How exactly do you increase your brand awareness?
You’ve likely spent considerable time building your brand and are having trouble spreading the word.
Brand awareness refers to making your brand recognizable to the average person. It creates a positive perception for your brand and entices consumers.
Regardless of your niche, you’ll face a lot of competition. As such, you have to make sure each brand awareness campaign makes your company stand out. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be as daunting as it seems.
Here are some tricks on how to increase your brand awareness:
1. Create a Memorable Logo
The first step is to create a memorable logo for your brand. You want something that can entice your audience as soon as they see it.
Take a moment to think about your favorite company logos. Think about how they can easily attract consumers.
For example, Coca-Cola attracts you because its a red logo. Red is often the best color to use for a food or beverage company. Apple intrigues you because the ‘apple’ has been bitten into.
Look at your favorite logos and write down why they intrigue you. Use this as a standard to create your own logo.
2. Participate in a Live Event
You have to promote your business by participating in a live event. This can include a convention, a trade show, or a career fair, as examples.
You can set up an exhibit where attendees can learn more about your brand. This is a great opportunity to promote and know your business to potential customers. You should read more on what are exhibits to learn how to set one up for a live event.
Even after you establish your brand, it’s always best to continue to participate in live events. This helps keep your brand awareness fresh and attracts new customers.
3. Create a Referral Program
One of the easiest ways to increase your brand awareness is to create a referral program. In other words, you have others do your promotion for you.
For example, Dropbox offers you extra cloud storage if you refer your friends. Similarly, Coinbase gives you an extra $5 worth of Bitcoin if you refer your friends.
These referral programs do a remarkable job of increasing brand awareness. Many of you likely know about Coinbase and Dropbox just because of the referral programs.
Many popular gyms depend solely on referrals to promote their business. Whether it’s Bally’s or LA Fitness, they developed brand awareness because of their referral programs.
4. Testimonials
Testimonials are also a great way to increase your brand awareness. The more people who speak highly of your brand, the more awareness it’ll have.
For example, in your ads, you can have customers expressing their satisfaction with your brand. If you sell products or services, consider creating landing pages for them.
On these landing pages, you can include customer testimonials that speak to the quality of the product/service. You can also request customers to write reviews on popular review websites.
You can also ask customers to express testimonials on social media. For example, a restaurant can ask patrons to take photos of their meals. They can share this image on Instagram and write a testimonial within the caption.
5. Endorsements
This might be a bit harder for smaller businesses. Nevertheless, if you can find a public figure to endorse your brand you’ll definitely increase brand awareness.
For example, you can shoot a commercial in which a celebrity endorses your product/service. Or you can have a print ad where the celebrity is how exactly do you increase promoting your brand.
You can also look at services such as Cameo to see if you can find celebrities willing to promote your brand.
6. Sponsoring
If you sponsor someone else’s work, you’ll be doing them and yourself a favor. For helping them with their project, they’ll work to increase your brand awareness.
For example, many popular podcasts ranging from The Tim Ferris Show to Triggernometry pause their shows to promote a brand. This brand has sponsored the episode by donating funds. Sometimes donations can be in the form of a product or service.
The podcast host(s) will then interrupt their episode to promote your brand. Listeners will get intrigued about your brand and are more likely to learn more about it.
You want to think carefully about what content to sponsor. Make sure the content creator aligns with your brand’s values. If it isn’t a match, then you can’t depend on the audience to want to engage with your brand.
You should consider writing a list of who sponsors your favorite content. Whether it’s a podcast, YouTube channel, or sports tournament you want to see what brands are popular through sponsorship.
Reach out to the content creator and ask them about sponsorship options. You also want to ask for data on how many brands have seen increased traffic through their sponsorship.
7. Free Stuff
Yup! We all love free stuff and it’s one of the best ways to increase brand awareness. Giving away free stuff works for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses.
For example, rapper Zuby began increasing awareness of his brand by giving out CDs of his songs. A craft beer company might give away free beer mugs. Or better yet, they might even give away free beer!
Create merchandise that you can hand out for free to potential customers. You can give this away at live events or at any venue where you can distribute merchandise.
You can also offer free stuff to staff members or to loyal customers. They’ll love to show off how much free SWAG they have! This ‘showing off’ will definitely increase brand awareness.
Create Your Brand Awareness
Now you know how to create brand awareness for your company. Start by creating the perfect logo for your brand.
Then you can use the other steps in this guide to continue to grow your brand. You can decide whether it’s best to have a live event, a referral program, etc.
Promoting your brand is a continuous process. Make sure you always refer to the guide when your company is stuck in a rut.
You can also find more great business tips on our website. Please do share this with your fellow entrepreneurs!