object’s image for designing the brand’s logo. The importance of a logo cannot be overstated, as it is often the first thing that customers notice about a company. When you  create a logo , the importance of it cannot be overstated, as it is often the first thing that customers notice about a company.  

A logo can evoke emotions and associations with a brand and can help create a strong visual identity that sets a business apart from competitors.

For example, Apple introduced a bitten apple as its logo in 1977. It continues to use this logo to this day with slight modifications in the color scheme.

You can design a great logo for your business by using popular logo-making tools such as Wepik, Canva, Wix Logo Maker, and Adobe Illustrator. You may also opt for an AI logo generator for a faster process.

Choose a consistent color scheme

Choose attractive colors for your logo and apply them consistently to reflect your brand. This means employing the same color scheme for your content, ads, and posts.

Consider Neil Patel, founder of NP Digital, who effectively leverages a blend of white, orange, and black to build his brand identity .

Just have a look at his website’s homepage here.

And he uses the same color scheme for his NP Digital website.

Similarly, these three colors are predominantly visible in most thumbnail designs on his YouTube videos.

Craft a catchy USP to promote your brand

A unique selling proposition (USP), or unique selling point, is a statement that businesses use to position themselves as better than competitors.

To craft a catchy USP, study your competitors first and then your target audience. See what your competitors’ strategies are lacking and how you can overcome that.

And then mention all the components to craft a convincing USP, which can highlight your exceptional product quality, excellent customer service , affordable pricing, or a standout feature.

Domino’s Pizza has been using the USP “fresh and hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less—or it’s free” since 1973.

It guarantees the quick delivery of freshly prepared pizza within half an hour. This powerful USP has helped fast food restaurants rapidly increase sales and evolve to become the world-famous pizza restaurant chain.

Establish a brand voice

Your way of communicating with your customers should be unique and consistent throughout your brand.

Maintain a similar tone in your advertising campaigns , posts, and content.

For example, Nike uses an inspiring tone with a logo that signifies positivity, speed, and motivation.

It uses motivational taglines in its marketing strategy , such as “Just Do It,” “Ready For Anything,” “Find Your Greatness,” “Equality Has No Boundaries,” and “Greatness Goes The Extra Mile,” among others.

Nike recently promoted its sneakers with a campaign featuring professional skater Sky Brown emphasizing women empowerment with the tagline “Who Said Woman Was Not Meant To Fly.”

2. Research your target customers

After establishing your brand, conduct extensive research on your target audience.

You should know your customers’ needs and how your product can fulfill their requirements.

Here’s the thing…

Around 84% of buyers prefer to buy from a business that understands their needs and provides a solution accordingly.

There are so many ways, such as conducting surveys and asking people about their preferences.

Here’s an example. In a tweet, McDonald’s recently asked its customers’ opinions on bringing back a discontinued food item.

This tweet received a high engagement from the audiences who retweeted this post more than 8000 times on Twitter. Consumers replied with their favorite discontinued food item that they wanted McDonald’s to bring back.

3. Promote your brand on social media

Social media is a powerful medium for increasing your business’s engagement and boosting sales . Currently, an estimated 92% of companies use this channel for marketing.

This amplifies the fact that you shouldn’t limit yourself to one platform. Use all the social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to connect with your followers.

But what’s the right strategy to get it done? 

Let’s discuss this in detail.

Use hashtags to reach relevant audiences

Hashtags effectively attract your target audience to your social media posts. Implement the right hashtag marketing strategy to increase brand engagement.

Use popular hashtags relevant to your brand by mentioning the brand name or any other such hashtag.

An example is Reebok, which has used the hashtag #FeelTheFloatride, to attract audiences for its Floatride shoes. Since then, it has become a trending hashtag.

And don’t just restrict your posts to your brand. In fact, mention other trending hashtags in your posts to find new followers.

Humanize your brand

Don’t always try to sell or promote your brand on social media. 

Instead, stay attuned to current topics and engage with what matters to people. 

Your brand should not come across as a faceless entity. So, consider discussing topics that truly impact and resonate with your audience. 

For instance, take a cue from Accenture, who recently shared their condolences for the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria and even pledged a generous donation of $1 million to aid the victims.

Create eye-catching posts

There should be something extraordinary about your brand to grab the attention of your followers on social media.

Create posts that appeal to your audiences. Schedule your posts in prior to avoid the last-minute hassle. You can Keyhole’s Publishing feature and schedule unlimited posts to top social media platforms.

It’s difficult to deduce which post will increase your engagement, but you can experiment with different things on your social media pages. In case you want to live stream to connect with your audience you can use  obs alternatives , live stream easily, and then save your streams as new posts.

Then, you can track the metrics with social media tools to check out what’s working for you.

Post your products, share updates and activities, promote your promotional offers, and discuss various other topics. Design appealing images and videos to present your campaigns beautifully. Plus, partner with top-notch  video marketing agencies  to elevate your campaigns to the next level.

4. Build relationships with your target audience

Providing excellent customer service is essential to increase your brand loyalty among customers. 

Maximize your interactions with your customers to understand them better. This, in turn, will strengthen your relationship with your customers.

Respond to your customers

Leverage social listening by analyzing how customers and competitors view your brand. 

Listen to customer complaints and queries and respond to them immediately to win customers. You should pay attention to their concerns and be a problem solver.

See here how Whirlpool responds to its customer complaint on its official Facebook page.

Form brand communities

Engage your customers by forming a brand community, along with a business page, to provide them an opportunity to discuss certain matters. 

It also allows you to share your topics and audiences to respond to you.

Start community topics on platforms like Reddit, or you can form groups of your brand on Facebook or LinkedIn, allowing your consumers to discuss certain issues with you.

5. Create SEO-friendly content that educates

Content marketing is very effective in successfully spreading your brand awareness, as 88% of content marketers have succeeded in their brand awareness goals.

Produce informative content for your audience so they can trust you as a credible expert in your niche. 

Content can be in the form of advertisements, blogs, online courses , e-books , infographics, podcasts, videos, white papers, and much more.

Educate your customers with helpful information and use top trending keywords in your content. Use keyword finder tools, such as WordStream, to find the keywords with high search volume in the search engines.

By producing SEO-friendly content , you can rank your website in a higher position on the search engines to appear preferably in search results and increase your brand followers.

6. Collaborate with renowned brands

Brand collaboration delivers impactful results for all of the brands involved. When you work with a reputed brand, it helps your brand in gaining significant attention.

A mention by a famous brand can help you in growing your brand.

Famous fast food chain Taco Bell collaborated with chips manufacturer Frito-Lay to create Doritos Locos Tacos, a Doritos shell with a crunchy taco recipe. 

This collaboration was an immediate success during the first year, as Taco Bell sold 1 billion Doritos Locos Tacos.

7. Leverage the power of influencer marketing

If you’re looking for a way to put your brand in front of a massive audience, why not do it through popular social media influencers? 

These influencers have legions of loyal followers who hang on to their every post, making them the perfect way to reach your target market.

Of course, it’s important to make sure that your marketing campaign is sending the right message. You don’t want to align your brand with anything negative or controversial.

Just look at Kylie Jenner, who recently endorsed Adidas’ retro Falcon sneakers. This resulted in Adidas fans reliving the 1990s era and helped the shoes gain credibility with the young generation.

So, if you want to get your brand in front of a massive audience, consider teaming up with a popular influencer who can help spread your message to your target audience.

8. Show real results with testimonials and case studies

An in-depth look at how customers feel about using your products is important to build the reliability of your brand.

A great way of doing this is to present case studies of your customers through videos where they share their experience of using your product.

Also, share your product reviews with your potential consumers to show them how people view and rate your products—it’s a great way to win their trust.

See here how Dollar Shave Club uses the reviews of its loyal customers to attract new followers.

9. Offer discounts & rewards

Customers want to avail discounts whenever possible. 

With this in mind, companies often facilitate their customers by convincing them to complete certain goals and giving them away coupons to use for enjoying discounts.

Especially in the e-commerce industry, it’s common for online vendors to offer discounted prices on products to attract more customers.

These vendors also offer referral bonuses on referring friends in the form of points to avail discounts and various benefits. In any of these cases, using an RFQ template when requesting payments from vendors is the way to go if brands are looking for more simplicity and efficiency.

Amazon Prime provides a great example of referral marketing.

If you referred a friend who made their first $5 purchase, they gave you a $5 bonus. Genius, right? It worked so well that they had to end the program in 2017 because they had gained so many users. 

Take your brand awareness strategy to the next level

Ready to take your brand awareness strategy to the next level? Consider using Keyhole.

With Keyhole, you’ll have access to powerful social media analytics and tracking tools that will help you measure and optimize your brand’s performance on social media. 

Try out our free trial today and see the difference it can make for your brand.

Related Articles:

12 Creative Ways To Build Brand Awareness In 2024

How Do You Measure Brand Awareness On Social Media?

Frequently Asked Questions

1. how to choose the most effective channels for your brand awareness strategy.

When it comes to finding the most effective channels for your brand, the first thing you need to do is understand your target audience. Get to know their media consumption habits inside out. Are they social media addicts who can't go 10 minutes without scrolling through Instagram or Twitter? Or do they consume information through traditional media, like TV or print publications? Knowing this will help you make a more informed decision about which channels to focus on.

2. How to measure the success of your brand awareness strategy?

To measure the success of your brand awareness strategy, you can use tracking metrics like website traffic, social media engagement, and sales revenue. Set specific, measurable goals for your brand awareness efforts and regularly evaluate your progress.

3. What is the significance of a brand awareness strategy?

Brand awareness introduces your product to its target audience and sets it apart from the competition. Businesses that maintain high levels of brand awareness are the ones capturing the highest amount of market share. That's because consumers are more likely to reach for brands they recognize over those they don't.

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How to Build Brand Awareness in 2024

When it comes to business, nothing can drain your business quite like stagnation. Failure to grow, adapt, and take on new challenges results in missed opportunities for profit and success. In this guide, you’ll discover fresh methodologies on how to build brand awareness and tighten your brand strategy.

Conduct a Brand Audit

As you consider your branding strategy, we encourage you to take stock of your current level of brand awareness. The best way to accomplish this is with a brand audit. Before building a new brand strategy, it’s essential to understand the value of your existing brand strategy.

A brand audit should identify the extent of your digital footprint and your existing engagement.

Additionally, your audit includes:

• Areas of missed opportunities
• Social media influence and opportunity
• Earned media share-of-voice audit
• “Searchability” of your brand online

This will help you identify what needs to be altered for a successful new year. Without diligence, your brand strategy can become rote and lackluster. Your brand audit should enable you to see your brand with fresh eyes and cut off any dead weight.

If you need impartial guidance in evaluating your current brand’s strengths and weaknesses, you can use a paid brand audit service. These audits are guided by professionals who know how to determine the reach and potency of your existing digital footprint. The best part? The data tells the story so you don’t have to.

Creating Your Brand Strategy

After identifying your existing strategy’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to develop your improved branding strategy. In our highly competitive marketplace, standing out is critical to being found by prospective customers.

You need a comprehensive media and branding strategy that attracts prospects through a variety of channels. Here are our top methods for enhancing your brand awareness in 2024.

1. Digital Media Strategy

Your digital media and engagement plan can be broken down into three parts. This includes your SEO efforts, engagement campaigns, and social media strategy.

SEO Optimization

You may have the best products or services in your field, par none. Yet, that doesn’t amount to much if your prime prospects don’t know your brand exists. Your prospect reach cannot transcend the bounds of your brand awareness.

To successfully navigate the dense online landscape, you need to up your SEO-game. If your competitors are dominating key industry search terms or “keywords,” they have the upper hand.

Optimize your website by checking:

• Update your website copy with information on these keywords
• Accomplish this by emulating the length and depth of the page that Google is ranking in the first position for that keyword.
• Use SEMrush or SiteImprove to find errors and recommendations for technical improvements. Accessibility issues, such as poorly sized fonts, or missing alt tags, will harm your SEO score.
• Scrounge your website for duplicate content issues or plagiarized content.

Learn more on SEO on-page optimizations with our blog, SEO and Content Marketing: Creating Effective Content .

Enact or Refresh Email Engagement Campaigns

Even if a prospect lands on your page, they may not be ready to buy. If they are early in their buyer’s journey, they may need more information before committing to your company. Email marketing helps hesitant buyers learn more about your company, boosting their confidence in your brand.

Multi-step audience engagement campaigns nurture your audience through non-intrusive methods. Email engagement must be done right to accomplish this. First, consider your existing segmentation and what messages resonate with each segment of your prospect base.

Then, evaluate if your existing strategy offers customized information to their interests. A one-fits-all approach may ward off potential customers and feel too “sales” minded, rather than informational.

Update Your Social Media

Social media is another component of your brand’s digital reputation and searchability. Prospects may browse your social media to understand your brand before committing as a customer. Alternatively, social media can engage existing customers—giving you two reasons to invest in your social media strategy.

Your social media should be more than obligatory posts. Make sure you’re providing something of value. Think of yourself as a teacher with something to teach, rather than an operator with something to sell. This approach will build an authentic connection with your prospects and encourage them to follow your page and engage with your content.

The tone you choose to use is dependent on both your brand and your audience. However, don’t be afraid to humanize yourself, or your company. A touch of humor can make your profile more interesting and may resonate well with your viewers.

Learn how to optimize your social media with our blog, Social Media Marketing Mistakes and Tips , from our social media expert, Callie Hitchcock.

2. Host a Podcast

You may feel like you’ve considered every option for expanding your reach and building credibility. Podcasting is an innovative method for businesses to establish themselves as experts and position themselves as credible resources.

Podcasting allows you to gain trust with your target audience without the turnoff of a sales pitch. In fact, by hosting a podcast, you become a valuable resource for your listeners. These listeners may turn to your company’s services because of the existing value you’ve brought.

The connections that you’ll make along the way are an underrepresented benefit to hosting a podcast. You’ll have the opportunity to invite industry leaders to your podcast and encourage them to share with their audience. This, in turn, can boost your name awareness with a new audience.

While podcasting may sound arduous for the typical business professional, it doesn’t have to be. Done-for-you podcasting services offer a simplified solution for tapping into this medium with minimal hassle.

3. Create a Content Marketing Strategy

It’s likely you already have the staples of content marketing nailed down. You have blogs, newsletters, and landing pages galore. Yet, creative content marketing may be just what you need to revolutionize your branding strategy and boost your brand awareness.

