When you buy a diaper, do you ask for a diaper or a Pampers? When you need a perfume, do you buy Fara, or Dolce & Gabbana?
The terms I mentioned are well-known brands, and they are on the top of brand awareness. For example, every time visit a restaurant, you ask for a soft drink, or Pepsi or Coke? Such brands have influenced the customer psyche, and they never ask for the generic term, but a specific brand.
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What is Brand Awareness? – Definition
Brand awareness is the level of recognition and association by a potential customer towards your products and services. For example, if you need a cold drink, the chances are that you will think of Pepsi or Coke. There are many other cold drinks available in the market but the both Pepsi and Coke have able to build brand awareness in minds of consumers.
If a company create brand awareness in consumer minds, it is one of the steps towards promoting and developing a product. This brand activity is more important for those companies launching new products and services in the market. By doing this a company can differentiate its offering from competitors.
Importance of Brand Awareness in Marketing
Companies with high brand awareness are able to generate more revenue. For example, when you visit a marketplace for a laptop, there are many product and options available. But having a differentiated product in your mind like Apple MacBook Pro or Dell XPS makes Apple or Dell distinguish from other competitors in the market. This happens when companies successfully promoting brand awareness in the entire marketing place.
If a consumer knows your product, there are chances that your product will make his decision making process easy. Instead of going through collecting information and research he will directly go to your company. Strong brands are always acceptable and trusted by customers looking for products for the first time.
Brand Recognition Vs Brand Awareness
Brand recognition enables a consumer to clearly identify a company’s brands based on its name, logo and other visual indicators like color, font, packaging etc. For example, you enter into a mall and notice a laptop on a shelf with an Apple logo and you can easily recognize that this is Apple Laptop.
On the other hand, when brand recognition goes one step ahead it becomes brand awareness. At this level, a customer recalls not only a brand name but also the other necessary information about brands. A customer is emotionally attached to a brand.
How to Build Brand Awareness
If you are a local business owner like Car wash, hair salon, hotel, rental services, you can use printed banners and wall chalking to aware your customers about the products and services you are offering. You can also distribute pamphlets in your target market and create brand awareness.
Social media platforms are a good source of generating brand awareness. According to a survey a common person spends almost 2 hours per day on social media sites. On social media sites, people discuss, review, and rate products. Launching a targeted campaign can help to interact with customers and provide products and services according to their needs and wants.
You can display your product at a physical location that can help you to build brand awareness. For example, if you are marketing newly launched cookies or candies you can distribute it at Point of Sale.
Other ideas to build brand awareness campaigns include
- Sponsor public events
- Organizing charitable and Fundraising Events
- Car Wraps is another attractive way brand building strategy
- Using LinkedIn publications on a regular basis
- Distributing free stuff in colleges and universities putting brand name logo on packaging
- Guest content sharing on other blogs
- Infographics with bright colors displaying marketing statistics and data.
If you want to execute your brand awareness strategy, it is important to measure brand awareness so you can customize your strategy accordingly.
Examples of Brand Awareness
I have already told about many brands like Pepsi, Coke, Apple, and Dell. Over the years these companies were able to increase brand awareness in the consumer minds.
There are other brands awareness examples include
- Amazon
- Microsoft
- Walmart
- Nike
- Youtube
People can easily identify these well-known brands by only spotting brands’ logos like Nike swoosh and audio Nike sound logo.
Every company is able to build brand awareness by using attractive visuals and voice content. This will be possible if you rightfully invest in advertising using different social media platforms and mass media channels. The key to success is to be consistent and try to increase your brand image in the mind of the target audience.
