In today’s competitive market, capturing attention is no easy feat. Businesses often focus heavily on ads and promotions, aiming for quick sales. But here's the truth: brand awareness isn't a separate step—it’s an ongoing process that works hand-in-hand with your marketing efforts.
When people recognize your brand and associate it with your products or values, they’re more likely to trust and buy from you. Building brand awareness isn't just about being known; it’s about creating a connection that keeps your business top-of-mind for consumers.
In this article, we’ll explore simple yet effective strategies to build brand awareness seamlessly alongside your marketing efforts, ensuring long-term growth and stronger customer relationships.
Read on to learn simple strategies to build strong brand awareness and help your business succeed.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the level of familiarity and recognition that your audience has with your brand. It’s not just about people recognizing your logo or name; it’s about how well they understand what your brand offers, the values it stands for, and the emotions it evokes.
True awareness of your brand goes deeper than mere recognition. It means that people can recall your brand’s purpose, its reputation, and how they feel about it. A strong brand awareness helps your business become top-of-mind when customers are ready to make a choice, making them more likely to choose you over competitors.
Types of brand awareness
Now that we understand what brand awareness is and why it matters, let’s dive into the different types of brand awareness.
1. Brand recognition
Brand recognition is the first level of brand awareness. It’s when people can identify your brand when they see specific visual or auditory cues, like your logo, name, slogan, packaging, or color palette.
This type of awareness happens when people see your brand’s elements and immediately recognize that it’s yours, even if they don’t know all the details of what you offer.
Interesting fact: A unique color palette can increase brand recognition by up to 80%, making it easier for people to remember your brand when they see those colors.
2. Brand recall
Brand recall is the ability of consumers to remember a brand when prompted with a specific product category or need. It's a measure of how well a brand is embedded in the minds of consumers, such that when they think of a particular product type, they automatically think of that brand. For example, when someone thinks of "soda," brands like Coca-Cola or Pepsi might come to mind due to strong brand recall.
This strong association often ties your brand to a specific product category, creating a mental link that keeps you top-of-mind.
For instance, if someone thinks of “pizza,” certain brands like Domino’s, Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s might instantly come to mind. That’s brand recall at work—people can remember who you are and what you offer, without needing to see your brand.
3. Top of mind
Top-of-mind awareness is the highest level of brand awareness. It’s when people think of your brand as the only option in its category. When customers need a product or service in your category, your brand is the first (or only) one they recall. This type of awareness makes your brand almost synonymous with the product.
For example, when people say, “I’ll get a Xerox of that,” they mean they’ll make a photocopy—even if it’s not on a Xerox machine. In this stage, your brand is so closely associated with a product category that it becomes part of everyday language.
What are the benefits of brand awareness?
Brand awareness helps in more ways than just making people remember your brand. Here are some of the benefits of brand awareness:
1. Helps gain the audience’s trust
People are more likely to trust and buy from known brands than unknown ones. Brand awareness helps people know your brand, what you do, and your reputation. And when people can see who you are, they are likely to trust your brand.
That's why influencer marketing has become so successful in increasing brand awareness and trust. People hear about your brand through a person they trust or admire, so they trust your brand.
2. Builds brand loyalty
Adding to the previous point, when people start to trust your brand and buy from you, it also stimulates brand loyalty. They know you, they trust you, they buy from you, they like you and keep buying from you in the future.
3. Makes marketing easy
Based on the previous two benefits, people can buy from the brand because they know them and trust them. It means that companies don't have to actively market to them to get them to buy from the brand. It happens even without marketing.
4. Expands brand association
Brand awareness helps your brand be the thing people connect with for a particular need or purpose. For example, when someone wants to find some information online, they immediately search on Google. It means that brand awareness can help your target audience remember you when they have a need you offer.
5. Increases brand value
Last but not the least, brand awareness helps you increase your brand value. Brand value is your brand's worth, which depends on how your customer perceives your brand and their experience with the brand. And if people have a positive perception and experience, it increases the brand value. Similarly, negative perception decreases the brand value.