Whether or not we realize it, we all respond to content. It fuels our understanding and support of decision-making processes as customers. Innovative methods of content marketing consider how to leverage content without the sales pitch for greater trust.

Thought Leadership Articles

People flock to leaders they can trust. The modern buyer has become increasingly skeptical and analytical. To build trust with your audience, you need to deeply understand your subject and your audience.

One way to display this is through thought leadership articles that allow you to articulate and display your expertise. While these articles don’t have a CTA or form fills, they provide the building blocks of awareness and trust. This, in turn, returns dividends in future opportunities.

Your in-depth articles can be placed on your LinkedIn, shortened to blurbs for social media, or recycled in marketing collateral. Learn more about building thought leadership articles in our blog, How to Write Successful Thought Leadership Articles .

Display Client Profiles

No one likes a showoff, and that goes for your marketing efforts too. Instead of touting your success, flip the narrative. Tout the success of your clients!

This approach gains visibility for your clients while revealing the value of your own services subtly. A benefit of this approach is the versatility it offers. You can produce a video and/or produce a magazine profile of your clients. Then, leverage the data via online publications or traditional print magazines.

By pitching your client profile to popular magazines and trade publications, or online news sites, you extend your reach and build your reputation.

Strengthen Your PR Strategy

Public Relations is the best method for building your brand awareness in a visual format. Why? Because PR spots can get you TV where thousands of viewers can connect your face to a brand.

People buy from people. This approach helps you build a link between your brand and your prospects by displaying your personality and insight. PR can also tap into niche platforms, such as radio, to expand your potential audience reach.

To accomplish this, your public relations team creates distinctive pitches to highlight you as a subject matter expert. It takes a great deal of effort and experience to land a spot on local or national TV and radio. By appearing on one of these platforms, you establish credibility while growing your brand awareness.

Grow Your Reach, Grow Your Brand Awareness

By employing these methods, your benefits are twofold. First, these methods support a growing brand awareness with a wider prospect base. Second, you engender a greater sense of trust that may turn a prospect into a loyal customer. It’s time to take action with your brand’s profile; let the seasoned media experts at Forbes Books create a customized plan for your business.

Lissie Kidd

Sr. marketing copywriter.

Lissie Kidd is a Sr. Copywriter with several hundred articles in her portfolio and even more edited and published under her supervision. Lissie holds a MA in Communications from Grand…

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How to Build Brand Awareness from Strategy to Practice

Laura Kloot

Read our marketer’s guide to brand awareness and see how you – like Coke – can use the power of recognition to inspire sales.

Ninety-four percent of the world’s population recognizes the Coca-Cola logo.

That is an awesome statistic, but at the same time, it’s not surprising.

The Coke company is an icon. Just a split-second glimpse of the white curly font and banner against the bold red background is enough to fire up the brain’s recognition engine. But there is something deeper going on. It’s called brand awareness.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is a measure of how well people recognize a brand or business by its name, logo, or other defining feature. Brand awareness is important because it is the first stage of the customer’s journey to purchase. After all, a consumer must be aware of a brand before they can decide that they would like to become a customer. Brand awareness is the goal for top-of-funnel marketing – the early part of the customer funnel when the audience is becoming aware of your brand for the first time.

Brands that have high awareness among consumers tend to outperform those that don’t. However, it’s not just how much brand awareness that counts. It’s focusing your brand awareness efforts in the right places, with the most potential to become customers.

More specifically, companies should concentrate their brand awareness efforts on the target audiences that really matter – those who are likely to buy their products or use their services.

Even so, brand awareness is not quite that simple. For example, you might assume that a baby clothing brand has no need for awareness among consumers who don’t have children. True, this is not the primary target audience, however, people with no children still buy baby gifts. And people who have no interest in babies at the moment may eventually have families of their own, or nephews and nieces! When considering brand awareness, it pays to think outside of the box, beyond the immediate target audience, and also consider the long-term effects of building brand awareness for future customers.

How does brand awareness increase sales?

You’ve decided to buy a pair of sneakers. Quick! What are the first brands that pop into your mind?

We don’t need to spell them out. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will buy the brand you thought of first. Perhaps when you get to the store, you will fall in love with a different brand and sneaker altogether. But the fact that you have a high awareness of certain brands is very important because it indicates an internal bias towards them. Multiply this effect by thousands of customers, and brands will inevitably see a sales increase. This is what every marketer aims for with their brand awareness activities.

Here are 4 ways that brand awareness boosts sales:

• Brand awareness gives a competitive advantage: High awareness among consumers means that brands have a head start compared to the competition. They have to work less hard to get the same kind of name recognition in the market. And that’s a great springboard to more sales.
• Brand awareness builds trust and authenticity: A brand that is well-known, easily identifiable, and has a strong voice in the market naturally radiates a sense of authority and leadership. This drives brand authenticity, consumer trust, and loyalty. And these are also the things that turn a brand into a sales leader. 
• Brand awareness attracts audiences with shared values: 77% of consumers say they buy from brands that share their social values . Whether it be sustainability, diversity, or something else, creating an association between the brand and the shared value is a powerful key to drawing attention and appreciation among customers. Not only does this build awareness of the brand and its values, but it also directly drives customers who share those values to open their wallets.
• Brand awareness boosts customer loyalty and retention: While brand awareness is considered a top-of-funnel goal, it is actually a customer retention tool as well. Why? Because it helps to keep the brand at the top of the customer’s mind, so they are more likely to return. Of course, just being aware of a brand is not enough to keep customers happy. You also have to deliver great products, services, and experiences. However, when these all come together with high brand awareness, it becomes much easier to hold on to customers and prevent churn .

How long does it take to build brand awareness?

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is brand awareness.

For some brands, awareness among the target audience increases at a natural pace in keeping with the growth and development of the company, its products, and its marketing approach. The Coca-Cola logo didn’t become recognizable overnight; in fact, it was first designed way back in 1885 ! 

No, your brand doesn’t need a century-and-a-half to build awareness. On the other hand, don’t expect brand awareness to skyrocket five minutes after launching a website and logo. Brand awareness is a long-term marketing tactic that demands deliberate planning, execution, and tracking.

Like many activities in marketing, brand awareness usually grows slowly and organically over time. How long it takes, whether 3 months to a year or even two years, will depend on a lot of factors –  it especially depends on how aggressive and powerful your brand awareness strategy is.

How to build brand awareness in 5 easy steps

The best way to build brand awareness as quickly as possible is to have a clear and clever strategy in place that will gain the most exposure for your brand with the right audiences in the right way.

Let’s take a look at the 5 necessary steps for how to build brand awareness :

Step 1: Know your target audience

Most marketing activities start here. In order to know how best to appeal to an audience, you first have to get to know them as people – their pain points, joys, fears, needs, frustrations, desires, and preferences. Only then are you equipped to consider how your brand can improve their lives, what marketing messages will speak to them, and the best ways to catch and keep their attention.

Step 2: Set your brand awareness KPIs 

Once you’ve honed your brand messaging, you need to figure out how to measure the success of your brand awareness activities. This means setting the key performance indicators (KPIs). 

Here are four KPIs for brand awareness that are commonly used: 

• Tools to help you: Google Analytics , SimilarWeb
• Tools to help you: Sprout Social , BuzzSumo
• Tools to help you: SemRush , Ahrefs
• Tools to help you: Mention.com , Mentionlytics

Step 3: Create targeted campaigns for your business

The next step is getting down to the business of actually building brand awareness. So, what is a brand awareness campaign? It’s a marketing tactic designed with the specific purpose of creating recognition of your brand, products, services, and values. 

Brand awareness campaigns are a high priority for marketers and advertisers, as they draw audiences into the top of the funnel, where they can then be nurtured through the full funnel to eventually become customers. Without brand awareness campaigns, it is difficult to fill the funnel with potential leads. According to a 2021 report, nearly 40% of marketers are spending between 26% and 50% of their advertising budgets on campaigns in the brand awareness and consideration phase.

Step 4: Diversify your channels

When your brand awareness campaign is ready to go, it’s time to decide how to promote it. 

Examples of the types of campaigns used for brand awareness include video marketing, organic & paid social media marketing, native advertising, and search engine marketing .

How social media increases brand awareness? 

• By exposing wider audiences to brands via their network of family and friends
• Providing a range of brand experiences, such as images, videos, interactive discussions, and promotions
• Using audience targeting to reach users who are most likely to be interested. 

Native advertising is also gaining ground as a preferred medium for brand awareness campaigns. The beauty of native advertising is that it supports non-intrusive, non-disruptive advertising experiences, targeting relevant audiences on high-quality websites, where they are naturally browsing and open to discovering new content. 

Search marketing is a very popular brand awareness strategy. When a potential customer is searching for a product or service in your niche, this is the ideal moment to show them your brand. They are actively looking for what you have to offer, and are open to discovering new information. Search engine marketing includes organic search results, based on SEO tactics, as well as paid search ads, which is a PPC strategy.

Step 5: Track & optimize

How to measure ROI on brand awareness is the next step in the process. 

Every marketing campaign should be optimized for cost-effectiveness, including brand awareness. Unlike hard figures, such as sales or leads, tracking and optimizing brand awareness is more challenging. This is due to the fact that “awareness” is inherently non-quantifiable –  it is not measurable in the same way that you can measure the number of new customers or the number of units sold.

Even so, the brand awareness KPIs set in step 2 are the benchmark to measure the return on investment of your brand awareness activities. Choose specific metrics that you want to track before launching a brand awareness campaign, and then look at them again after a certain period following the campaign. For example, monitoring completion rates on a brand awareness video provides an indication of viewer engagement. Comparing completion rates from different awareness videos can demonstrate what type of video works better for your brand.

There’s also the question of how to measure aided brand awareness?

Aided brand awareness is the level of brand recognition when the audience is specifically asked about the brand. It’s the difference between the question, “What pizza brands come to your mind?” and “Have you heard of Pizza Hut pizzas?” Aided brand awareness can help businesses understand the quality and quantity of awareness specific to their brand among different audiences, rather than focusing on the industry as a whole. 

Aided brand awareness is measured with the help of surveys and questionnaires via social media, email marketing, or focus groups.

How to run a brand awareness campaign?

There are different ways to do this, but they all revolve around telling a story or imparting a message about the brand that ignites conversation, engages emotion, and gets the audience thinking about the brand.

Check out this example of a great brand awareness video by Disney. In 2016, Disney came out with the #Healthilyeverafter campaign to promote healthy eating and lifestyles. Note that the video is not promoting a Disney movie, selling tickets to Disneyland, or advertising Disney merchandise. It is focused on the values of the Disney brand, and connecting those to the audience’s lives. 

How to create brand awareness in a new market

Getting a car from 0 to 10 mph demands more energy than from 10 to 20. For the same reason, creating brand awareness in a new market is particularly challenging. How can you get a brand recognized when starting from scratch?

When businesses can’t yet rely on social networks or word-of-mouth, or if their website authority is not established (making SEO a challenge), then native advertising is an excellent choice. With native ads, brands can get placement on the world’s premium websites and get exposed to high-quality traffic and qualified audiences.

The difference between regular ads and native advertising is the state of mind of the consumer. Unlike display ads, native ads are shown to customers when they are in a general mode of discovery. They are not looking for a particular brand; rather, they are open to new content that might be relevant to them. This is the ideal moment to catch consumer attention and make the reader aware of a brand that they didn’t know existed and would not have searched for. 

Another big advantage of native advertising is the advanced targeting opportunities. With native ads, brands can target audiences by their interests. A consumer who is interested in jewelry may not have heard of a specific brand. But when they are shown an ad for a jewelry brand, specifically targeted to them because of their interest, then suddenly they become aware. 

Interest targeting can go even deeper than that. If a customer loves jewelry, but also shoes, then the jewelry brand can target them with ads on websites about footwear fashion trends. This kind of deep targeting is an extremely effective way to build brand awareness where it didn’t exist before. 

Besides interest targeting, which targeting option is best for achieving brand awareness? 

Lookalike audiences. This targeting feature identifies audiences who are similar to existing audiences. Brands can uncover new audiences where they never could have found them before with the help of lookalikes – an ideal tactic for building brand awareness among new audiences in new markets. This audience targeting tool is available on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and the Outbrain network.

Brand awareness examples

There are lots of great brand awareness examples out there. Some are so good, you will probably remember them off the top of your head. 

How about George Clooney and Nespresso? Or Corona beer , which did not shy away from its name even during the infamous coronavirus pandemic? 

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of brand awareness and how they worked:

Dove – Becoming the voice of body acceptance

In 2004, Dove launched what was then a radical and game-changing campaign focused on the issue of body acceptance. The brand ran a series of ads featuring regular women with average body sizes and shapes, rather than airbrushed models.

Although the long-running campaign has had its share of hits and misses, such as the backfiring of its body-shaped bottles, there is no doubt of the power of the ‘Be Real’ message and how much brand awareness it has generated over the past decade and a half.

For good and for bad, Dove succeeded in positioning the brand as a central voice in the important global conversation around body image, body confidence, and self-esteem.

Karcher – Native video boosts brand recognition

The Karcher vacuum cleaner brand harnessed the power of video for a brand awareness campaign – but with a twist. The videos were promoted on Outbrain’s native advertising network, using the “Click to Watch” format. Rather than annoying the audience with pre-roll video ads that interrupt their online experience, Outbrain Click to Watch ads are 100% opt-in, which means the viewer chooses to watch by clicking on the video. The viewer is primed to discover the brand because they have opted-in to the awareness experience.

The results speak for themselves: in a joint study with Nielsen, the campaign was found to increase brand recognition for Karcher by 81%, and make viewers 70% more likely to associate Karcher with floor cleaners. This even led to an increased purchase intent of X1.81.

You don’t have to be Coca-Cola to win brand awareness

Coca-Cola is probably the world’s best example of the concept of brand awareness. For marketers of any company or product, brand awareness is a prize you should be aiming for. Unlike Coke, you don’t need billions of people to recognize your brand, but you do need to build brand awareness where it counts. Use the simple steps and the inspiring examples in our brand awareness guide above to make your brand stand out from the crowd. 

Click the Start Now button above to launch your brand awareness native campaign. 

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• August 16, 2020
• Brand Marketing

Brand Awareness Campaigns: The Ultimate Guide

There are many elements that form a brand . Being aware of what a business has to offer is the first step toward choosing that same brand over all other options.

