The Easiest Way To Build Brand Awareness Today

Whether you’re an Apple person, a Nike person, or a Whole Foods person, no one finds it weird when you associate your personality with a brand. 

Essentially, you are going around promoting these companies’ products and services without any incentive at all. And that is the power of brand awareness. 

When you can embed your business into your consumers’ lifestyles and purchasing habits, then you will have a huge edge. 

We’ve helped companies boost their brand awareness by reaching hundreds of thousands of people with digital marketing. 

And in this blog, we’ll show you a few key tips on how we do it.

We’re going to cover the importance of brand awareness in 2022 and how to build better brand awareness for your business.

With 2020 coming to an end, we want to give you some time-tested strategies for generating brand awareness in 2022.

And while it seems obvious, some of you may not know exactly what brand awareness is. 

So let us quickly describe it for you.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand.

In other words, it represents how well people recognize and remember you.

Companies with huge brand awareness are often referred to as trendy, popular, or buzzworthy. 

Brand awareness is key, especially for early-stage companies who have not quite developed a customer base.

In fact, we would argue that this is the first thing you need to focus on after you have solidified your business idea.

You could have the best idea in the world, but it really wouldn’t matter if no one ever knew about it.

That’s exactly why we are here to help you get the word out about how awesome your product or service is! 

And by the end of this blog, you should have some clarity on what you can start doing immediately to improve your brand awareness.

That said, let’s go ahead and dive in with several ways you can improve your brand awareness.

How To Build Brand Awareness

Step #1 – Determine Your Path (organic or paid) 

When you are starting with brand awareness, you need to determine if you want to do it organically or with paid advertising.

The path you choose largely depends on your business and your financial situation.

And it’s important that you choose a path so that you know what it is you need to focus on the most.

If you are going the organic route, that means that you are trying to create brand awareness without spending a lot of money.

And most small businesses love not having to spend money if they can avoid it.

But you also need to consider the con of organic marketing which is speed.

In other words, it can take you a long time to start seeing results strictly from organic marketing.

But also consider that the hardest path can also be the best path.

Because taking the easy way is way more attractive for the majority of people, which means more competition.

This means paid advertising is also okay.

The pro of paid advertising is speed.

You can literally set up an advertising campaign in one day if you are really skilled at what you’re doing.

With a PPC campaign, you can reach millions and even billions of people.

But you would probably think the con is cost, right?

Because you have to spend thousands and even millions of dollars to reach those people.

Yes. That is true.

Okay, here’s a quick recap. 

Organic is free but it’s slow and paid is costly but it’s fast.

Now as you understand that, it’s time to start thinking about your business.

Now, we can’t cover every business’ case here in this blog because everyone’s brand is a little bit different.

But here’s our general rule of thumb:

If you have products and services where the customers make more impulsive buying decisions, then speed or paid search advertising may be best for you.

An example of an impulsive buying decision maybe something like a customer deciding to go to an event.

Or maybe get some flowers on Valentine’s Day or going to the local bakery for some delicious cookies.

On the other hand, if your products and services are a little bit more complex where the customers have to do a little research to make a decision…

…then free or organic marketing may be best for you.

An example of a more complex buying decision would be getting:

• a new computer,
• or buying comfortable shoes,
• or getting professional services done like a cleaning company

You can try to do both of these things at once.

In fact, we encourage it and have built our services so that we can help business owners utilize both organic and paid marketing. 

However, if you’re doing it on your own, then it may be very costly for you. 

And that’s why we recommend focusing on one area first. 

Once you’ve chosen your path or paths, then you’re ready to move on to step number two, which is to develop content.

Step #2 – Develop Content 

You can’t create brand awareness if nobody knows anything about you, right?

The clear first step is to start creating content and we’re going to look at how you can do this with paid and organic advertising.

With paid advertising, it’s pretty easy.

What you will want to do is to create 1-2 really good and valuable lead magnets.

What exactly is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is something valuable that you are offering to a stranger, completely free.

The reason why it is called a lead magnet is that in order for the stranger to get that valuable thing that you are offering, they must give you their contact information.

The key is to create a win-win scenario where the person receiving the lead magnet is happy.

And you are happy because you just got the information of a potential customer.

Therefore, you need to offer something valuable that is also related to your core business products and services.

