Brand Awareness
August 6, 2024
Brand awareness refers to the degree of familiarity consumers have with a brand’s product or service. It’s what makes your brand the first choice among potential customers when they are making a purchase decision.
Brand awareness is critical to the long-term survival and success of any business.
Products or services that lack brand awareness are often relegated to marketplace obscurity, while those with strong brand awareness often see their brand names being used to describe an activity or a category of products or services. It’s brand awareness at play when consumers say they’re going to ‘Xerox’ a document, ‘FedEx’ a parcel, or ‘Uber’ to the airport.
It’s also important to distinguish between two related concepts: brand awareness and brand recognition.
Brand recognition is the ability among consumers to identify your brand, usually based on visual or auditory cues. Think of Nike’s the Swoosh, McDonald’s golden arches, or Intel’s quintessential four-note bong.
Brand awareness, on the other hand, is a relatively deeper concept. It’s awareness not just of a brand’s products or services but also its unique selling propositions (USP), values, and reputation.
In this article, we’ll explore what makes brand awareness so powerful and show you how to build the perfect strategy.
Brand awareness delivers tangible results that drive business growth. Here’s how:
A well-recognized brand makes your marketing efforts far more effective.
Brand awareness increases relatability and helps companies foster stronger relationships with their audiences. According to a study by Marq, 68% report that brand consistency contributed from 10% to more than 20% of their revenue increase.
Your marketing messages resonate more when people already know and trust your brand.
Trust is arguably the most important facet of brand awareness. In recent years, brand trust has redefined relationships with customers.
According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, 71% of all consumers and 79% of Gen Z say it is more important to trust the brands they buy or use today than it was in the past. So much so that U.S. consumers are willing to pay more for brands they trust. Brand trust is the deciding factor that would lead 46% to buy the higher-priced option between two similar products. 
Source: Salsify
Brand awareness is the gateway to building credibility and reliability, leading to more trusting consumers.
Brand awareness is about more than attracting new customers. It's about keeping the ones you have and keeping them for long. A Harvard Business Review survey found that customers who trust a brand are 88% more likely to buy again.
Fred Reichheld, a leading researcher on loyalty marketing, notes that return customers tend to:
Brands that people are aware of are often perceived as more reliable. When a brand reinforces this sense of reliability, it increases customer loyalty and repeat business.
Strong brand awareness positions you as a leader in your industry. Whenever they need an online search, most people think of Google. That is the power of brand awareness.
Industry leadership and its link to brand awareness is not just about appearances either. Research by Harvard Business Review shows that trusted brands outperform their peers by up to 400% in terms of total market value.
Customers who think of your business as an industry leader are more likely to choose your products over the competition. Think about it — when you have to purchase a new tool, are there certain brands that come to mind to solve specific needs?
5. Boosts Brand Equity
Brand awareness is the foundation of brand equity —- the overall value of your brand. Think of brand equity as the difference between the value of a product with and without the brand name attached to it.
High brand awareness contributes to higher brand equity, allowing you to charge premium prices solely because of your brand name.
Another benefit is that strong brand equity leads to loyal consumers who are seven times as likely to forgive a company’s missteps and almost nine times as likely to try new offerings from the same company.
Now that we understand the ‘why’ behind brand awareness, let's delve into the ‘how.’
Here are the three essential elements of a successful brand awareness campaign:
You need to carve a niche and position your brand as the best solution to a consumer problem or the best answer to a consumer desire.
What are your core values? What unique problem do you solve?
Answer these questions to develop a compelling brand narrative that resonates with your target audience and makes you pop out from the competition.
Source: Exit Five
Your brand messaging needs to be communicated clearly and consistently across all touchpoints, both online and offline.
Your brand's visual elements —- logo, color palette, typography —- are the face of your brand.
They should be aesthetically pleasing and embody your brand's personality and values.
A well-designed visual identity instantly makes your brand recognizable and creates a lasting impression on your audience.