That is why we can’t talk about brand awareness without mentioning the power of consumer choice . Whether it’s products, gadgets, services, or even simple things like information, we are all faced with many choices each day. 

Conscious consumption is, therefore, the perfect way to flex our choice muscles. The more information you have about something, the more likely you are to predict the effects it will have.

So how can increasing brand awareness help your business?

Defining Brand Awareness

In Bynder’s “ State Of Branding Report ” for this year, more than a thousand branding and marketing professionals from different industries answered questions about their current strategy.

When asked about their biggest branding concerns in the upcoming period, the majority of 42% of respondents see “growing brand awareness” as their number one concern in 2020.

Seeing as consumers are gravitating to those that share the same values as them, every brand strives to increase awareness.  

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is the extent to which consumers can recognize and recall a particular brand, to then connect that brand to specific ideas, goods, or services.

From an internal business perspective , raising brand awareness is part of the branding and marketing strategy. Often with a goal to get the brand in front of as many people as possible.

From the perspective of the consume r, that involves identifying, comparing, and using specific brands. Consumers choose the things they use because they are aware of the solution a brand offers to a problem.

How can you increase brand awareness?

The idea of brand awareness is to introduce your brand, connect with, and bring new consumers to the business. 

It’s part of your strategy that is focused on building and marketing yourself as a recognizable brand profile.

I’d like to distinguish between the two ways that you can raise brand awareness: active and passive.

Passive awareness spreading which happens through creating effective brand identity and messaging. Active awareness raising is done through marketing and campaigning.

Here are the most common ways to increase brand awareness:

• Influencer marketing
• Direct advertising
• Real-life events
• Community participation and support
• Content marketing
• Brand awareness campaigns

How To Run a Brand Awareness Campaign

A brand awareness campaign is a set of coordinated promotional activities carried out by a brand with the goal to increase the recognition of its business.

10 Actionable Steps For Your Brand Awareness Campaign

• Create strong brand identity elements. That includes brand logos, colors, mission, purpose, and more.
• Set relevant goals and objectives for your campaign. Use the smart goal framework: specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound.
• Define your target audience. Make sure you know who it is that you want to reach with your awareness campaign.
• Document your strategic approach. The message of your campaign and the strategy you’re going to use to convey it to consumers.
• Plan for delivery of campaign content. Decide on your core content pieces and the social platforms and channels of your campaign.
• Assign key performance metrics. Make sure you know what are your main performance indicators.
• Set a campaign timeline and budget. Organize these important elements behind the scenes.
• Prepare all the necessary materials and content. Get everything ready for the active campaigning part.
• Carry out all awareness campaign activities. During your period of campaigning, start moving things from your notes into the real world.
• Analyze and report on success and performance . After your campaign is over, create a summary of important learnings.

When it’s done right, it will consistently power the growth of your brand.

In this article, I will discuss how you can run brand awareness campaigns. Here is how you can organize a brand awareness campaign from start to finish and get you the success you set out to reach.

Set campaign goals and objectives

The first step toward increasing awareness is to build exposure . Whether that be through content marketing , direct advertisements, influencers, community events, and so on.

In simple terms, it means finding a way to introduce your target audience to your brand and what you stand for. Therefore, to capture their attention and spark an interest in what it is you have to offer.

Brand exposure happens by being present in the right places, open for the right people to get to know you. 

With that in mind, how exactly does a successful campaign look like for you? What are your brand awareness goals?

S.M.A.R.T Goals

A popular practice for setting goals is by using the  SMART  framework , which means that each goal should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

That might go something like this:

• Get 5,000 new followers on Instagram by January
• Increase social sharing on Facebook by 40%
• Increase website traffic by 50% in the next 3 months

Make sure that your goal is realistic and achievable. Don’t be vague with the set-up, set  specific objectives  that you can track and measure when the time comes.

Define your campaign target audience

Second, comes the connection that you establish with your people. Now that they know that you exist, why would your brand be of any interest to them?

At this part, it’s necessary to consider not only who it is you’re targeting, but their state of being as well.

When creating awareness, you’re preaching to people that don’t know about you yet. These so-called “ cold audiences ” are consisting of people that are not yet familiar with your brand or what you do.

They are, however, aware of their needs. They just don’t know to recognize you as the solution to their problems yet.

Connect your solution to a problem that they have. Consequently, raising awareness that you exist and that you can help them.

Audience Profiles

First, narrow down their  demographic characteristics  such as: age, location, income, education, job title, gender, or anything else that will be useful to know ahead.

Then you can go a step further and think about their lifestyle and how you fit into their daily life. Here are some questions you need to answer: 

• How does a typical day for your target audience look like?
• What kind of activities do they enjoy in their free time?
• Some goals they want to achieve?
• What are some problems they face?

Create a picture of how they spend their time and attention during the day. That will make it easier to find a place for your brand in their lives. 

They shouldn’t be the ones that make changes in their lives to incorporate your brand. You need to fit into their routine and help them by making the problems that they face daily easier to solve.

Connecting with them can be done by finding common ground . It’s all about the vision that you share, the things that you can help each other accomplish, and more.

If you’d like to read more about designing consumer or audience profiles, check out this article: How To Create Target Audience Profiles .

Outline Campaign Content and Direction

Content is the backbone of your brand awareness campaign. In this step, it’s time to come up with the strategy and communication plan to carry out your campaign.

For your campaign to have an effect on your consumer, you must have a positive impact on them. To deliver some sort of value that will make them remember you.

I’ve identified two crucial components in this step: your strategic approach and the delivery of content. It’s basically creating an outline for your campaign.

Campaign Strategy

By strategic approach, I mean the message behind your campaign and the type of media that you’re going to use to convey that message.

It is really important to have a well-defined  brand identity  before you create a campaign that will act as a fuel that helps your campaigns run. Here are a few things to consider:

• What is your brand story ?
• Your brand mission and vision ?
• What problems does your brand solve?
• How are you different than your competition?
• How can you apply all of this to your campaigns?

There are two players, in this case, you and the consumer, so what does it take on your first interaction to be successful? Create a recognizable identity .

Campaign Delivery

Think about the  platforms and channels  that you will be using and how they are connected with each other.

Platforms  are the foundation on which you can build your brand presence, such as the web, phone apps, social media, and gadgets.

Channels  serve as a more direct means of communication and include email, advertising, search engines, chatbots, phone, and more.

And while the goal of your campaign is the same everywhere, each platform may also require different types of content.

What platforms are you going to use for your campaign and how?

You need to plan the content to fit into each platform as intended, such as media dimensions, ad copy, and so on.

Formatting Content Example

Every social platform serves a different purpose. While your marketing campaign should have the same messaging it is important to think about the native environment of each social platform.

Make sure that your ad is shown in the  right place  for the desired result. Get into the mindset of the audience.

Second, make sure that you use the  right format . I see way too many people that place improperly formatted photos as story ads these days, don’t be that person.

Let’s take Instagram ads for an example:

When you decide where to place your ad, you should think about the different use of Instagram Stories and the feed.

While viewing  stories , everything happens faster, and people are looking for a quick experience. The call to action of your ad would be to swipe up.

If you’re creating a stories ad, then you definitely need to use an image with the size of  1080 x 1920 px  for the best effect.

When scrolling the  feed , people are more likely to stop and take a better look, read the description, and visit your profile to discover more about your brand.

If you want to place an ad on the main feed, then use an image of  1080×1080 px  for the best result.

Organizing campaign flow

Assign Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators are the  metrics  that are relevant for your campaign. KPI’s are an internal way to measure and learn from your efforts.

You can assign key performance indicators by considering the goals that you’ve set for your campaign from a business point of view.

Taken into account that this is a setup to increase awareness, these performance indicators for your brand will probably include things like reach, impressions, cost per impression, and so on.

Here is a list of possible brand awareness campaign metrics:

• Content Reach
• Content Impressions
• Cost per Impression
• Social mentions
• New Followers
• Branded Search
• New referring links
• Content Engagement

Consider the needs of your campaign and address the ways that you will measure its performance and success.

Mark the timeline of your campaign

Each campaign requires a schedule that you follow. Make a plan of the  touchpoints  of your campaign and the expected dates that you will start and finish.

For example, it might take one week to do research and prepare the strategy of your campaign. It can take another week to complete the visuals or gather all the resources, and so on.

Plan ahead on how you’re going to manage the workflow that your campaign requires. That way you will be well prepared.

Mark the important dates of your campaign in a calendar.

Set your campaign budget

The costs of a digital campaign can vary a lot. It depends on whether you’re a team or an individual, the available budget, the length and scale of your campaign, and more.

Here are the areas you should consider and make a budget for:

• The cost of resources you need (ex. Cameras, Software, People)
• The cost of sponsored placement
• Any other cost that is relevant to your case

Campaign Activities

In the final part is where you begin moving your vision and plans out of the notes, or out of the meeting room and into action.

The workflow behind the scenes of the campaign can vary greatly depending on your organization and the scope of your campaign. However, I’d like to touch on a general format that anyone can follow.

I like to separate the workflow into three parts: pre-launch, active campaigning, and post-campaign .

This way you can clearly identify the stage, come up with the activities that need to be performed, and finally dissect that even further into specific tasks.

It will make it much easier to organize and complete everything that is on your schedule.

Pre-Launch activities

Once you’re done setting up your campaign behind the scenes, you can move on to creating the specific contents of your promotion. This part is about designing the look and feel of the project.

Campaigns usually require more than one piece of content mixed together strategically. Make sure that your message and visuals are consistent across the board.

• Design Campaign Content
• Decide on campaign timeline
• Review and approve campaign budget
• Crate final schedule

Active campaign activities

• Posting on schedule
• Tracking performance and key metrics
• Carry out all planned campaign tasks

Post campaign

After the campaign is over, and it is all about analyzing the results, creating notes about key learnings.  This will help with decision making for future campaigns easier.

What worked and why? What didn’t work?

Creating successful campaigns comes from long-term experimenting and learning along the way. Your audience is unique, so you need to get in tune with them.

• Analysis of campaign results
• Create a report of success and key learnings
• Outline strategy and steps moving forward

What to do next?

The only way to create a real impact is to create positive change for your consumers.

To leave them feeling better off than they were before they got introduced to you. To be recognized as the thing that shifted their perspective in the time, they needed exactly that.

You offer something valuable and enticing , and they give you their attention in return.

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A Complete Brand Awareness Marketing Strategy For 2024

June 4, 2024

Many marketers recognize the benefits of having a brand name like Nike or Amazon , but duplicating their brand awareness marketing strategies is unrealistic for most who don't have multimillion-dollar marketing budgets.

However, that doesn't mean that brand awareness marketing won't work for your company.

The problem with most brand awareness marketing strategies is that they're a compilation of various random marketing tactics rather than a repeatable, measurable, strategy.

Without a defined strategy, it's difficult to identify what's working and double down on that approach.

In this post, we'll provide an effective step-by-step brand awareness marketing strategy that you can use to build brand awareness among your target audience to increase sales and lower marketing costs.

What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the public’s familiarity with a company.

Companies with strong brand awareness have an advantage over their competitors with weak brand awareness, as prospects with some level of familiarity with your brand are more likely to purchase your product/service over a completely unknown brand’s product/service.

There are different levels of brand awareness, and companies strive to achieve a high degree in each of the following aspects that contribute to the level of brand awareness:

• Brand Awareness Quality: The types of people that recognize your brand, ranging from ideal prospects actively searching for your product/service to irrelevant personas who will never have a need for your product/service.
• Brand Awareness Quantity: How many people recognize your brand.
• Brand Awareness Depth: How well the person knows your brand and its values and products/services.

To help you improve the quality, quantity, and depth of your brand awareness, we’ll provide a step-by-step brand awareness marketing strategy below.

Step-By-Step Brand Awareness Marketing Strategy

Rather than giving you a selection of various marketing tactics, this brand awareness marketing strategy will help you create a flywheel by establishing a repeatable, measurable workflow. This way, you’ll be able to produce compounding results from your brand awareness marketing methods.

Step 1: Establish Realistic, Measurable Goals

One of the key reasons most brand awareness marketing strategies fail is that they don't establish clear, attainable brand campaign objectives.

Without goals, it's impossible to optimize your strategy and improve performance. It's also not really worth the investment if it isn't aiding the overall business's goals.

Therefore, write down key brand awareness metrics that you plan to track and set goals for each of those metrics.

For example, you can track:

• Brand impressions.
• Brand name search volume.
• Audience growth (email signups, social follower count, etc.).
• Brand sentiment.
• Website traffic.

Then, the key to setting goals is to look at your current month-over-month growth for each of those metrics and set a growth rate goal about 10-20% higher than your existing month-over-month growth rate.

The key to goal setting is to create realistic goals. So, expecting your brand awareness to double within the next month is unrealistic, and you may shut down your program before it has time to gain traction – even if it is trending in the right direction.

Step 2: Map Out a Top of Funnel Marketing Strategy

The goal of all marketing efforts is to move prospects closer to the point of sale, though you can’t expect them to convert as soon as they first learn about your brand.

Many people aren’t ready to buy, and even if they have entered the buyer journey, you’ll need to build trust with them before asking them to convert.

Therefore, create a top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) marketing strategy that introduces them to your brand.

You can use a combination of content and paid marketing channels like social ads to increase brand awareness , but the main goal of this stage is to begin building a relationship with your ideal customer by providing value.

The best way to provide value is to simply answer their questions for free content.

Some of the specific types of content you can use at the TOFU stage include:

• Blog posts.
• Video content.
• Social media content.
• Checklists.
• Infographics.

For example, here at GaggleAMP , most of our TOFU strategy consists of organic blog posts and social media content that educates our audience on the topic of employee advocacy and engagement:

Source: GaggleAMP

You can also run paid social ads to improve brand awareness, though a simple impression of your brand's name and logo usually isn't as powerful as consuming a piece of content. This is because the content allows you to demonstrate your brand's authority on the subject and build trust, whereas the impression only improves recognition.

In other words, content tends to drive higher quality and depth of brand awareness, while paid ads tend to improve the quantity of brand awareness (it's much easier to receive 1,000 impressions than to convince 1,000 people to consume your content).

So, which of the above-mentioned types of TOFU content (blog posts, video content, social content, etc.) should you choose for your brand awareness marketing strategy?