Ok, that's all well and good. But how does it affect the brand? The thing is that when brands have higher brand value, it simultaneously increases their stock prices, social impact, and ability to expand. And vice versa for negative brand value.
How to increase brand awareness?
After reading the benefits, you are excited and want to increase your brand awareness. Here are the strategies you can use to increase your brand awareness.
1. Create thought leadership content
You can create content in blog posts, guest posts, social media, email newsletters, YouTube videos, podcast episodes, etc. The format depends on what your brand does and what type of content your target audience consumes.
When you create content focused on your niche or topic, it shows people and search engines like Google that you are a thought leader. So, they'll start to trust what you have to say and share it with people who might find your content useful, thus improving your organic reach.
More reach will inevitably lead to increased brand awareness and demand generation for your product or service.
If constantly creating content and putting it out there seems like a chore, well, because it is. But there is a way to make one content channel easier for you through email automation.
And you can't automate the content in the emails. But you can create an automated journey and change out what email you want to send to your audience. This way, you only have to create the content and not create a whole journey from scratch every time.
We have recently updated our email journey builder to help make journey creation easier for people; you can check it out by signing up. But if you want further assistance, you can book a demo to find out exactly how the new journey builder works and how you can optimize it to its full potential.
2. Advertise everywhere
Studies show that it typically takes 5-7 impressions for consumers to start recognizing and remembering a brand. To build social media presence and trust, you need to ensure your presence is felt consistently across various platforms. The key is not just being visible, but being visible at the right moments and places.
The choice of advertising channels should be tailored to where your target audience spends most of their time and engages with content. Consider utilizing a mix of platforms such as Google search ads, social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), YouTube ads, and display banner ads. Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, retargeting ads, and TV spots can also amplify your reach and keep your brand top of mind.
3. Use co-marketing
You can partner with your niche or product brands but not competitors. This will create awareness amongst your audiences and get some benefits to your existing audience like discounts, free trials, etc.
Here's how Mailmodo partnered with Volopay and how it helped our audience.
We’re excited to announce our partnership with @volopay, a unified platform designed to streamline workflows and simplify spending.
Currently, Volopay is offering its service at special offers to all the @mailmodo subscribers.
4. Rebranding
Sometimes your brand might be really old, so all the brand elements like the logo, typography, colors, etc., might be a bit outdated. Or, you might have created your branding elements as a small business owner.
This is why it will greatly benefit your brand to have a fresh makeover. Hire a designer to create a better, more iconic logo or brand color palette.
This is what Airtel's revamped logo was able to do for the brand.
Airtel not only rebranded itself in terms of a new logo, but the business also relaunched with new positioning, voice, strategy, etc. It helped them become a well-known telecommunications service company and increase their brand awareness.
5. Use a mascot
Now, a mascot can be an actual human face of the brand or a fictitious character. And we do know that it's not suitable for everyone, so only try this out if it's suitable for your brand and if you have the budget for it.
This strategy works because our brains can remember people, characters, or animals better than a logo. That's just human nature, so let's leverage that.
Here are some examples of brands that use mascots to get better brand awareness:
Coco Pops: The Coco Pops monkey brings a playful, energetic vibe that instantly connects with kids and parents, making the cereal memorable.
Source: Campaign
Pillsbury: The Pillsbury Doughboy, with his iconic giggle, creates a warm, nostalgic association with baking and family moments.
Source: Mondoweiss
Duolingo: The Duolingo owl is not just a mascot but a friendly reminder (sometimes hilariously persistent) to stay consistent with language learning.
Source: TechCrunch
When you look at the mascots, you can immediately remember the brands, what they do, and even a certain memory associated with the brand or product. That's how powerful mascots are for brand awareness.
6. Offer free trials
This is a great strategy for most service-based brands, especially if your service plans are expensive. Most people are hesitant to buy something expensive if they are unsure if it's worth the investment. So, by giving them a free trial, you allow them to check out your brand and product first. This helps build trust and increase awareness as they'll recommend it to other people if they feel pleased with the free trial.
7. Sponsor events
This is a good option for bigger brands with a high budget. You can sponsor an event, games, award shows, etc. Your logo will be placed at several locations at the event and during the event's promotion. When people see your brand at such places, it passively gets registered in their brains. And they will be able to remember your brand when they come across it again.
