What is Brand Awareness? Guide & 9 Powerful Tactics to Build It [2022]

Brand awareness is a metric that shows the level of recognition of a brand, product, or service among consumers. It’s important as it helps you reach a new audience and improve your marketing outreach. How do you build, measure, and raise brand awareness? This essential guide will answer most of your questions.

What is the role of brand awareness in building your business? Is it necessary to succeed?

Creating brand awareness is crucial not only for start-ups but also for companies with an established position in the market. Brand image can be a deciding factor for the right audience.

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

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

• What is brand awareness?
• What are the benefits brand awareness?
• 9 tactics to build brand awareness
• How to measure brand awareness?
• The most important brand awareness metrics
• How is your brand recognition?

What is 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 a bit 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 when it comes to 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.

What are the benefits of brand awareness?

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

The benefits of building robust 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!

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 research the 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 assure your customers will come back to you. In other words, brand awareness 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 is directly correlated with brand awareness.

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 enforces associations. A lot of people don’t use handkerchiefs but kleenex, orders coke and not soda, and so on. Consumers use the brand name from the top of their minds, and they do not always differentiate between brands.

It connects actions or events with certain products. We replace generic terms with branded words. And that’s how part of our marketing is done for us.

04 Helping you reach your target audience

Reaching the right people at the right time is the key to success. Brand awareness is an important 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.

9 tactics to build brand awareness

Before you start building and improving your brand awareness, you need to set a benchmark. You should measure the brand awareness of your brand and your competitors’.

Set it up by measuring your current brand awareness levels.

The easiest way to measure the levels of brand recognition is to use a media monitoring tool, for example, Brand24.

A media monitoring tool collects all publicly available mentions about your brand, products, and services and analyses the results.

Within the Analysis tab, you will find the information about:

• The total number of mentions
• Social and non-social mentions
• Estimated social media reach
• Non-social reach
• The number of social media interactions
• Sentiment analysis

All of these metrics are vital for assessing your brand awareness and working on your brand management.

To truly assess if your brand awareness efforts are bringing the desired results, you have to establish the levels of awareness of your close competitors. To check other brands, simply create another media monitoring project that will track marketing campaigns and word-of-mouth marketing.

To compare two projects in Brand24, simply go to the Comparison tab and choose the projects you want to compare.

Building recognition of a brand can be easy when you have a brand awareness strategy.

You can implement plenty of tactics to boost it, starting with a strong social media presence through referral programs, dedicated awareness campaigns, social media contests, or improving user experience.

What’s in there for you? Let’s see!

Here are our nine marketing strategies you can use to build brand awareness among your potential and existing customers:

• 01 Use media listening for brand awareness
• 02 Build brand awareness on social media
• 03 Use customers’ testimonials
• 04 Cooperate with social media influencers
• 05 Do your SEO research
• 06 Make your product exclusive
• 07 Implement marketing campaigns
• 08 Partner with local business
• 09 Invest in referral program

01 Use media monitoring

The critical element of increasing brand awareness is to be aware of 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 media monitoring tool.

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

• One 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.

You can set up a project with the key phrase “who can recommend?” and narrow down the results with our geo-filter.

Another aspect of media monitoring for brand awareness I’d like to mention 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.

02 Build brand awareness on social media

Well optimized social media channels can do wonders.

Claiming that almost everyone is now on social media is not an exaggeration. Only Instagram 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 Twitter. Brands that can produce engaging visual content, for example, jewelry producers or cosmetics brands, have a loyal following on Instagram and Pinterest. And 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 see how your content spreads on social media.

Social media monitoring tools will help you:

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

This helps to 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.

03 Use customers’ testimonials

As I mentioned before, customer testimonials are a great way to build brand awareness.

What are the perks of customers’ testimonials on your website?

• They help establish your credibility as a brand
• They drive sales. There’s nothing more convincing than reading success stories from other satisfied clients
• They are highly effective and free ads

So, where do you start with implementing customer testimonials on your website?

Use all the positive mentions your media monitoring project has gathered!

You want to display only positive mentions about your products or services on your website. Don’t worry; we got you covered.

Brand24 offers a sentiment analysis option. In the Mentions tab, on the right side of the screen, you’ll find a slider that will filter the mentions according to their sentiment.

You can analyze only positive mentions with your predefined keyword and group them.

Once you’re done with choosing the right testimonials, click on Create a new widget.

You will be redirected to the widget creation wizard, where you can adjust the widget visually. Then the tool will generate a piece of code you can quickly implement on your website.

It might sound like a lot of work, but trust me, it’s a piece of cake, even for not so technically savvy users.

An implemented widget on a website looks like this:

And it is a great way to convince undecided customers to opt for your product!

I know it seems quite a lot for a widget tool, but it’s much more! I’ll show you the benefits of an Internet listening tool in the following paragraphs.

04 Cooperate with social media influencers

Influencers can help you reach consumers you’d otherwise miss. They can not only spread your content and build brand awareness but also legitimize your message with their authority.

The key to successful social media influencer marketing for your company is choosing the right influencers. They have to align with your brand’s core values and have the same target audience as you do.

So, if you already know that influencers help build brand awareness, how do you choose the right ones? We have an answer!

Take a look at your project in Brand24, more specifically at the Analysis tab.

Brand24 analyses all the mentions and identifies two key metrics for identifying influencers:

• Influence of social media authors
• Most active social media authors

Brand24 also identifies the platform the influencers are active and calculates their share of voice, number of mentions, and reach.

That way, you can be sure that you choose the right influencer to work with.

05 Do your SEO research

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A well-optimized website will rank high on Google, so the users are more likely to click on 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 is not only about implementing keyword research on 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 has an impact on your position in Google or any other search engine.