There are two questions you can ask to select the best type of content for your brand awareness marketing strategy:

1. What Type of Content Do Your Competitors Use? 

The strategies that work for your competitors will probably work for you as well. You can determine the answer to this question by signing up for your competitors' email lists, tracking their social media accounts, and following their blogs.

If you don't have time to manually execute this work, consider using a tool like Crayon to do it for you. You can also use a tool like Semrush to track your competitor's content and SEO strategies.

2. What Type of Content Can You Create Sustainably? 

Consistency is key to building any kind of audience, so if you can't sustainably create the content week after week, the strategy won't work. For example, if your competitors are using video content, but you know you can't consistently create video content, choose a different form of content, like blog posts.

After you've selected the type of TOFU content you'll produce, you can amplify it with employee advocacy. Employee advocacy is when employees share branded content with their audience. This boosts the TOFU content's reach as it will reach all of your employees' networks.

While employee advocacy is highly effective at amplifying branded content, organizing an employee advocacy program and ensuring employees consistently share the right content at the right time can be difficult.

To solve this problem, we created GaggleAMP, an employee advocacy platform that allows managers to easily assign engagement activities and track employee engagement at scale.

You can learn more about GaggleAMP or schedule a demo today .

Step 3: Map Out a MOFU/BOFU Marketing Strategy

Marketers usually understand that brand awareness quantity (the number of people you reach) is important, though brand awareness quality and depth (who you attract and how well they know you) are arguably just as important, if not more important.

The TOFU marketing efforts you implemented in step two introduced the audience to your brand, and now you can use middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) strategies to deepen the relationship with right-fit customers.

Some of the common marketing strategies you can use at this stage in the relationship include:

• Webinars. 
• ABM campaigns.
• White papers and case studies.
• Presentation slides.

Here's a great example of a MOFU/BOFU piece of content:

Source: NP Digital

Neil Patel also revealed on his podcast that webinars are some of their best-performing content.

At this stage, you can collect the person's email address in exchange for the MOFU/BOFU content to strengthen the relationship and keep them engaged through remarketing efforts.

Again, analyze the strategies your competitors use and select the method that you think is most sustainable for your marketing team if you're not sure what kinds of MOFU or BOFU marketing efforts to select.

Implementing MOFU and BOFU content into your brand awareness marketing strategy will help you see a higher ROI from your TOFU efforts, as you can engage and convert them. Otherwise, many of your TOFU visitors will visit your website but never return.

Step 4: Create a Repeatable Workflow Process

A major cause of failure for most brand awareness marketing strategies is simply a lack of consistency in both publishing schedule and messaging.

Publishing consistency is important to any content marketing strategy's success, as audiences won't remember who you are if you stop publishing for a period of time.

Messaging consistency is critical to brand awareness, as your audience will be confused if they see different value propositions each time they see your brand name. In addition, most people need to see a brand multiple times to remember it. If the messaging and brand feel is constantly changing, your audience might not even recognize your brand.

Fortunately, you can solve these problems with a repeatable workflow.

To get started, use a project management tool like Asana or Trello .

Then, upload your branding and messaging guidelines to ensure everyone produces similar content/imagery.

Next, create a publishing calendar with deadlines for each project and assign each team member a certain step within the process. You can add milestone deadlines to the calendar to ensure each step is completed on time.

Source: Trello

Step 5: Measure Results and Adjust 

Execute the plan outlined above for the next few months. If you don't give it enough time to collect data, it will be difficult to identify trends and see if it's growing in the right direction.

Once you've consistently executed for a few months, look at the metrics you identified in step one and see if they're trending in the right direction. To remind you, the brand campaign objective metrics are:

One common problem we see is that brands measure the success of their strategies based on arbitrary industry benchmarks rather than growth trends.

Ideally, aim for a percentage month-over-month growth rate increase rather than a particular number. If you notice that your growth rate is increasing rapidly, that's a good sign.

The only drawback is that those metrics only provide insights into brand awareness quantity. To ensure your brand awareness strategy is also increasing in quality and depth, check that your sales and revenue data are also steadily increasing.

If your brand impressions are increasing, but they aren't contributing to sales volume or revenue, you might be attracting the wrong audience. Or, your marketing funnel might have some leaks, and you're not effectively moving them to the next stage of the funnel to deepen the relationship.

How To Increase Brand Awareness

Above, you created a flywheel that makes it possible to create a brand awareness marketing strategy that produces compounding growth.

In this step, we’ll show you various tactics you can add on top of your foundational marketing strategy to increase brand awareness at every step in your funnel.

Tip #1: Implement Employee Advocacy

If you’re posting content on social media, one easy way to get more out of your content marketing efforts is to ask your employees to engage with it and share it with their networks.

Employee engagement multiplies the quantity of brand awareness for each social media post for a couple of reasons:

All of your employees’ networks see your brand’s content.

When social media algorithms see that your post receives a lot of engagement, they typically interpret that as a positive signal and give your blog post more organic reach.

The quality of brand awareness generated from employee engagement is also much higher as the impressions are warm. This is because the people viewing the content already like, trust, and follow your employees, so they’re more likely to take any content recommendation from your employees more seriously.

Here’s a great example of employee advocacy in action.

In this case, the employee shared the content and stated why he was proud of the feature and how it works. You can read the full post to see his thoughtful comments:

Source: Marc Thomas

The only drawback of employee advocacy is that it can be difficult to keep employees engaged for an extended period of time. Many don't have time to participate or are afraid they may say something off-brand.

As a result, engagement rates tend to drop off after a few weeks.

We experienced this challenge firsthand and created an employee advocacy platform to solve this specific problem.

Today, GaggleAMP allows you to assign specific engagement activities to specific employees.

Simply select one of our many engagement activities that specify a specific engagement action (like, share, reshare, comment, etc.) and the social platform ( LinkedIn , X (formerly Twitter), Facebook , etc.).

Then, fill out the engagement activity with details like a deadline and engagement instructions. In fact, you can even use our AI-Powered Paraphraser for Managers to create suggested text for the employees. This way, employees don't have to think of anything to write, and they can confidently publish the content knowing that the copy is pre-approved.

Once you've finished the engagement activities, you can assign them to specific employees or a group of employees (executives, the marketing team, etc.).

Employees then receive a notification (via email, Slack , or Microsoft Teams ) that they have engagement activities waiting. Next, employees log into their personal Gaggle, view the engagement activities, and schedule them for publishing.

This process makes it easy for employees to participate in your employee advocacy program as it only requires a few moments of their time each month and very minimal effort.

As a result, employees consistently engage with social content, and you never have to send nagging emails begging them to engage.

To see for yourself if GaggleAMP is a good fit for your company, schedule a demo today.

Tip #2: Influencer Marketing

Partnering with people who already have a large, loyal following of your ideal prospects is another excellent method to increase quality brand awareness.

You can partner with influencers to share your existing content or create new content about your products or services.

While influencer marketing is a common strategy in B2C marketing, most B2B marketers aren't using it effectively as there isn't a platform to connect with great B2B influencers.

The best way to find relevant influencers right now is to look through your current customer list and see who has a large, loyal following of your ideal audience.

Then, reach out to them and offer your product or service for free if they can discuss how they use the tool and its main benefits on social media.

Here's a great example of this type of B2B influencer marketing:

He also gives a shout-out to the tool he used to uncover the following messaging insights:

The key to mastering influencer marketing is partnering with the right influencers. Many marketers make the mistake of prioritizing influencers with large follower counts, audience loyalty is more important. Therefore, marketers that achieve the best ROI from influencer marketing usually partner with micro-influencers that have built strong trust with an audience that is highly relevant to your brand.

In addition, selecting influencers who are already using your platform is ideal because they'll understand the value of your product and articulate it more effectively.

If the influencer's audience doesn't trust the influencer or aren't a good fit for your product or brand, they likely won't move to the next stage of your marketing funnel.

Finally, if you don't want to launch a full influencer marketing campaign, you can simply ask these influencers to do a content collaboration with your brand.

For example, you can ask them to do a joint webinar or contribute to an article you're writing. If they participate in your content, they're more likely to share it with their audience, boosting your brand awareness and reach.

To figure out which influencers to contact, just look at the influencers your competitors or parallel brands partner with. For example, you'll see that Brian Dean has a significant following and has recently been on many different podcasts with well-known SEOs. So, he might be a great candidate to reach out to if you sell an SEO tool.

Source: Brian Dean

Tip #3: Repurpose Content

Creating more and more content is exhausting and resource-intensive, so one of the best ways to get the most ROI from your content is to repurpose existing content into different formats.

Here's a great example from the ad agency Single Grain . The founder recorded one video, and then the team repurposed it into various content formats.

The beauty of content repurposing is that it doesn't require top-tier talent to execute, as the content ideas were already articulated in the original content.

This makes content repurposing much more cost-effective than content creation as you can even use AI to execute most of the repurposing.

Tip #4: Repost and Update Content

Similar to content repurposing, you can also revamp and republish your previous top-performing content.

For example, look at which blog posts are losing the most in rankings and update them:

You can also simply republish your top-performing webinars, social media content, and even ads.

This is a key strategy that Justin Welsh used to grow his X (formerly Twitter) account to 400,000 plus followers. (Note that he uses the term repurposing, but he seems to be referring to the concept of reposting.)

Source: Justin Welsh

Tip #5: Run Paid Ads

Finally, you can always generate more reach by simply running paid ads to your existing content.

For example, this company is running an ad for one of its blog posts on X (formerly Twitter) to help the blog post achieve more reach:

Source: Addressable

The benefit of paid ads is that they produce a fairly immediate ROI and can help your content gain more organic traction.

How To Measure Brand Awareness

In the foundational strategy, we discussed a few different metrics you can track to gauge a brand's success, including:

Tracking the effectiveness of awareness campaigns is notoriously difficult, as you can't always tie it back to a specific metric. In fact, most key brand awareness moments occur on dark social and via word-of-mouth marketing. So, in addition to tracking metrics, also watch general revenue and sales growth trends.

While stakeholders may counter that other marketing efforts are contributing to sales and revenue growth, it's highly likely that your brand awareness efforts are key if the above-mentioned metrics are trending at a similar growth rate as your sales and marketing metrics.

It's also important to realize that brand awareness is a long game, and you won't see an immediate ROI. This is critical to point out to stakeholders as you pitch the idea of a brand awareness marketing strategy to them so that expectations are aligned.

Take the First Step in Your Brand Awareness Marketing Strategy Today

If your brand awareness campaign isn’t performing as well as you hoped it would, it’s probably because you’re using a collection of tactics rather than a structured strategy with a clearly defined marketing funnel.

To solve this problem and achieve a better ROI from your brand awareness marketing strategy, follow the steps above.

If you want to further amplify your brand awareness, our favorite tactic is leveraging employee advocacy. To learn more about how your team can benefit from an employee advocacy program, schedule a demo of GaggleAMP today .

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How to Increase Brand Awareness: Top 6 Strategies

• What causes low brand awareness? It can result from insufficient marketing efforts, inconsistent messaging, or limited visibility in the target market.
• How do you fix lack of brand awareness? You need to focus on targeted marketing campaigns, enhance brand messaging consistency, and increase visibility through various channels.
• How do you track brand awareness increase? Use methods like surveys, website analytics, social media metrics, brand mentions monitoring, brand searches analysis, and market research.

Brand awareness strategies can make or break a company’s campaign. As the first stage of the marketing funnel, brand awareness lays the foundation for the entire customer journey and the rest of your campaign performance — helping you cast as wide of a net as possible before narrowing down your reach and ultimately fueling conversions.

That’s what it’s so important to understand how to increase brand awareness across channels.

Still, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to increase brand awareness. Your approach will depend on many factors, including your campaign goals, budgets, audience behaviors, and advertising platforms. As such, it’s important to consider a range of strategies and best practices to help raise awareness for your brand.

Here, we’ll explore some of the most effective methods to build brand awareness across the web and strengthen your market presence.

What is Brand Awareness?

First, a brand awareness definition. What is brand awareness? It is the extent to which audiences recognize and remember your business. The higher the level of brand awareness you can generate, the more potential customers will be familiar with your brand, logo, messaging, and products.

It’s tough to understate the importance of brand awareness . As noted above, brand awareness strategies have the power to increase your market share, expand your reach, and lay the foundation for the rest of your campaigns. A shoe retailer, for instance, might launch native ads promoting their new boots across publisher sites. They can then use the data from those ads to retarget people who already engaged with their content and generate lead . Looking for more inspiration? Try these brand awareness examples .

Before building your campaigns, however, be sure to clearly determine your brand awareness objectives . For instance, you might be looking to drive traffic to your website, increase your TikTok followers, promote a new product line, enhance your brand reputation, or improve brand familiarity and recall.

Once you decide on your goal, it’s important to know how to measure brand awareness . Again, there is no standard or universal way to measure brand awareness. The metrics you choose will depend on your strategies, goals, and campaign channels. For example, common brand awareness metrics include:

• Ex: How many users viewed your email ad within a publisher newsletter?
• Ex: How many users clicked on your search ad and made it through to your landing page?
• Ex: How many users viewed or completed your Instagram video?
• Ex: How many users viewed your promoted search result after asking a relevant query?

By identifying and consistently tracking brand awareness analytics, you can better optimize strategies to meet your goals and understand exactly how target audiences engage with your business.

How to Create Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness can be tough, especially when you’re fighting for customer attention across saturated platforms. That’s why it’s important to understand how to create brand awareness with a range of proven strategies.

To start, you can use these foundational tactics to build your brand awareness campaigns:

1. Start with a Powerful Brand

It’s tough to build awareness for a weak brand. So make sure you first take these steps to create a strong and powerful brand presence that hooks in new customers:

• Align products to your brand identity. Each of your offerings should tie back to your brand identity and mission — not just visually, for instance, but also in terms of matching your overall brand message, voice, and vision.
• Be recognizable. Choose a name, logo, and color palette that stands and is easy to remember. Again, be sure to align these aesthetic assets to your brand voice and message, delivering a uniform and easily recognizable experience for your customers.
• Design a cohesive brand story. Create opportunities to connect with customers on an emotional level by pulling back the curtain on your brand and telling a compelling story.

2. Make Marketing a Key Player in Brand Strategy

In today’s retail landscape, your content marketing strategy can be as important as your products themselves, since branding plays a vital role in customers’ decisions. As such, it’s crucial to build brand awareness into your overarching market strategy.