8. Use word of mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful strategies for boosting brand awareness and building trust. People trust personal recommendations over ads, making WOM an essential tool for gaining loyal customers. Tactics like referrals and influencer marketing can effectively increase brand awareness and market share, even without massive advertising campaigns.
By encouraging satisfied customers to share their experiences, you strengthen brand equity and expand your reach organically. This approach not only drives new customers but also supports long-term success by leveraging the power of brand awareness throughout the customer journey.
9. Offer freebies
One of the classic ways to increase brand awareness is by providing free stuff. People take it and remember who provided it and what they do. Now, what type of freebie is up to you. It can be frivolous stuff like keychains, posters, baseball hats, etc., just to put your branding out there. Or meaningful stuff like eBooks, reports, whitepapers, etc., that provide value to your audience.
At Mailmodo, we generated awareness for our brand by creating freebies like our Email QA checklist and State of Email eBook to help people with email marketing and establish ourselves as thought leaders in the field.
Get this pre-send checklist to hit send with confidence
An interactive checklist to send error-free emails
Another thing you can do under this category is host contests and giveaways on social media, as those posts usually tend to go viral. So, you can reach a bigger audience organically and increase awareness.
Now, let me clarify that these are not the only ways to create brand awareness; there are more. So, read more articles and try different ideas to increase your brand awareness.
10. Collaborate with influencers
Partner with influencers who align with your brand values and have an engaged following. Even micro-influencers can help you reach a highly targeted audience. Influencers can create authentic content that resonates with their followers, providing a personal touch to your brand.
How to measure brand awareness?
You can't measure brand awareness in traditional means where you get solid numbers. But you can measure activities and metrics to gauge if it's going in the right direction. Here are some ways you can measure:
1. Website analytics
The number of direct traffic you have gotten can be a great way to determine how many people have visited your website directly by entering the URL themselves. This shows how many people remember you and have actively searched your website.
You can use tools like Ahrefs or Google Analytics to analyze the search volume for your keyword. This shows how many people are searching for the name of your brand. And you can keep monitoring it over a period to see how much your brand awareness increases.
2. Social media reach and engagement
When you're sharing content across social media or other platforms, it's crucial to track certain metrics to evaluate how effectively you're boosting brand awareness. These metrics provide insights into the reach and resonance of your content, helping you understand your brand's visibility and the level of interaction it generates. Key metrics to monitor include:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Impressions | Total number of times your content is displayed. |
| Reach | Unique number of people who have seen your content. |
| Sessions | Total visits to your content or website. |
| Likes | Number of positive reactions to your content. |
| Follows | Number of users who follow your profile after viewing content. |
| Shares | Times users share your content with their networks. |
| Comments | Number of comments on your posts, showing audience engagement. |
| Saves | Times users save your posts for future reference. |
| Clicks | Number of clicks on links within your content. |
3. Social listening
Social listening is when you look at how people talk about your brand online, including reviews, comments, mentions, hashtags, etc. It'll show you how people truly feel about your brand. You can use tools online like Brand24 to keep tabs on social media, news, websites, publications, etc., to find out who is talking about you.
4. Ask people how they came to know about you
You can ask people how they came to know about you when they first joined or became a customer. Or you can also survey through social media, email, or telephone and ask people (existing customers or random people) how they came to know about your brand.
And when conducting surveys through emails, you will usually have to direct them to a different website which can cause friction and lead to people not filling out the survey.
We can help you with that. With Mailmodo, you can send surveys that people can fill within the email itself.
Check out our Interactive feedback form templates
This reduces friction, so you'll get more people to answer your survey. And, if you want some guidance on how to create it, book a demo, and we'll show you how it works.
Make people aware
Hopefully, you understand how crucial it is to increase your brand awareness before focusing on getting sales. Get going and work on increasing awareness with the strategies mentioned above.
After creating some awareness, it's time to move to the next level, attracting leads. Check out our guide on top of the funnel to know more about how you can attract leads with top-of-the-funnel content.