Mastering your website and social media channels is a prerequisite for brands competing in today’s attention economy.
Make sure to also explore other opportunities to showcase your brand, depending on where your audience is.
That could include:
By diversifying your brand's touchpoints, you increase the likelihood of reaching and engaging with your target audience.
Encourage them to share your brand’s content on their personal social networks. Tools like GaggleAMP can help streamline this process, allowing you to amplify your brand's reach through the collective voice of your employees.
Your brand must be willing to adapt and innovate to stay relevant. To that end, it’s important to:
Being adaptable is much easier when you have a thriving community around your brand. They can provide relevant feedback on where they want you to go and how they feel about your previous actions.
Investing in building a strong community leads to loyalty that goes beyond repeat purchases and spills into creating active brand ambassadors.
Encourage user-generated content, authentically engage in conversations, and show that you care!
Let’s now get into the weeds of developing your brand awareness strategy. Here are the six main components you need to focus on:
Think of your brand as a person. Does its personality shine through in everything it does?
Once you develop your brand image it needs to be consistent. From your website design to your social media posts, every touchpoint should reflect a consistent, unique identity.
65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences, but 61% of customers say most companies treat them as a number.
The more you understand your target audience, the better you can tailor your message to resonate with them. Think about who you are talking to and what makes them tick.
Research by McKinsey found that companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue!
Getting your brand’s tone of voice right can create a long-lasting impression on your target audience.
Consider the language-learning app Duolingo, which has a reputation for being silly, fun, and consistently aware of running trends. This is further supported by its mascot Duo’s quirky antics.
This is just an example and your brand doesn’t have to be playful in the same way. Your target audience might prefer something more serious and professional or motivational and inspiring.
You can discover your ideal brand voice by defining and studying your buyer personas.
Whatever it is, your brand's tone of voice needs to be consistent —- and if it’s not working out, don’t be afraid to make adjustments!
A good unique selling point (USP) focuses on a specific benefit you offer that your competitors don't.
Take Mailchimp, for instance.
In the crowded email marketing space, Mailchimp carved a niche for itself by offering a user-friendly platform with beautiful templates specifically designed for small businesses.
Their USP? ‘Drag-and-drop email marketing for everyone.’
It's clear, concise, and speaks directly to the pain points of the company’s target audience —- small businesses that need an easy and effective way to create email campaigns.
When people search for solutions you offer, you want to be at the top of the search results. This can be tough, with thousands of competing businesses all vying for the same first-page real estate.
Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and high-quality content marketing to increase your visibility and attract organic traffic.
Don't just post for the sake of posting. Create content that adds value, sparks conversations, and encourages engagement.
A study by Kantar examined 235 global campaigns from 110 different brands, using proprietary data from campaign effectiveness polls. It found that brands that communicate using human language —- tapping into people’s emotions and avoiding more functional terms —- perform better on brand awareness KPIs.
But remember, it’s not just your brand’s voice that counts on social media.
What your customers and employees are saying is just as important. According to Nielsen, 88% of consumers said that they trusted recommendations from people they know, above all other forms of marketing messaging. 
Social media is the gateway to tap into the conversations around your brand and its products.
Let’s get into the top tactics for raising your brand awareness.
People connect with stories on an emotional level.
Your message needs to be wrapped into a narrative that simplifies information and transports people into your shoes —- your origins, mission, challenges, and successes.
In the digital age, everyone is taking on a constant barrage of online visuals. Only brands that invest in high-quality and smart visual content stand out.
According to a survey by Wzyowl, 82% of people have been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a video. Visual content also includes logos, product shots, infographics, and shareable social media graphics.
Posting content consistently is important, but so is engaging with your target audience!
Respond to comments, ask questions, and participate in relevant trends. Your audience wants you to listen and care about their opinions.
This refers to content that your target audience creates or shares about your brand, without being paid to do so. UGC has become among the most effective brand awareness strategies due to its perceived authenticity.