For example, you might start a brand awareness campaign to reach a wide audience with native ads across top publisher sites. Then you might retarget people who engaged with those ads, reaching them more personalized, niche marketing tactics that appeal to their specific interested and keep them moving along the funnel.

As another example, you might use trend marketing techniques to establish your brand as a thought leader and go-to source for expert insights. After building brand awareness with this approach, you can encourage repeat readers to sign up for your email newsletter, generating leads and subscriptions for future campaigns.

3. Start a Referral Program

You can start a referral program to help turn loyal customers into advocates and build brand awareness through word of mouth — one of the most powerful and effective awareness strategies. As studies have shown, 49% of consumers say friends and family are their top sources of brand awareness (Ambassador).

Natural dog food brand, Ollie, for example, invites current customers to “Feed a Friend” for discounts on future purchases:

Not only can referral programs help you reach new customers; they can also build affinity and nurture relationships with your existing, most valuable customers — mobilizing them to become trusted ambassadors on behalf of your brand. In fact, you might even incentivize loyal and repeat customers to join your referral program by offering discounts, rewards, and exclusive access to new products or content.

4. Improve Your SEO

One of the best ways to build awareness is by boosting your search results rankings. This way, when potential customers query with relevant keywords, your content and landing pages can surface to meet them — driving new traffic to your site and attention for your brand.

That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) tactics can help. If you’re looking to improve your ranking on Google and Bing, for example, consider implementing these SEO strategies :

• Conduct keyword research. Discover which keywords are most relevant to your target audiences. What topics are people searching for? What questions are they asking? Focus on keywords with high potential engagement and but low competition among other brands in your industry.
• Build high-quality content around those keywords. Use those keywords to inform your content strategies, creating informative, educational, and valuable content that helps answer your customers’ questions and address their pain points. For example, you might incorporate keywords into the headline, body, and visual metadata of your blog posts, making them easier for search engines to discover.
• Continue to optimize keywords. Customer preferences and behaviors are always changing. So remember to frequently conduct keyword research and update your content and landing accordingly.

The 6 Best Strategies to Improve Brand Awareness

Once you’ve established the basics of your brand awareness strategy, you can start to find ways to increase brand awareness and scale your reach. After all, building brand awareness is a constant, ever-changing process that requires continuous adjustments to enhance results.

That’s where these strategies come in. Consider utilizing these six tactics to take your brand awareness campaign to the next level.

1. Run Facebook and Instagram Ads

Even if you already have a social media presence, you can use Facebook and Instagram ad placements to target specific audiences based on their preferences — helping them discover new brands and products that they may like. You might use a lookalike audiences feature, for instance, to target people who are similar to your most valuable customers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll engage with your posts.

This form of content advertising , in particular, can be effective because these social ads are designed to match organic social content, fitting seamlessly into users’ feeds. Meaning, you can launch brand awareness ads that help expand your reach and improve results without disrupting the user experience.

2. Partner with Influencers to Review Your Product

Use influencer marketing to access niche, existing communities of engaged followers. After all, these influencers have already earned the trust and attention of their followers. By partnering with them, you can help build valuable awareness for your brand and even start driving sales. For example, you might tap influencers to review your products and invite their followers to make a purchase with a custom discount link.

3. Incentivize Client Reviews

Highlight customer reviews and success stories by placing them on your landing pages and even in your ads. Showcasing these testimonials can help potential buyers learn more about what your brand has to offer — giving them the inspiration they need to move along the customer journey.

To elicit these reviews, you might send follow-up emails to people who’ve made a purchase and invite them to provide their feedback in exchange for an incentive, such as a discount on their next order.

4. Interact with Followers

Improve social media engagement by frequently and directly interacting with your followers. That is, don’t just blast out vague messages to the masses; have someone on-call to respond to questions and concerns and provide personalized feedback. Brands can also run social media contests, giving users an opportunity to be individually recognized and rewarded for their engagement. All of these strategies can help boost brand awareness and affinity in a crowded social media landscape.

5. Implement Remarketing Campaigns

Remarketing campaigns can take your brand awareness efforts to the next level by reengaging people who’ve already clicked on your ad or consumed your content. Since these users have demonstrated their interest in your messaging, they’re more likely to respond to brand awareness ads, leading to greater results at more efficient costs.

A beauty retailer, for example, might target a broad demographic with ads leading to a blog post of beauty tips. The retailer can then retarget people who clicked through and read the blog, inviting them to subscribe for more content.

6. Leverage Native Advertising

Native advertising is one of the most effective strategies for building brand awareness. Unlike traditional banner ads, native ads match the form of their surrounding content, yielding more intuitive and less disruptive user experiences.

As a leading content discovery platform , Taboola provides the tools that advertisers need to launch engaging native ads across the open web. With their choice of premium placements, advertisers can tap into a network of over 9,000 top publisher sites, driving brand awareness among audiences who are already engaged and ready to consume new content. Taboola also supports a range of innovative ad formats, including native video ads and Motion Ads, which play on a short loop, similar to GIFs.

A globally recognized fast-food chain, for example, partnered with Taboola to promote its new burger using native video ads. The ads ended up driving a 58% video completion rate and 68% viewability — outperforming every other distribution platform.

Find more inspiration with our brand awareness case study examples.

Final Thoughts

Building brand awareness is crucial for business success. Implementing the strategies outlined here can effectively enhance your brand’s visibility and engagement in the market. From refining your brand identity to leveraging a range of digital marketing channels, each strategy plays a vital role.

Generating brand awareness doesn’t have to be overly complex, either. With the right tools, strategies, and outreach channels, you can build brand awareness campaigns that engage wide audiences and keep them moving through the funnel.

Just remember that driving awareness is an ongoing effort. It’s crucial to frequently evaluate your campaigns and optimize your brand awareness strategy to stay competitive in an ever-changing market. You can use native advertising, for example, to continuously increase brand awareness across the open web.

With platforms like Taboola, you can seamlessly connect with your target audience and drive meaningful results. Ultimately, integrating native advertising into your marketing strategy can unlock new engagement opportunities and propel your brand to greater heights in the digital landscape.

Learn more about how to raise awareness with Taboola.

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8 Ways to Build Brand Awareness For Your Business

Discover your brand's unique character. Reveal the truth with our free quiz!

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness reflects how well your target audience knows, recognizes, and remembers your brand.

Whether you’re starting a business or trying to grow an existing business, you face a common challenge: how do you get the word out about your brand and generate buzz?

People are exposed to endless ads. From the moment people open their eyes and look at their social media feeds, they see marketing messages.

How can you stand out in such a noisy world and grab peoples’ attention so they remember who you are?

There are no recent, accurate numbers on how many ads consumers see daily, but it’s safe to estimate that a person sees thousands of ads and marketing messages daily. Businesses spent $240 billion on advertising in the United States  last year. The number increases annually as more people get online and our lives become more digitized.

Why is brand awareness critical?

When your target audience needs a product or service you offer, you want them to think about your brand. For that to happen, your brand must stand apart as the authority in your field.

It takes time and a strong brand strategy to build brand awareness. Brand awareness rarely happens by chance.

That’s why you must build a strategy and consider how you’ll get people to know, recognize, and remember your brand. If you’re starting and working on a business plan , your investors and lenders will carefully scrutinize your market research and go-to-market strategy and assess whether you have a solid roadmap to build brand awareness in your target market.

How can you build brand awareness on a small budget?

The biggest challenge when looking to increase your brand awareness is often competing with giant corporations with deep pockets.

If you sell a new beverage, how can you hope to overcome the buzz behind Coca-Cola or Pepsi? Not only do they saturate the airwaves with advertising, but they have a presence in nearly every store and restaurant in America.

Fortunately, you have creativity and raving fans on your side.

Most small businesses don’t fall into the food industry category, but you likely still have some established brands you compete against.

Here are our favorite tips to make the most of your brand identity and brand image , even if you don’t have a big marketing budget.

1. Know who you are

Before increasing brand awareness, you must know who you are as a brand.

What are your core values?

Look at your company through the eyes of potential customers.

How do your unique benefits help them most?

You might have the cutest office on the block, but customers won’t care unless it results in a better product for them. Think about your unique selling proposition (USP) through your users’ eyes.

Once you have a USP in mind, you should promote it anytime you mention your brand name.

2. Choose the right brand colors

Color has a huge impact on human emotions and how users respond to your business. Did you know color can increase brand recognition by 80% or more?

Many big-name brands use the same color consistently to embed the company logo or business name in users’ minds, such as UPS’s brown and yellow.

Be sure you:

• choose your color palette based on the emotions you’d like to generate from your audience.
• use those colors consistently in every impression you make on a potential client.
• use the same hues on your website, social media, in-store, product packaging , and ads.
• if you find that your brand identity doesn’t cut it anymore, consider rebranding .

You can add colors here and there to make a more emotional impact . Red can generate excitement, so it’s often a good option for call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Blue is a reassuring, steady color that can lend itself well to financial businesses. Black is elegant looking.

What color works best for your target audience?

3. Seek client referrals

Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. A recommendation from someone who has used your product or service goes a lot farther than you asking someone to trust you.

People are much more likely to take the word of their peers. You can start a referral program to reward your customers for sending new business your way.

Your loyal customers will be happy to tell others what they love about your brand. Sometimes you just have to ask for their help to remind them to step up and share.

4. Find networking opportunities

Another way to spread the word about your business is to connect with other business owners in your area and industry. Most local communities have a chamber of commerce. Ask if they have events where you can interact with others in your area.

Team up with complementary companies to run joint promotions.

For example, a restaurant and a theater might team up and offer a discount for couples wanting to go to dinner and a movie. Another idea is to share one another’s mailing lists by promoting the other business in a newsletter.

In addition to reaching one another’s customer base, you’ll also gain access to people experienced in running a small business. They may have additional ideas on extending your brand’s reach without spending a fortune.

5. Experiment to create viral campaigns

There are 4.48 billion people on social media , increasing over 13% in one year. If you aren’t already tapping into social platforms to spread the word about your business , now is the time to jump on board.

Think about how you can spread the word to your target audience. You don’t have to reach over four billion people. You only need to reach the ones likely to become your customers. You can do so via advertising and messaging highly targeted to your chosen demographics.

You can also develop campaigns likely to spread , such as asking your audience to do something good and tagging your business with a hashtag.

Have your users share a photo using your product and donate money for likes and shares to a particular cause.

Think about what your audience is most likely to share that might spread the word about your brand while also making a positive difference in the world.

6. Establish your expertise

A blog can be your budget-friendly best friend in building brand awareness. You can establish yourself as an expert on a topic and gain traffic from search engines. Study search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, and use best practices to help your articles rank high in results.

For example, you might have a hard time ranking for a popular keyword such as “pizza,” but you can improve your SEO and rank for a phrase such as “pineapple pizza recipe for new cooks.”

Learn the format, length, and best practices to grab the attention of search engines and browsers, and you’ll gain traffic to your site.

Once people see you as the go-to expert on a topic, they’re more likely to buy from you when they need what you sell.

7. Encourage company culture

The right company culture puts customers first and gets workers excited about what you’re doing. If you train your staff and make them feel part of the team, they can help spread the word about your brand.

Remember that every person who works for you has family and friends. When they tell people how much they love their job and how amazing your products and services are, those folks will want to see for themselves.

You can also let them discount family and friends for an added perk. Reward them for big orders with a freebie, discount, or gift card. Look for ways to reward your most loyal workers just like your loyal customers.

You should also set some social media policies. It’s good to let your staff post about your brand and share links, but you need to control it, or it could get out of hand. Perhaps have a company page where you share posts they can put on their walls and reward the employee who has the most likes and shares.

8. Avoid spam

In the early days of trying to get the word out about your brand, it’s easy to overdo it. You see a question on an online forum and want to answer that your product is the perfect solution.

However, being spammy will only hurt your brand reputation in the long run. You’re much better off offering some generic advice and hoping someone clicks on your name and sees you know what you’re talking about.

You could also say, “This is my area of expertise, and here is how you fix the issue.” Since you aren’t outright mentioning your brand, you aren’t spamming groups, but you also plant a seed in the reader’s mind to go look you up possibly.

Don’t email people who haven’t signed up for your list. Don’t jump onto threads other marketers started and take them over. Be respectful and share about your business only when appropriate to do so. You want to increase awareness but in a positive way.

Never miss an opportunity

Take advantage of every opportunity you’re given to increase exposure for your business. Consider including your email signature as an additional marketing channel . Put your logo on your checks. Add a tagline to your product packaging . Spend a few hours optimizing your local SEO strategy .

If someone invites you to a radio talk show, accept. If you can put your name on a little league banner, take it. If you’re sharing links on social networks, use a custom URL shortener to create branded links. Look for every budget-friendly thing that fits your audience and leap on it.

In the early days, especially, getting your name in front of others as much as possible is vital. Later, you can choose to be pickier and invest more in targeted marketing.

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15 Best Brand Awareness Strategies: The Ultimate Guide To Building a Brand

A successful, well-established brand is immediately recognizable, loved and cherished by its customers - sometimes even the whole world. 

This, in a nutshell, is what brand awareness strategies can help you accomplish with your brand.

You may think that brand recognition is just something that would come naturally to your business as it grows and expands its services and products.

But knowing brand awareness ins and outs can help you get a better perspective about why it is important to nurture it right from the start.

When you have brand recognition, it's easier to grow brand awareness, which actually suggests how famous your product is and how familiar your target audience is with its characteristics and qualities.

Having a recognizable brand and all  the right  people aware of it is what happens when the fruit of your labor becomes part of their daily life and habits. Your brand is making a promise that only it can fulfill.

There are traditionally effective tactics  to build a brand  and there are techniques that are blazing a trail in our digital day and age. This guide looks at both.

Table of Contents

15 brand awareness strategies that are effective and easy to apply, what is brand awareness, how to measure brand awareness, why does brand awareness matter, what are the benefits of brand awareness, elements of brand experience: why it’s important for brands to have a purpose, 1. keep consistency in voice and image.

Presenting a brand consistently across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%. Consistency is the #1 strategy for leveling up your branding awareness. People respond negatively to a change if it’s frequent and seemingly aimless.

A purposeful rebranding is completely okay, but you shouldn't frequently change your brand image over and over again. Successful logo design specialists understand the importance of maintaining visual continuity for long-term brand recognition.

