So, you want them to see what you have to offer? You want them to be interested in your wares.
Sometimes customers just need to be helped, they need to be told about your product/services and sometimes you may even need to draw pictures to get their attention. Understanding the different levels of customer awareness can help you improve an unaware prospect’s knowledge of what you are offering.
Brand awareness is the very first step in the Customer Journey and is key to eventually acquiring customers. You want people to recall and recognise your brand’s products and services.
By strategizing your brand awareness, you can help build a ‘connection’ with your customer, often an emotional one. Think Nike and their ‘Hero’ focus, where everyone who wears their shoes is seen as extraordinary.
According to the US-based Content Marketing Institute, building brand awareness has been a top goal for B2C and B2B marketers for years.
Influencer marketing creates brand awareness
Sound brand awareness helps to keep your brand top-of-mind with your target audience, creating a feeling of familiarity and constancy. This serves you well when customers are faced with a decision to buy from you or your competitor. If they are aware of you, they are more likely to buy from you.
Brand awareness centres around the customer feeling that they are heard, they are ‘special’ and that your service/product is speaking to them directly; that you are personalising your product for them. Identifying the level of customer awareness means you can actually tailor marketing and sales tactics based on their knowledge of your company and their needs.
The best strategy here is to help them understand what it is that they need from you, how the company can help them. Some customers don’t realise what they need, but by understanding customer awareness, you can target those customers and show them how your product or service can help them. It’s a form of reverse psychology I suppose…
Companies that understand their potential audience are more likely to ultimately convert them into purchasing customers once they are aware of what is being dangled in front of them.
Get satisfied customers to post testimonials about your brand
Referrals and word-of-mouth marketing are credible and valuable methods of customer acquisition, so get testimonials under your customers’ noses from satisfied customers, let them see what they could be missing out on. Make the digital revolution work for you! FaceBook is a fertile ground to display your wares as is LinkedIn for a more professional audience, while, if your product is really visually appealing, Instagram is the way to go.
You can also complement your social reach with search advertising and SEO, or you can launch sponsored social posts promoting your products/services to target audiences. Twitter provides an ‘awareness campaign’ template you can use to target your preferred audience.
You can also reach entirely new audiences by using strategies such as influencer marketing and guest posting.
Also, keep an eye on what is trending by way of new channels that you can be the first to take advantage of. Five years ago, for example, podcasting emerged onto the scene, and major brands, such as GE, Marriott, and IBM, quickly climbed onto the bandwagon with their own branded series. Currently gaining traction, technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality provide opportunities for investigation with awareness campaigns.
Brand awareness campaigns don’t only make more people aware of your business; they can also influence how people think about your business, which ultimately contributes to overall brand kinship and brand loyalty.
So, now that you are more aware of what you can do, what are you waiting for?