06 Make your product exclusive

When Google first introduced Gmail, you could only log in if you had an invitation from somebody who already had an account.

Word of mouth is the best kind of marketing, and Google is aware of it. Gmail users were sharing links to the email agent, and the tool quickly went viral.

Creating a sense of exclusivity will, on the contrary, build brand awareness. People like to share their interesting finds.

From the UX design point of view, make it easy to share. A clear call to action, for example, invite your friends, and an easy-to-fill form is a must-have.

If you don’t have a strict software product to offer, think about all the exclusive deals you could offer to your customers to boost brand awareness. You could provide a discount for referring your product to a friend or propose exclusive content to your customers.

07 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.

08 Partner with local businesses

Building a global business can be your dream, but you might get more conversion if you focus on the local market, at least in the beginning.

Partnering with local businesses to build brand awareness works similarly to cooperating with influencers. You can expose your products to new audiences, which will tremendously help increase your brand’s awareness.

A coffee house can team up with a local bakery, a fashion brand with shoemakers, and a wedding venue with a florist. There’re many options to choose from.

09 Invest in referral program

Referral programs are a great way to spread the word about your brand, product, or service around. A well-executed referral program can bring substantial value to your company and boost your brand recognition.

A referral program will expand your marketing efforts and give you the endorsements you need to build a strong brand.

In programs like that, your existing customers and influential people from your industry niche, encourage others to make a purchase. Once people buy your product or service from their recommendation, they receive a commission, and you get some new customers.

Referral programs can help you reach new customers that would otherwise be unaware of your product. Moreover, the burden of creating new content is on your partner.

How to measure brand awareness?

Measuring the results of a brand awareness campaign can be a daunting task. Nevertheless, you need to know the results of your awareness campaigns. Once you measure the campaign, you will understand the levels of brand recognition and will know how to improve them.

You can divide brand awareness metrics into two subgroups: quantitative and qualitative brand awareness metrics.

Let’s start with quantitative ones. Quantitative brand awareness metrics will give you a general understanding of your brand perception online.

• Direct traffic. Direct traffic shows you the number of people who typed in the URL of your website directly into the search bar. It’s a valuable metric since it tells you how many people know about your brand and are looking specifically for you.
• Social media engagement. Most importantly, the number of comments, shares, and likes under your social media posts. Social media engagement is easy to track, especially with help from media monitoring tools like Brand24.

These brand awareness metrics provide hard numbers. You can easily see the changes in direct traffic or social media engagement.

Qualitative brand awareness metrics are a little bit more tricky. In this step, you have to determine how many people are aware of your brand. To measure qualitatively, try:

• Monitoring the volume of mentions of your brand. The volume of mentions is a strong indicator of how many people talk about your brand online. Moreover, if you combine the volume of mentions with sentiment analysis, you’ll know the feelings around your brand.
• Surveys. Sometimes all you have to do is ask whether someone has heard about your brand or not. You will get direct feedback from your customers and know what your potential customers think about you.

Read more: How to Measure Brand Awareness?

The most important brand awareness metrics

Whether you focus on qualitative or quantitative brand awareness metrics, there are some hard numbers you can track to measure your brand recognition. By measuring your brand awareness regularly, you can follow your brand awareness campaign results.

I present the results based on Brand24, a top media monitoring tool.

Which metrics should you take into account?

01 The volume of mentions

The volume of mentions will tell you how often your brand name has been mentioned online. The total volume of mentions should be your first metric when it comes to assessing the results of your campaigns.

If the number of times your company has been mentioned online increases, it means your campaign is bringing the desired results. More consumers are aware of your company, and your brand recall grows.

02 Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis will put your volume of metrics in the right context. You will know whether the talk around your brand is positive, negative, or neutral.

Negative mentions about your company will definitely help your brand recognition and brand recall. But is it how you want to be seen on the market by your consumers?

People will talk about your products or services online. Even if they post negative content online, that doesn’t mean a bad thing for your company.

You can still turn the tables around.

Sometimes, it’s just as easy as replying to an unhappy customer. They will probably tell about their brand experience to their friends and family, increasing your offline brand awareness.

03 Social and non-social media reach

Reach is one of the most important metrics when it comes to brand awareness and brand recall.

Reach will tell you how many people have seen your content across the whole Internet. The higher your reach, the bigger brand awareness, and therefore, brand recall.

04 The share of voice

The share of voice will tell you what part of the whole online discussion was initiated by a certain public profile. The higher the share of voice, the more influence the person has.

The share of voice is important for two reasons when it comes to brand awareness.

First, it will help you assess your brand reputation. The more consumers trust your brand, the more they will talk about your company. And, they will come back to you more often, thus increasing your brand recall.

Secondly, examining the share of voice of some social media accounts will help you find the most promising online influencer to work with.

An influencer marketing campaign is one of the most effective ways to promote your brand among brand new audiences.

05 Influencer marketing campaign

One of the sure ways to boost your brand recognition is to cooperate with an influencer in your field.

Influencers can present your product or service to their audience and vouch for them with their authority. Mentioning your brand name will help with your brand recognition, which is especially important for younger, lesser-known brands.

Mentioning your brand name will put your company on the radar of many new consumers.

Read more: Brand Awareness Metrics You Should Track

How is your brand recognition?

Does your company need to work on brand recognition? Is your brand name well-known among your target customers?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you should put some resources into growing brand awareness.

A bulletproof brand awareness program 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.

Putting your brand on the business map is hard work. Brand awareness marketing should be an essential part of your marketing strategy.

Brand identity is what differentiates successful brands from not-so-successful ones.

Brand awareness allows you to show your products and services to a brand new audience. Once you increase brand awareness, you will see an increase in your brand’s core business metrics.