That's why having a brand book to document your brand style and visual identity is always a good idea.  A good example of a consistent brand is Coca-Cola, whose logo and image haven’t changed all that much ever since its establishment in the late XIX century.

Did you know that 94%  of the world’s population recognizes the Coca-Cola logo?

Besides the logo, other aspects of consistency are the brand voice and the media image. Every channel your brand is communicating on must have its own unique "zing", but must also not deviate too much from the standards you set in your branding process.

2. Use All Aspects Of Social Media

The safest and surest way to raise your business branding to the next level is by utilizing social media in your brand awareness strategies. It’s like having open access to a directory of hundreds of millions of potential customers - all for free! Having a page on relevant platforms is a must, but you should get more serious than just having a Facebook/Instagram/Twitter page created.

Besides regularly posting content that is useful, helpful and interesting to your audience, you should also:

• Engage with your followers through comments and messages
• Engage or partner with other brands from your community
• Use social media ads to expand your reach and grow brand visibility
• Try various advertising and engagement techniques to see what's working 

Other social media-related things to consider are  contests, quizzes and giveaways. Numerous businesses resort to this method for raising brand exposure. One way to do this is to ask your followers to share your post and tag their friends in the comments.

A good idea for making the most of social media is partnering  with influencers in your industry. These social media celebrities wield huge power in a massive fan base and are a good source of new potential customers for you. Them endorsing your brand could give you exposure to millions of people.

Plus, you should create your own custom, branded hashtags.  This tactic is especially effective on Instagram and Twitter. Sure, it may take some time for it to catch on and take off, but it’s worth waiting and working on it. Use it on posts promoting new products or services, company news, events, contests, etc.

3. Enhance Customer Satisfaction

It’s uncanny what damage to your brand one SINGLE bad customer experience can do. Plenty of people vow to never have anything to do with a brand responsible for a bad experience. Worse still, they tell their friends about it, who vow the same – and just like that, you’re in a pickle! To avoid all that, always go above and beyond to provide your consumers with the best customer experience. That should be engraved in your business’ ethical code.

If you mess something up or provide sub-par service – make amends by giving away something for free, or replacing the product or giving a huge discount. Having unsatisfied customers is risky in the age of internet reviews. A bad reputation will be heard long and wide and spread like wildfire, and you don’t want that.

On the other hand, customers who are satisfied and better yet – delighted by your products or services – will be happy to leave positive reviews and recommend you to everyone. A famous example that serves as words to do business by is that of an eyeglasses company Warby Parker. As the story goes, the owner sat on a train with a man who left his glasses in a sitting compartment and he not only returned the glasses to the man – he made a brand new pair for him.

That is building brand awareness in the most direct way possible and it cannot fail to impress. That's what you should aim for.

4. Advertise On The Right Channels

77% of Twitter users appreciate a brand more when their tweet is responded to. Acknowledge your customers! 

However, this doesn't mean that you should invest only in Twitter advertising.

Each advertising channel has a unique audience. And you should choose the channels where your ideal customers spend most of their time.

Some of the social platforms are prone to gathering younger demographics, some are more “hip” than others. There are platforms and channels that cater to the needs of a group of people that lean towards a certain political value. The crucial thing is to do research and find out where your target audience is. That way, your products and services will make the biggest impact, even within omnichannel marketing campaigns. 

You can do this yourself with a tool like  GrowthBar  or you can hire a branding agency that can help you with this, as they have the necessary expertise and experience in determining this.

5. Partner With Other Brands

A brilliant way to stir more attention and increase brand awareness is to conjure a partnership with other brands that share your values, views or vision. Or, those can be local companies from your community that you want to engage with and support.

This can build your brand awareness by exposing it to the audience that "belongs" to partnering brands. There are many examples of brands teaming up together in order to bring a very special marketing campaign or a one-off product.

Some of the most memorable examples of this were:

• GoPro & Red Bull tying up for the Stratos project
• BMW & Louis Vuitton creating The Art of Travel campaign together
• Starbucks & Spotify running the Music Ecosystem co-branding campaign

Co-branding can be a particularly effective strategy for smaller businesses, especially to grow visibility and impact in local communities. This can be done by holding joint events, sponsoring events, supporting local sports teams or festivities, donating to charities, etc.

6. Don’t Shy Away From Freebies

Refrain from thinking that handing out free stuff would somehow cheapen and devalue your brand. Quite the contrary!

People love free things and they'll see your freebies and giveaways as a nice token of generosity. Coming from their beloved brand (yours!) earns extra points.

Don’t forget to stamp your business name and cool logo on whatever you’re handing out, though.

7. Use Google AdSense Auto Ads

Google’s AdSense Auto ads help publishers by pointing to the optimal place for them to create ads.

This type of dynamic ads uses algorithms based on machine learning to appear on websites best suited for your brand to help you reach the right demographics and to do it quickly.

AdSense Auto ads are an almost ideal way to achieve the most difficult of all things: finding the right audience and placing your products and services right in front of them.

8. Leverage Remarketing Campaigns

You’ve encountered this yourself: you visit a website – say an online shop – just to have a look at a few items, browsing some clothes. Then you leave the website. But almost immediately, you start seeing ads for the items you’ve looked at every other site you visit. That’s remarketing. And those ads are inviting you to return to that online shop and buy. Apart from the obvious – having your ads virtually everywhere your potential customers go online – remarketing campaigns send out the impression that your brand is huge, and capable of producing all these advertisements across the internet.  And of course, you get to increase your conversion rates .

9. Create Powerful Referral Programs

Referral programs are a surefire tactic to reward existing customers for recommending you and incentivize new customers to try out your products or services. Plus, these programs can  ultimately increase your revenue in the long term. Referral (or loyalty) programs are systematic processes that can automate rewards payout and can easily be tracked.

There are dozens of mind-boggling examples of awesome referral programs throughout recent history.

Some of the examples are:

• PayPal’s money giveaways as referral awards
• Dropbox’s giveaway of extra storage space for anyone who refers their friend to them
• Amazon Prime’s $5 discount on the next purchase for every friend who joined

10. Live Your Beliefs

Your business needs to be more than a job to you and your employees – it has to be a calling. A famous example of Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO , Brian Chesky, illustrates this point the best. His world-renowned brand got a huge backing from venture capitalist Peter Thiel who granted Cheskey an important piece of advice: K eep the company culture intact.  As Thiel explained, once they get too big, companies corrupt their culture and lose their way.

Based on that, Chesky sent an email to his employees that quickly went viral and became one of the cornerstones of the "living your belief" philosophy.

Here is the part of the email Chesky sent:  "There are days when it’s easy to feel the pressure of our own growth expectations. Other days when we need to ship the product. Others still where we are dealing with the latest government relations issue. It’s easy to get consumed by these. And they are all very important. But compared to culture, they are relatively short-term. These problems will come and go. But culture is forever.” Airbnb’s core brand belief is contained in its slogan "Belong Anywhere".

11. Focus On Values And Emotions

They say that people buy on emotion and justify with logic. Branding based on values and emotions, especially in marketing, develops meaningful relationships with customers.

In fact, 89%   of shoppers stay loyal to brands that share their values. Emotional branding has taken on a whole new level of science.

Honda , for instance, tracks facial and eye movements and changes to detect the activation of emotions in humans when they watch their commercials. They are using this to better optimize their branding. Consumers see their favorite brands as an extension of their individuality and style. If your business forms an emotional bond with your clients, you’re halfway to the top. In some ways, such " emotional seduction"  is the key to making a brand great – not its relevance.

Of course, to convey the right emotion, you need to know your audience head-to-toe: who is into your brand, what is their demographic, is there one particular emotion that fits your brand? Let emotions speak through the language your audience understands.

For example, if you are targeting younger audiences, keep in mind that they use the language of the internet more and more.

That means you should be using a lot of emojis in your messaging, too. Don’t be afraid to adopt this manner of speaking on your social media platforms, email marketing campaigns and other channels.

12. Build A Brand On Community And Belonging

94% of global consumers consider it important that the companies they engage with have a strong purpose. 

Belonging is one of five basic needs, as described by psychologist Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs . People’s identity and sense of self are largely dependent on the feeling of community and belonging. And the world is already one large community, so to speak: modern technology and social networks are bringing us all closer together. Fluid identities that stem from this situation open up people to more choices than ever before. If a brand utilizes this sense of "me" and "we" in a proper way, by connecting to bigger collectives , it shares values and a common purpose.

As was discussed in the section above, people identify through the labels they consume as they symbolize who they are, in a way.

Affiliations to certain groups and lifestyles are made consciously and subconsciously by the people who take brands with this way of thinking into consideration.

Your business, with a brand positioning with the community and belonging in mind, will be seen as a lot more than a provider of a product or a service –  it will become an extension of people's lives.

13. Don't Forget Offline Campaigns

The digital age’s most imminent trap is that it might get you to believe nothing outside online marketing matters.

Offline marketing campaigns, such as direct mail, print materials, billboards, posters, brochures, branded handouts and other tactics can truly help you increase brand awareness.

Also, don’t neglect offline media outlets and print publications.

All too often enterprises forget that, despite living in the age of the internet and smartphones, traditional ways of advertising still exist and offer platforms for showcasing your brand’s consistent identity.

14. Consider Starting A Podcast

Podcasts are increasingly popular today: they help people stay on top of things, get industry insights quickly, learn from experts and more. 

You can also consider starting your own (business) podcast to interview industry experts, develop relationships with peers and grow brand authority, credibility and awareness. Using podcasts as a brand awareness strategy is especially effective in an industry or a niche that doesn’t have many podcasts, to begin with, so you can make yourself a famous podcasting star overnight (ideally).

Also, you can get in touch with popular podcast hosts who would like to welcome you to their show.

Being a guest of a popular podcast can put you in front of their (typically large) audience and help you grow brand recognition and awareness.  

15. Build Narratives Around Your Brand

F or truly going the extra mile with raising your brand awareness, aim for being memorable and nothing sticks to the collective and individual memory as a good, compelling story. As John Bates , Executive Speaking Success and Business Coaching CEO, explains: "If you can’t properly convey a story then your products are not going to appeal to your audience."

He also claims that our brains value stories more than anything . John Bates shares some tips for business storytelling:

• A story needs to have circumstance, curiosity, characters, conversationist and conflict
• Forget bragging; instead, relate to your audience
• Spark the emotions of your audience
• Get the audience engaged through all the senses
• Start the story in the middle and build from there
• Show your values, show people what matters to you

When you start building meaningful narratives around your brand, storytelling can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level, build trust and grow brand awareness. 

Since you're here, let's review the basics of brand awareness and why you should focus on building awareness for your business. 

Brand awareness is the level of association and recognition your target audience has towards your products, services and overall business.

Building brand awareness can help you: 

• State your business values, mission, vision and purpose
• Bridge the gap between your company and the general public
• Make your business trending and popular both online and off-line
• Foster trust and build a strong bond between your customers and your brand
• Put a brand face (and a voice) on to show the personality that is easier to relate to

Brand awareness forms a connection between your business and your audience's feelings about your business.  

To form a meaningful connection that goes beyond just one single purchase, try socializing, networking and, generally, behaving more like a person than like a company.

Think of it this way:  

• When you’re paying with a credit card, you’re not calling it a "credit card" but simply – Visa
• During summer heatwaves, you’re enjoying your popsicle, not freezer pops
• A Band-aid is what you use to stop the cut from bleeding, not a plastic bandage
• Barely anyone ever says "lip balm" – it’s chapstick or nothing

All these products have one thing in common: their branded names have replaced the generic terms used for them. They've got immense brand recognition – the ultimate goal of every proprietor and enterprise owner.

You should always measure your brand awareness because, otherwise, how’d you know your strategies are working? There are two measuring methods for brand awareness strategies:

1. Quantitative Measuring:

• Direct traffic coming from Google and other search engines
• Website traffic including the number of visitors, time on the page, bounce rates, etc.
• User engagement includes likes, shares, and comments on social platforms, forums, etc. 

2. Qualitative Measuring:

• Setting up Google Alerts to see how much your brand's been talked about online
• Social media listening and monitoring with social media management tools
• Running brand awareness surveys to get feedb ack directly from your audience

Read our full guide on how to measure brand awareness for more tips!

Nurturing a high level of brand awareness is important b ecause it helps you create emotional connections with your audience.  It also improves your general visibility with customers and prospects and provides you with a larger market share.

You can, indeed, add a more effective logo or an on-brand Facebook cover image, but your brand image is still going to be way more than that.

These are the key benefits of brand awareness:

• Customer loyalty : Having a well-established brand helps you reach your target audience and make your products or services much more relatable and humane. The trick to this is also advocating the values of your business with honesty and integrity which people will recognize. Ties thus created with customers increase their levels of loyalty. Which, in turn, increases customer interactivity and engagement.
• Visibility and brand recognition : Brand awareness increase can lead to two outcomes: visibility and recognition. When you have a visible and recognizable brand, it's more likely to become your audience’s choice. Its familiarity is tantamount in a sea of choices consumers are faced with every day. Having clear visibility becomes an advertisement in itself, leading to being noticed by the majority of the public.
• Credibility and market advantage : Visibility and recognition help you build brand credibility, a natural overture to becoming more advantageous on the market. Credibility leads to competitiveness, even prestige. When a brand is more competitive, revenue from purchase volumes rises, as does ROI.
• Products "sell themselves": Well-established brands sell products and services before they even appear. Just look at the craze every time Apple releases a new iPhone. That’s because a brand makes a promise, a guarantee of products' quality and worth, even before they appear.
• Values beyond products : Today, more than ever, consumers are buying more intelligently, more ethically, and more compassionately. Communicating values and topical themes, and contributing to the zeitgeist, means a lot to consumers and clients who see your brand as a champion of our times. The brand built on community and belonging by living its beliefs will always be lauded.

Finally, let's discuss the importance of brand experiences and how to improve them.

Darren Coleman of Branding Strategy Insider argues that it is vital to think of the context of your brand and the experiences associated with it. 

He calls this context The Brand Experience Environment and it consists of:

• Understanding the customers  by helping them get their job done, encouraging their engagement and managing their expectations
• Fine-tuning your perspective by embracing transparency, adopting a holistic mindset, competing primarily through value, not price, having patience and accepting a loss of control
• Considering the mechanics of delivery  by creating an emotional connection, facilitating co-creation and delivering omnichannel experiences
• Adopting a data-driven approach  by obtaining quantitative insights and measuring holistically

Once you understand the context of a brand and its experiences,  there remains one final thing to comprehend: brand positioning is not the same as brand purpose.

