“Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.”-David Ogilvy.
When one of the most important figures in the history of advertising said this, he probably knew that it will be relevant for a long time to come. Without a strong brand image and identity, businesses and companies cannot become sustainable or experience growth. As a business owner, if you want to build your brand, you need to create awareness about it.
Take any globally recognized symbol for example, Nike’s Swoosh or McDonald’s arches, they are all now identifiable brands due to successful awareness campaigns.
Basically, when you think about going big with your business, you have to look for ways to strengthen your brand identity. This will only happen when your target audience is able to associate and relate to the brand, and becomes familiar with it. The more people start to recognize it, the easier it will be to gain their trust.
With a focused advertising strategy, you can get the desired results and increase brand awareness. Here are a few ways you can try!
Market Your Unique Feature
It is essential that your customers can tell what makes your brand and business stand apart from the rest.
Promote and highlight what makes you unique and different from the others. If it’s a product or a service that you are newly introducing in the market, create an advertising campaign around that.
Your unique feature could also be represented in your company’s logo design even if it’s an advertising firm’s logo, packaging and digital image. Moreover, it also pays to get some guidance on how to design an advertising logo fit for campaign materials. This could take your advertising firm further and help the audience recognize your brand more easily.
Some companies also come up with their unique signature and personalities to get the attention of the target audience.
You can add a mascot, humor or design element that connects with the people and remain in their memory.
Consider it as creating a voice or tone for your brand. Target, KFC and Slack are just a few big names that have managed to make a mark by appealing to the customers in this way.
Run Social Media Campaigns
You might have often come across various brands and companies running contests and announcing giveaways on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
This is a good way to create brand awareness and reach out to more people far and wide. With a contest or giveaway, you will be able to engage the consumers and also help them get to know your product or service.
Social media has become a highly useful tool for businesses these days, particularly small ones and startups. It allows them to build their brand identity without spending a huge amount of their advertising budget. Social media marketing tools can make this process easier for you.
You do not necessarily have to make it something huge and expensive. Even a small giveaway or voucher can go a long way in making the audience familiar with your brand.
Content Driven and SEO Marketing
In today’s world, content is king and critical to effective advertising. In order to reach out to the audience and increase brand awareness, you have to focus on producing content that catches the attention immediately.
Whether it is on websites, blogs, video or audio, you have to make sure that what you put out suits your brand values and gives the right message. As a business owner, you should be prepared to face tough competition in the content marketing sector. This is why it is also important to have a strategy that allows you to be creative, unique and interesting with your posts.
Once you have the content figured out, you can move on to Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is commonly known.
This will be critical to brand awareness as the more you appear in the top of search pages, the higher the chances of generating traffic and attracting consumers. You can also research the different SEO tools and programs that you can use to your advantage and expand your reach.
Collaborate with Influencers
This could really help you with a successful advertising campaign and more awareness as well.
When influencers with a huge following and a loyal audience will talk about your brand, you will be able to breakthrough in the market. By collaborating with influencers, you can get the word out there and become visible to the consumers.
Otherwise, you can also try and partner up with other brands that might already be recognized.
You may think that it could take the attention away from your business but it’s actually an effective marketing technique. If another brand with an established consumer base partners up with you, their audience will also become familiar with your presence.
Native Advertising
Basically, this is about focusing on visual elements on a website or any other digital platform. Infographics, articles, paid ads and even videos that look like they belong on a particular web page and wherever they are featured.
Native advertising is actually quite prominent today and a lot of us don’t even realize how frequent we come across such content. But since it is incorporate in such a way, it does not look like an advertisement. With the help of such non-disruptive ads, you can successfully increase brand awareness and in a short time as well.
If you are consistent with the imagery associated with your campaign, you can continue with this for a long time. Certain design elements like a color palette or scheme, patterns or even a particular font that represents your brand could be highly useful.
Hopefully, these marketing or advertising techniques will be able to give your brand a boost in visibility. In today’s day and age, there are several ways that you can take advantage of to put your brand out there without going overboard.
While flashy billboards might be good for getting attention. However, you can only become a memorable name if you are able to connect with people emotionally.