You can encourage UGC by rewarding users who post testimonials, reviews, and related content about your products. Other strategies to elicit UGC include contests, giveaways, and challenges.
5. Employee Advocacy
When employees become brand advocates, they share company content on their social media, participate in industry events, and spread the word to their friends and family.
These trusted recommendations build brand awareness that sticks.
Platforms like GaggleAMP help you tap into the full potential of employee advocacy. They streamline, amplify, and track your employee advocacy programs.
When everyone’s doing the basics, you need to be one step ahead. Here are a few advanced brand awareness strategies worth looking into:
Artificial intelligence can help forge genuine bonds with your customers through more precise targeting than ever before.
AI-powered chatbots can provide instant customer support, while recommendation engines can suggest products tailored to individual preferences.
Platforms like GaggleAMP have integrated AI to deliver employee advocacy experiences that resonate rather than replicate. Its AI capabilities include paraphrasing content for authentic employee sharing, diversified recommendations, and content amplification.
According to Slideshare, 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand that offers personalized experiences.
One-size-fits-all marketing doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to speak in your target audience’s language and understand their world. Deep data insights can help provide relevant recommendations and options for individual customers.
As we step into the future, more brands are going to be using virtual reality and augmented reality to transport customers into their brand universes.
The possibilities are endless —- virtual factory tours, ‘try on’ products from the comfort of their homes, and gamified shopping experiences.
Good decisions require good data, so you need to measure the right brand awareness KPIs.
Many of the biggest businesses today leverage brand awareness to be where they are. Their stories provide valuable insights for your brand—-no matter what stage you’re at.
HubSpot, a leading provider of inbound marketing software, makes big strides using inbound marketing. It consistently focuses on content marketing to build a well-recognized, authoritative brand.
Salesforce, a global leader in CRM solutions, uses a multi-faceted marketing strategy to build long-lasting brand awareness and market its platform to diverse industries.
Your brand awareness efforts are incomplete without the right tools to streamline your efforts and maximize your impact.
These are a few platforms that can help take your brand to the next level:
GaggleAMP is a leading employee advocacy platform that amplifies your brand message through your workforce. It turns employees into brand advocates who share content across their social networks to bolster the impact of marketing efforts.
Hootsuite helps brands manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard. It’s ideal for scheduling posts, monitoring social media conversations, and analyzing performance.
This free tool provides valuable insights into your website traffic and user behavior.
You can track where your visitors are coming from, what pages they're viewing, and how long they're staying on your site. It's high-quality data, and it helps you identify your most popular content and optimize your website for better engagement.
SEO tools like Semrush track your search engine rankings, analyze your competitors, and identify keyword opportunities. It's a good idea to have such a tool to augment and improve your SEO strategy.
This content discovery tool identifies trending topics and popular content in your industry. You can use it to find inspiration for your content, track your competitors, and discover influencers who can amplify your reach.
Brand24 is a social listening tool that lets you monitor brand mentions, track sentiment, and identify trending conversations around your brand.
Receiving insights about both positive and negative perceptions around your brand helps you engage better with your audience, address concerns, and identify opportunities for brand building.
Designing and distributing your own survey can be trickier than you think—and getting it wrong can lead to bad data and disastrous decision-making.
SurveyMonkey lets you gather feedback from your target audience about their awareness and perception of your brand. You can use this data to finetune your messaging, improve your products or services, and build stronger customer relationships.
Even with the best intentions, there are common missteps that can derail your brand awareness efforts. Steer clear of the following mistakes to keep your strategy on track:
Building brand awareness isn't a sprint —- it's a marathon that requires consistent effort, creativity, and a willingness to adapt. The right strategies and tools in your arsenal can help you create a brand that’s not just recognized but understood, appreciated, and remembered.
Ready to ignite your brand awareness and build a loyal following? GaggleAMP empowers your employees to become passionate brand advocates, helping spread your brand organically to relevant and receptive audiences. Start a free trial today!
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
