We are all trying to get a share of the consumers' wallets. Do you often wonder why customers are
purchasing a specific brand repeatedly, why do they believe only that particular product fulfils their need?
It all starts with brand awareness.
Brand awareness is a necessary process that influences customer buying behaviour through the subconscious level. It is very likely, if consumers haven't heard of your brand's existence, they will not consider buying from you.
Understanding brand awareness, and how to develop a marketing strategy with solid brand awareness at its core, enables you to convert your target audience into loyal customers and brand advocates.
This article explains what brand awareness is, why it’s crucial for business success, how to monitor it, and how to enhance it.
What does brand awareness mean?
Brand Awareness describes the level of information about your brand in people's minds. There are three awareness levels that people associate with your brand:
● Brand name recognition
● Product range recognition
● Brand attributes recognition
The two forms of brand awareness
Brand Awareness involves two stages, brand recognition and brand recall, based on how much information is recognised by the knowledge base of consumers and associating it with current circumstances.
Aided awareness (brand recognition) references to the consumers' ability to recognize your brand from a list of brands shown or when asked questions about the brand with prior knowledge of a specific product category. Your audience can identify the brand logo, colours, and slogan as earlier noticed or heard. For example, if you look at a brand’s logo, even making out the words, you can recognize which brand it represents.
First level awareness (brand recall) references to the customer evoking a memory of the first brand, in a product class or category that can satisfy a need leading to a purchase. This level of brand awareness can trigger emotional stages about how they are generally feeling about the product and their experience. For example, if you think about buying a new washing machine, your mind automatically sees a washing machine with associated product lines, emotional triggers, company values amongst others features.
Why does brand awareness matter?
Brand awareness allows the consumer to attach value to the product, thus a high level of brand awareness prompts a quick purchase, ensuring your marketing budget delivers a higher return on investment (ROI). Consumers are inundated with choices and connect more easily with brands they recall or whose values they admire, thus spending money with them rather than an unfamiliar brand or product. That is because consumers prefer brands that are recalled easily rather than researching and collecting information before making a purchase.
So, how do you get customers to trust your brand?
By driving brand awareness, you can generate positive attitudes about your business in the minds of potential customers.
Consider the soft drink business, and if removed from their product packaging, most soft drinks are inseparable. Thus, giant industries like Coca-Cola and Pepsi depend on advertising and creating brand awareness to make their brands the ones consumers reach out for.
Benefits of brand awareness
The companies that exercise brand penetration and awareness, focus on building value into their campaigns, highlighting core competencies that set them apart from the competition. Achieving a higher brand awareness rate creates powerful brands, helps establish category leadership, delivers revenue growth and increase market share – thus preventing competitors from gaining an advantage.
The key benefits of brand awareness:
● Customer Loyalty: building brand awareness keeps your product remains on the top of the minds of consumers for a long period. Having well-structured brands enables you to reach an infinite target audience. It makes your services relatable and appreciated. Through constant advocacy trust increases, as consumers see your business values aligning with perceived notions, thus establishing brand honesty and integrity that consumers recognize and appreciate.
● Brand Visibility: creating clear brand visibility is a promotion by itself. it boosts your chances of discovery by a vast majority of people. The brand credibility leads to the establishment of an overture that generates a competitive advantage by becoming a product of choice. Revenue growth, rise in purchase volumes and increase in ROI, flow in naturally thereon.
● Products sales: brand empowerment signifies the stage where products “sell themselves” prior to products and services appearing and marketing being activated. For example, people are enthusiastic about a new product from Apple because of the brand awareness, credibility and value.
How to increase brand awareness?
Most users can identify their favourite brands and experience a connection at the first association, be it at the time of immediate contact with the logo or hearing a snippet of the jingle. It is a powerful force to generate sales. Businesses need to use a variety of distribution channels to communicate with their target audiences, at appropriate times and right places by leveraging advertising, word of mouth publicity, social media blogs, events, sponsorships, etc.
The key is to be persistent with the brand messages to create strong brand awareness. Consumers become conversant and familiar with a brand when there is a consistent digital footprint.
Next: Why is it important to measure brand awareness? Read on.