Brands often confuse purpose for something admirable in regards to social and community contexts, as something "good for the society," as Syl Saller of Diageo writes. The mistaking purpose for a position leads to brands losing their ability to compete and be different from the rest. The purpose of the brand is contained in its culture and strategy, not in campaigns driven by "impassioned points of view."  Building a brand from the ground up, or rebranding it, is responsible work.

The 15 brand awareness strategies listed in this article have enough case studies and successful experiences by top companies to be backed with this hard evidence of their effectiveness. Branding is best left to professionals. You can browse directories on our website to search for the best branding companies based on their location, industry and expertise.

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9 Brand Awareness Strategy Ideas for 2024

Brand development is a journey. Unfortunately, it’s one that many marketers overlook.

Without a definite brand awareness strategy, you’ll lose your business to your competition. How familiar are people with your brand? How can you increase brand awareness for your brand?

A brand awareness strategy is a crucial element of successful marketing in 2023. It has the potential to transform your business into an established market leader.

Conversely, a lax attitude to promoting your brand will only hamper your growth and success. And if you don’t increase brand awareness , you can’t ever hope to achieve brand recognition.

Which makes us wonder: What’s the difference between brand awareness and brand recognition? And why is either one important?

In this blog post, we explore these nuances and give you nine (9) brand awareness strategy ideas to grow your business.

Table of Contents

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the level of familiarity your target audience has with your brand and their knowledge of your business, your products, and your values.

For example, when you hear “Apple,” you think of cutting-edge tech gadgets and slick advertising.

The value of building positive brand awareness is most apparent in the early stages of a new business venture, as you need to make sure to spread the word about your company and its products or services. Apple asserted brand dominance and was a pioneer in brand building around some of the most iconic products. 

The Importance of Brand Recognition

So, what is the difference between building brand awareness and brand recognition? Brand awareness is the force that drives the entire narrative of your brand. Every digital branding agency will tell you that increasing brand awareness is key for your business.

Everything from your logo, slogan, and colors to your brand messaging and voice counts here.

There should be consistency and unity across all marketing channels, such as email, social media platforms, etc., so that you communicate with prospects in a way that resonates with them.

Over time, as you implement these brand awareness strategies, people will start to associate your brand with the products and services you provide.

Brand recognition is when your brand becomes synonymous with the service it provides. 

Here are some fantastic examples of brand recognition, where each one of these brands have become a household name today:

• “Do you have any Tupperware for my leftover pizza?”
• “I’ve cut my finger on the lid, pass me a Kleenex ”
• “Okay, it’s pretty bad, do you have a Band-Aid?”
• “I think I’m going to faint, Google the nearest doctor’s surgery.”
• “It’s an emergency, call an Uber !”

You get the picture.

Research into search engine marketing indicates that 82% of people will opt for a brand they are familiar with , even if that brand is ranked lower on the search engine results page.

Read also: Lead Magnets and Why You Need Them (Guide Blog)

3 Undeniable Benefits of a Brand Awareness Campaign

So, just what can a strong brand awareness campaign achieve? Yes, we know brand recognition is the ultimate goal, but what will that really do for your business?

Let’s take a closer look.

Increase Customer Recognition

People gravitate towards the familiar, and a good brand awareness strategy will help you forge that connection with your target audience.

Foster Customer Loyalty

When consumers start recognizing your brand and become acquainted with your products or services, they’ll soon begin following you. More people will begin to view you as a credible, professional business. 

Better yet, they will spend more .

A well-conceived brand or product awareness strategy fosters customer loyalty , and that helps your brand build a large, active customer base that makes your company more sustainable in the long run.

This is why building brand awareness around loyalty is beneficial. 

Stir Up Excitement for New Products

If Tony the Tiger appears on the screen, people tend to perk up as they know the brand already.

That makes it easier for Kellogg’s to launch a new twist on their beloved Frosties cereal.

When you have a brand awareness marketing strategy that plays to your strengths, it can be a great way to connect with more people, creating warm leads ahead of major product launches.

Read also: Types of Customer Services & What Suits Your Small Business Best

9 Brand Awareness Strategy Ideas for Small Businesses

So, now that you understand why you should have a brand awareness strategy, it’s time to look at some key ideas.

In this section, we’ll explore nine brand strategy ideas that companies have already used to build a great brand image.

#1. Partner with Other Known Brands

The Japanese clothing company Uniqlo doesn’t like to be pigeon-holed. In an effort to spread, they began sponsoring free admissions to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

By doing this, the company pushes its brand name to a new audience and generates a buzz around its company through social media marketing, paid social networks, blog posts, guest posting, social media posts, and other content marketing channels.

Key Takeaway

Aligning yourself with a respected brand or business will help you inherit the image and reputation of that brand.

Marketing Tool Tip

BuzzSumo allows you to analyze a popular content strategy and see what type of content your audience likes and shares the most.

#2. Use Referrals

We’re sure you’ve heard of Dropbox. The free sharing and storage service is massively popular, and one of the reasons for that is their use of referral programs .

The company made it easy for its users to refer the service to friends and family via email or social media.

The incentive here was that you would get more space for every sign-up that you helped Dropbox acquire.

Digital marketing guru Neil Patel reports that this referral program strategy led to a 60% surge in sign-ups.

Think about how your products can leverage self-promotion.

InviteBox helps you raise brand awareness and brand positioning via their referral programs by adding referral boxes on your website.

#3: Launch Your Service as a Closed Beta Version

OptinMonster research found that more than 60% of millennials make reactive purchases because of the fear of missing out (FOMO) .

So, how can this help you increase brand awareness and build brand recognition?

Well, you could take a leaf out of Evernote’s book. The collaborative notebook app launched a beta version for a few months, encouraging people to send invitations for access to this new service.

The campaign worked, bringing over 120,000 sign-ups within a few months.

Sometimes exclusivity is the best way of evoking customer interest with brand awareness campaigns. 

People want to feel special, and nobody likes the idea of missing out.

Beta Testing allows you to test the waters and collect user data before scaling your product.

#4. Align Your Value Proposition With the Customers’ Needs

Today, personalization is paramount. It all starts with great audience personas, giving you a clear picture of what your potential customers actually want and need. Since different companies have different target audiences, it can be useful to take the help of experts, like Venture Smarter to create your marketing strategies.

By drilling down to find what is truly valuable to the people you are trying to serve, you can align your brand messaging to align your brand awareness marketing efforts with the potential and existing customers’ pain points. Major brands like Amazon and Netflix have nailed personalization by offering customers a tailored service, which caters directly to their desires. 

Adopt a customer-centric approach with your strategy, and you will soon become a recognized solution for the problems of your target audience.

EngageBay allows you to segment your audience and create personalized email sequences that speak directly to the needs of each potential customer.

#5. Engage More People With Video Content

It’s not easy to stand out from the sea of competition.

Video marketing is on the rise because it is captivating in ways that text or images simply can’t be.

Research shows that adding a video on your landing page can boost conversions by as much as 80% .

Related blog: Understanding the 4 Key Steps to Brand Development — A Brief Guide

Get on the video trend this year to boost audience engagement. 

Google Analytics can be used to track page views and video interactions.

#6. Offer a Freemium Service

Over the past few years, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry has skyrocketed. Many brands in this space have built brand awareness efforts by offering a freemium service.

Companies got their brand name out there by offering a free-forever, restricted version of their product.

Slack did this to great effect, and the free service stoked the fires enough to convince many consumers to buy the full premium service eventually.

In fact, the strategy worked so well that Slack achieved 30% conversion rates on its freemium users.

Read also: 9 Types Of Branding And What They Really Mean

Offer a freemium product or service to show people your company is willing to give something valuable for no cost.

People will talk about it, and your brand awareness will spread.

Sprout Social can be used to monitor audience engagement and interest on your social channels. It’s an all-in-one social media management platform designed for small and medium businesses. 

#7. Harness Social Proof to Persuade More People

Most consumers trust the opinions of friends and family members and actively consult them prior to making a purchase.

People care about the customer experiences and opinions of others and place more value on those than they do on the word of a company.

When you see positive reviews on a website , it influences your decisions, right?

Yelp is a popular recommendation site that took humanization to a new level by allowing users to create their own profiles. This put a face to the names and nurtured a community, making reviews even more trustworthy and improving public relations. 

Creating a community around your brand will drive trust and brand loyalty during your brand awareness campaign, which are key prerequisites for brand recognition.

Taggstar claims to boost conversion rates by 12% purely by using its tools to leverage social proof on your website.

#8. Follow-Up with Remarketing

Do you know how online advertising and marketing strategies work?

The customer journey involves quite a few steps:

• A consumer needs a certain product or service.
• They search for solutions online, evaluating the available choices.
• They hesitate and decide against taking any action.
• They continue to research their options. They start to narrow things down, focusing on a few options that they trust or gravitate towards for some reason.
• Finally, they revert to the brand they favor most before converting.

Many companies miss out on the fact that the majority of consumers hesitate. As little as 2% of people are prepared to buy on their first visit to a website.

If you can follow up with people after they express some interest, you can maximize your conversion rates.

People need time to make a decision, and that can involve several visits to the same site. When visitors leave your site, the sale is not dead. 

Google Ads is all about targeting a specific audience, narrowing your focus to increase brand awareness based on customer attributes, like the devices they use or their geographical locations.

#9. Narrow Your Focus with Account-Based Marketing

The case for aligning your sales and marketing departments is overwhelming: it can deliver a nice 209% growth in revenue.

Account-based marketing seeks to coordinate the activities of these two teams so that you can drive tangible results in a more efficient, cost-effective way.

Focus on account-based marketing to get a better return on investment (ROI), as your most promising leads often get you the biggest profits.

Use a tool like Rebrandly URL Shortener to shorten and brand the links you create and share online.

Using branded links will improve your brand visibility and, at the same time, turn your links into a promotion for your brand.

Brand Awareness Campaigns: The Fast and Smart Way to Build a Global Audience

As you can see, there is no shortage of marketing technology to help a brand build the awareness and recognition they need to establish a sustainable customer base.

The trouble is, even the most motivated marketers can feel overwhelmed by all the apps, tools, and tricks they need to learn.

Wouldn’t it be much easier to just have one centralized platform that incorporated everything you need? Imagine how easy your marketing campaign would be to manage then.

Luckily, such platforms exist. 

In an era when customer relationships matter more than ever before, a unified CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform is an increasingly attractive option.

For small businesses, EngageBay is a dream come true. It is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer service platform, with integrated CRM. ( Read reviews )

The coolest thing about EngageBay is that it costs less than $1 a day! Just sign up for the forever-free version today, and see your business take off. 

Even the free version packs a punch, with tools like multichannel marketing, web analytics, account-based marketing, a drag-n-drop landing page builder — the list goes on…

EngageBay’s reporting dashboards can help you measure your brand awareness. 

We also have a comprehensive demo video for you. Check it out: 

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Allbirds CMO on why brand building is key to company’s turnaround plan

A campaign promoting a new Tree Glider shoe is part of the sustainability minded marketer’s bigger push into awareness-driven tactics.

The balance of power in the sneaker industry is shifting as legacy brands like Nike and Adidas face fresh challenges from upstarts. As newcomers including Hoka and On gain market share, Allbirds — among the category’s original fleet of direct-to-consumer disruptors — has contended with slumping sales. Now, it’s looking to change the narrative with a revamped marketing strategy.

Founded a decade ago, the San Francisco-based company first rose in popularity thanks to its comfortable designs and a sustainability minded ethos. Once deemed the “it” shoe of Silicon Valley , Allbirds saw its fortunes turn following an IPO in 2021 and over expansion into retail. Net revenue dropped 26.8% in Q2 2024, partially due to the closure of 10 stores, though the company narrowed its losses .

Allbirds this year has shaken up leadership, promoting Chief Operating Officer Joe Vernachio to CEO in March and appointing new product leads . It has debuted new shoe models that are gaining traction with consumers. The latest offering, the cushy, minimalist Tree Glider , is the biggest launch of the bunch and a key piece of a return to stronger brand building, kicking off a larger “Allbirds by Nature” platform.

An ad campaign created with Sid Lee that landed Tuesday has a dreamy quality as people walk around in Tree Gliders before floating into the air. Messaging emphasizes the dual meaning of “nature” in relation to both the Earth and intrinsic human qualities. A partnership with Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, a wellness influencer and founder of Melissa Wood Health, rounds out the effort.

“We’re excited about building a platform that can sustain us through the lens of consistency, repetition and investment, hopefully for the next five-plus years,” said Kelly Olmstead, who took on the CMO title at Allbirds in December.

Olmstead’s prior roles include nearly two decades at Adidas, where she helped lead brand, retail and digital marketing for North America. Below, Marketing Dive spoke with the executive about tapping into a cult following via customer relationship management (CRM) and what marketing tactics are catching her interest this year. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MARKETING DIVE: You’ve been in the CMO role almost a year now? 

KELLY OLMSTEAD : We’ve been in the midst of this brand reset. I joined as a contractor and I wasn’t sure about coming back to a footwear brand. I came in and just fell in love first with the people here and the spirit, we say a lot: “High horsepower, low ego.” I was really disarmed by that. I stayed because I do think Allbirds is poised for a strong return. 

One of the things that struck me out of the gate was this perfect storm of opportunity. We have an incredibly high [Net Promoter Score]. Coming from this industry, to be north of 80 on an NPS means people that know us love us. But we have very small and steady awareness, around 15% to 17%, that is hard to move. It’s about telling more people about the brand and getting more people to try us. 

What was missing from the past marketing strategy that didn’t connect those dots? 

We’re nine years old. Marketing takes time. What I’ve been excited to do with Joe [Vernachio], with [Chief Design Officer] Adrian [Nyman] and with our agency partner, Sid Lee USA, is formulate a campaign and a platform that will endure. It has the breadth to allow us to dimensionalize great products and what’s special about those products, but also can flex into this more aspirational brand space. People that choose Allbirds are making a conscious choice for something that is a little lesser known. It’s kind of counterculture, it’s not the mainstream. 

How have the cross-organizational aspects of the brand changed since you joined? Did it used to be more siloed? 