Then BANG! You have the start of a brand new relationship!

Why are lead magnets so important for paid advertising? 

On most advertising platforms, you are paying for everybody that you reach and sometimes the people who click.

The smart way to maximize your advertising is to capture that person so that you can move them down the funnel past brand awareness.

What are some examples of a lead magnet?

Chances are you have been the consumer of a lead magnet in the past.

If you’ve had to give your contact information before getting a quote, then that’s an example of a lead magnet.

Or if someone has offered you a free tour but before you go on it you have to give out your contact information, then that’s an example of a lead magnet.

If you’ve taken a quiz and you had to put in your information before seeing the results, then that’s a lead magnet. 

Any site that requires you to sign up before experiencing a free version or trial is a lead magnet.

Now switching gears to organic content development. 

Organic Content Development

For this, you need to follow the same principles that you would as paid content, except you will give it away without requesting contact information immediately.

Basically, you want to create content that is valuable and relevant to the audience you want. 

For example, this blog you’re reading is an example of organic marketing. 

When people create podcasts or make television appearances, or make social media posts, those are all examples of organic marketing.

The key is to make it as relevant as possible while still providing an extreme amount of value to the people who are consuming it.

So if you are a comedian for example, then creating memes or jokes on social media is a proven way to get more brand awareness for yourself.

In fact, the awesome thing about organic marketing is that if you create something valuable enough, then it has the potential to go viral.

Now, while this is extremely rare, it is definitely possible and we’ve worked with clients who have seen this happen. 

You’re going to be creating so much valuable content, people will be able to find you easier online.

Which will have a compounding effect, therefore, building very stable brand awareness.

Our biggest recommendation for organic marketing is to create a few pieces of content pillars. 

These are usually huge pieces of content like a book or a seminar that can be broken into very small pieces of content that provide value to an audience.

For example, if you have a book that is 12 chapters long. Then you could simply take quotes from the book and create social media posts.

Or if you speak at a lot of events, then you could record it and take clips for YouTube.

Or maybe you can simply create a blog on a topic with depth and unpack everything you know about the subject.

Step #3 – Promote Your Content

The last step for building brand awareness is to promote the content you’ve created.

When it comes to paid advertising, we know that you’re going to need to spend some money to reach your audience.

But here’s the thing, finding the right audience can take time.

So, that means for the first few months, you may be running different experiments to test:

• the age,
• the genders,
• the locations,
• and interests of who you suspect your audience to be

There are no shortcuts to this.

In fact, the audiences that seem to be the most straightforward are often the ones that are highly competitive.

Again, this will depend largely on your business and your financial situation.

Our biggest takeaway here for everyone is to realize that even though paid advertising has speed, you still need to find a sweet spot.

Or with organic marketing, the game is all about volume and activity.

Do you want to create as much valuable and relevant content that you possibly can or publish it as fast as you can?

The more that you are putting your content out, the more likely you are to reach more people.

Some brands like Fashion Nova post more than 8 times a day on places like Instagram.

And brands like HubSpot publish long-form written content more than 10 times a day on places like their blog. 

The more you can produce, the better.

It is quantity over quality and you have to remember perfection is the enemy of progress, so you need to make moves as soon as possible.

Now, don’t let this intimidate you.

We still advise that you start where you can.

But make sure you’re not holding back because you could lose more opportunities.

In addition to publishing, organic marketing is also about your activity.

Make sure that you are communicating with your fans in your comments and messages.

Try to expand your reach with hashtags or other organic tools for that platform.

Also, if you have time, then try to post in groups or comment on other influencers’ pages.

The more you can engage with the audience or community that you want to tap into, the more likely you are to be noticed by that audience and receive more awareness.

Conclusion

Generating more brand awareness for your business doesn’t have to be difficult if you follow these tips.

There are truly tons of ways you can gain visibility whether you use paid or organic advertising methods.

As long as you remain consistent with the methods you use, you will help your brand reach your customers wherever they are.

If you found this blog helpful or maybe need more insight on how to really get started with crafting the best content for your business, you’ve come to the right place!

Our team is dedicated and ready to help! Whatever marketing solutions your business needs, we have the tools to help when you call.

Contact us here or talk to an expert now at (404) 596-7925.