Joe was with the company for a few years. In assuming the CEO role, he comes in with a wealth of knowledge, not only in Allbirds, but also Mountain Hardwear, The North Face, Nike. He’s done it all. He’s not necessarily a CEO by trade. With this whole “high horsepower, low ego” [idea], he has really gone out and tried to break down silos. I can’t speak to what it was before but certainly now there is a spirit of all of us getting on the same page and getting a clear plan. 

It’s a challenging time for the business. How are you balancing launching this new marketing with that contraction? 

There’s been a lot of great work done to get Allbirds to a more operationally healthy place. What I am feeling, not only from the executive team but the board, is the willingness to invest in brand. It’s the view that it has the potential to be a 100-year brand. That’s a shift of the way that we market, the KPIs we’re looking at. Having been at some brands that have been around for a lot longer, that’s how you weather storms and downturns. 

The balance of brand building versus performance marketing is a bigger theme I’ve covered. Allbirds is natively DTC. How is the organization thinking about media differently? 

There’s been changes in terms of operations. Performance marketing used to sit with e-commerce, now it sits with marketing. We’ve been able to look at the performance of assets and stories and react to those to get to the best work. That’s been a huge benefit. 

There’s a more modern way to look at a platform, whether it’s YouTube or Netflix or even TikTok, to entertain, to give the consumer something valuable so that you earn their attention. If not, they’re done in 3 seconds. We’re hoping to articulate the Allbirds story, which is unique and not something you’re going to get in 3 seconds. We’re looking at longer-format content, where Allbirds may not be the first thing you see, but hopefully you get a lot of value out of what we’re putting forward.

You mentioned a couple of platforms, like Netflix and TikTok. Are you advertising on those platforms?

We’re on YouTube with this most recent campaign. We’re on TikTok and all of social. What’s coming in Q4 is still not baked, but we’re looking at what the right platform is to build a more robust story for Allbirds. In the space of footwear, it’s such an emotional purchase and there’s such high consideration that you have to do the work.

It’s an interesting time for footwear, generally. Nike and Adidas have both struggled with challenger brands. Do you think of yourself as being within that set?

Absolutely. Allbirds was one of the first to come in and disrupt. I was sitting at Adidas and saying, “Who are these guys?” Allbirds was really at the forefront of challenging the big dogs and doing it in a way where they walk the talk. Very few brands will open source some of the secrets that make them great. That was my first exposure [to Allbirds]. We did a collaboration between Allbirds and Adidas on what was, at the time, the most sustainable running shoe on the market. There is a real opportunity that Allbirds helped to create. 

I think of shoes as being bucketed into streetwear, sports performance and comfort. Is there any one of those or a mix of them that you’re looking for Allbirds to have a bigger stake in?

In the last couple of years, we’ve really put forward this story around sustainability because that is a leadership space for us. The “Allbirds by Nature” campaign realizes that nature is a much bigger, more aspirational position. 

“Effortless by nature” is the line that we are associating with the Tree Glider. You see this maximalist, overdone viz tech [from other brands]. The Tree Glider is really interesting in its ability to be comfortable but it has the confidence to not have an overt logo. That was an intentional design choice from the inception. There is a real opportunity to have a more sophisticated take.  

Tell me more about the Sid Lee relationship. Is this their first work for you? 

It is. Both Joe and I, separately, had a relationship with Sid Lee before. We brought in Sid Lee and it was a true collaboration. When we got to “by nature,” it was so simple but it does have breadth. You can articulate product benefit, aspirational human benefit and style benefit. It’s the consistency that we need. We’re too small to be telling different stories all the time.

We’re in the thick of back to school and holidays are coming up. What’s your plan for H2?

The Tree Glider launch will be our biggest push, certainly since I’ve been here. We’re excited to be back in streaming, TV and true awareness channels to articulate what Allbirds is about and do it in a more distinctive, ownable way. Going into Q4, we’re looking into deeper stories we can tell and maybe more longer-format content in addition to everything we do on social and within the digital and retail space and with influencers. It is, we believe, a story we’ll be telling well into Q1. We see this as the first step and the hope is, by Q3 of next year, that we’re in a rhythm in terms of marketing and investment.

Is there anything new tactically or in terms of technology in 2024 that you’re particularly excited about? 

We haven’t been at a place where we can push into awareness-driving efforts, so partners, influencers and awareness channels. That’s certainly not a new tactic, but it’s something that we haven’t been as invested in. For the launch of the Tree Glider, we partnered with Melissa Wood-Tepperberg. I don’t believe she partners with brands she doesn’t truly believe in because her credibility is at stake. 

We have a pretty exceptional CRM program that we own [called C360]. It’s the ability to have almost too clear of a picture. More data is not necessarily better. Just recently, we brought in new team members that have helped us build a solid strategy around how to unlock that, how to prioritize what we do with it. They are thinking about how to use personalized marketing and CRM in a much stronger way that helps us put the right products in front of customers at the right time. 

Correction: A prior version of this story misstated the Net Promoter Score for Allbirds. The story has been updated with the correct number. It has also been updated with additional details describing Allbirds’ partnership with Adidas.

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Polo Ralph Lauren makes Ad Awareness gains during Paris Olympics 2024

Official kit supplier of the US Olympics team – Polo Ralph Lauren – has reaped the rewards of its association with the Paris Olympics 2024 table toppers, YouGov BrandIndex data shows.

The brand’s Ad Awareness score, which reflects the percentage of an audience who say they have watched an advert for a brand in the past two weeks, among US Olympics fans rose from a low of 5.5 before the start of the Olympics on July 22 to a high of 14.8 in the closing stages of the Games on August 7.

Given the massive fan following of the Olympics in the US, it is natural that the benefits of this uptick were registered among the overall American population too. During the same period, Ad Awareness scores among all Americans rose from 6.6 to 10.

The adverts may have also sparked conversations around the brand, with WOM Exposure – a metric which measures the share of an audience talking about a brand – rising from a low of 3.4 on July 23 to 10.2 on the last day of the quadrennial event, August 11. Scores among the overall US population also rose appreciably – from 5.9 to 8.5.

Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Polo Ralph Lauren’s Ad Awareness score is based on the question: Which of the following brands have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks? and delivered as a percentage. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 307 US Olympics fans between July-August 2024. Figures are based on a 2-week moving average.

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More From Forbes

Want to build a celebrity brand authenticity is key.

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Ruchi Desai is a builder and proven zero-to-one founder who co-founded EIGHT, a light beer brand, with NFL Hall of Famer Troy Aikman.

Today’s consumer is spoiled for choice—the pace of innovation has never been faster. Savvy consumers can choose from different styles of beer, seltzers, ready-to-drink options, liquor or malt-based beverages as well as organic, low-alcohol or no-alcohol, and even low- or no-carbonation. And that’s in just one category!

It’s never been more challenging or imperative for brands to cut through the clutter. Retailers, eager to meet consumer demands for variety and novelty, have raised the hurdles brands must clear to maintain shelf space.

It’s no surprise then that a new celebrity brand seems to launch every day. Celebrities and influencers, with their built-in communities and reach, can boost awareness almost overnight. But that hype alone cannot build a sustainable brand.

Celebrity Brands: How Authenticity Influences Receptivity

The fundamentals of brand building haven’t changed. Brands need to have a clear differentiator that offers unique value to consumers. But consumers have gotten much smarter with ever more access to information. Gen Z has grown up on social, interacting digitally with each other and brands, as well as curating their own personal brands. As a result, they are incredibly discerning with finely tuned authenticity radars.

When a celebrity endorses or launches a product, it becomes an extension of their brand , and consumers expect the two to align. If not, they are quick to call out the discrepancy. For example, when megastar Jennifer Lopez launched her spirits line, Delola, fans pointed out she had previously highlighted her abstention from alcohol. The backlash forced Lopez to explain that she does enjoy an occasional cocktail.

On the other hand, influencer and entrepreneur Emma Chamberlain recounted her obsession with coffee on a panel at this year’s Beverage Forum, a leading industry event. Her followers watched her drink large quantities of coffee and teenagers—themselves new to the category—came to her for advice and recommendations. She translated that trust and credibility into Chamberlain Coffee, which Forbes estimates (paywall) doubled revenue in 2023 to $20 million.

Three Tips For Building Authentic Celebrity Brands

At EIGHT, we partnered with NFL Hall of Famer and three-time Super Bowl Champion Troy Aikman to create a light beer brand. During the pandemic, Aikman leveled up his already healthy lifestyle by eating whole, organic foods, working out more intensely and incorporating meditation, cold-plunges and time in the sauna into his daily regimen. He still wanted to enjoy an occasional beer with family and friends, but couldn’t find one that fit his clean, active lifestyle. That led him to co-found EIGHT.

This venture has been successful, but there are a few crucial guidelines for anyone looking to build an enduring celebrity brand:

1. Ensure the celebrity’s story organically supports their reason for creating the product.

The idea for this beer was truly born out of Aikman's desire to find a product that served his needs. What’s more, Aikman interned for a beer distributor in Oklahoma before transferring to UCLA. He has a long history with beer and an authentic motivation to brew a better product.

It's important for brands to highlight such backstories, so consumers understand the connection. Casamigos did this beautifully. The tequila brand's story is rooted in late-night conversations between its two most prominent founders, Rande Gerber and George Clooney. You can still find trucks with a picture of George and Rande on their motorcycles in the middle of an agave field. The pair have also created ads highlighting their friendship.

Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston created this same magic with Dos Hombres. Their impetus for starting the mezcal brand was simply that they missed each other . After years of working side by side on the set of "Breaking Bad," they yearned for a new project to collaborate on. You can still find the pair popping up at bars, serving Dos Hombres and having a great time.

All of these examples show that while not everything has to be about convincing drinkers of the authenticity of the celebrity’s connection to the product and brand, drinkers should be able to find proof points across an array of media to support the story.

2. Align the brand’s values with the celebrity’s own brand and values.

You also need to identify the celebrity and brand’s respective values and determine if they match. Be honest with yourself. Neither can exist in a vacuum. If there are any irreconcilable discrepancies, then either the brand’s values need to be molded more closely to the celebrity or you need to find a different celebrity.

3. Build and engage both the celebrity and the product’s communities.

We've found that a high level of brand alignment and commitment drives connection with partners and consumers while validating the brand’s mission. With EIGHT, Aikman was actively involved in the formulation of the product and still remains close to the day-to-day business.

Beyond Celebrity Appeal: How Brands Can Highlight Authenticity

The impact of connection and authenticity cannot be understated, even outside the celebrity arena. For example, black-owned breweries are outperforming the segment and total beer. Kevin Asato, executive director of the National Black Brewers’ Association, credits these breweries’ success to an unwavering emphasis on their authentic self and connection to the community.

UK-based Thatcher’s Cider is working to have a net zero environmental impact by 2030 by installing thousands of solar panels, investing in technology to recapture carbon dioxide let off in production, planting more than 15,000 trees and investing in lighter aluminum cans. The brand is not just supporting environmental causes, it is truly walking the walk—and consumers are taking note.

Whether it’s a celebrity founder, community connection or an investment in sustainability, brands must fully embody who they are. These values need to be consistent across the entire organization and reflected in how they treat employees and partners, what causes they show up for and how they operate daily. When there’s a mismatch or only surface-level commitment, even highly successful, coveted brands can falter.

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WK Kellogg to close Omaha plant, downsize in Memphis as it shifts production to newer facilities

Lellogg’s Omaha manufacturing plant is shown Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. Kellogg’s announced on Tuesday it would be closing the Omaha manufacturing plant by end of 2026. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via AP)

Employees leave the Kellogg’s Omaha manufacturing plant, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. Kellogg’s announced on Tuesday it would be closing it’s Omaha manufacturing plant by end of 2026. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via AP)

A look at Kellogg’s Omaha manufacturing plant, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via AP)

Employees leave the Kellogg’s Omaha manufacturing plant, on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Omaha, Neb. (Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald via AP)

FILE - Striking Kellogg’s workers stand outside the company’s cereal plant in Omaha, Neb., on Dec. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/ Josh Funk, File)

Kellogg’s Special K cereal is displayed at a Costco Warehouse in Cranberry, Pa., on Jan. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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WK Kellogg Co. is closing one U.S. cereal plant and downsizing another as part of a plan to consolidate its operations in newer facilities.

The company said Tuesday it will close its Omaha, Nebraska, plant by the end of 2026. It also plans to scale back production at its plant in Memphis, Tennessee, starting next year.

WK Kellogg said it will increase production and invest in new infrastructure, equipment and technology at its plants in Battle Creek, Michigan; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Belleville, Ontario. The company said it plans to invest $390 million in new technology and infrastructure and will incur a one-time charge of $110 million in restructuring costs.

Battle Creek-based WK Kellogg said the plan will result in a net loss of 550 jobs, a number that includes hirings at the plants that will increase production. The company didn’t immediately respond when asked Tuesday how many workers would lose their jobs in Omaha and Memphis.

In a statement, Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert said she didn’t learn of the planned closure until Tuesday morning.

“I’m certainly disappointed that Kellogg’s would make such a significant announcement this way,” Stothert said. “After more than 75 years in Omaha, Kellogg’s will leave a big void.”

WK Kellogg’s Omaha plant was the epicenter of a strike against the company in 2021, when workers walked off the job for two months to protest a two-tier wage structure and other issues. At one point, Kellogg sued its union , saying striking workers were blocking entrances to the Omaha plant.

The strike ended in late 2021 when the company agreed to raises and other benefits.

The reorganization comes amid a decline in U.S. demand for cereal. Cereal sales boomed during the pandemic, when families were home and eating breakfast together. But they have struggled since then. Unit sales of cereal have fallen 4.2% over the last year and fell 3.6% the year before that, according to Nielsen IQ, a market researcher.

WK Kellogg Co. was formed last year when its former parent the Kellogg Co. — which was founded in 1906 — split into two companies. WK Kellogg retained the cereal business, including brands like Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, Rice Krispies and Raisin Bran. Kellanova, based in Chicago, houses many of the company’s best-sellers, including Pop-Tarts, Pringles, Eggo waffles and Cheez-Its.

WK Kellogg said Tuesday its net sales fell 4% to $672 million in the April-June period. The company got some boost from higher pricing and growing sales of premium products like Special K Zero. But its overall sales volumes fell by 4.8%, and the company said it felt some pressure from store-brand cereals as customers sought better value.

WK Kellogg shares dropped more than 7% Tuesday.