If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions then you’ve probably found yourself wondering what makes some brands go viral. And analyzing them to figure out what their secret sauce is.

Though their individual strategies can vary, there’s a specific term for what they’ve achieved   in the world of marketing – Brand Awareness.

Brand awareness is an abstract but valuable metric to guide your marketing efforts. This is because it’s ultimately customers that keep businesses afloat. And in an ever-growing competitive market, you need the customer to choose you again and again.

Brand awareness allows you to integrate your products and brand seamlessly into the customer’s lifestyle. So much so that you become the default rather than the option.

Brand Awareness vs. Brand Visibility 

So, does brand awareness mean you have to saturate the market with information about your brand? Will being everywhere and constantly bombarding the consumer achieve this?

Well, yes and no.

Being consistent and omnipresent in social media gives businesses an edge. But it does not really do much for connecting with the audience.

What you want to do instead is intentionally make your audiences aware of these things:

• What your brand stands for
• Your product offerings
• The brand’s visual identity and logo
• Your messaging
• And all the small but significant details about your brand story 

This requires nuanced messages, content creation, and marketing. 

Does it sound like a lot of effort? Especially when there are other methods of customer acquisition and retention that seem easier? 

Don’t let that discourage you. Designing and executing a brand awareness campaign has unmatched advantages.

Investing in Brand Awareness for your Business

Why build Brand Awareness? 

You could just adopt one of the multitudes of marketing tactics available to you instead. After all, you’ve got endless choices to grow your business including: 

• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media Marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Paid advertising
• Offline marketing
• Promotional marketing
• And more!

Fair point, but we are going to let you in on a secret. 

When you combine these tactics through a brand awareness strategy and brand awareness campaigns you increase your ROI exponentially. 

Let us consider this simple fact. When we go shopping, we are more likely to choose a familiar brand than a new brand that just advertises aggressively.

When you’re competing against many other businesses, aggressive advertising isn’t enough. You need customers to be aware of you for your brand to stand out from the crowd. 

Consumer Trust

A 2018 study tells us that over 96% percent of consumers don’t trust ads and would rather engage with brands they know. 

This study is a clear indication that building brand awareness and having users become familiar with your brand and products is the first step to converting them into customers. 

And how do you do this? By building a brand in the public domain. And being constantly present in customer’s minds. These steps allow businesses to slowly gain customers’ trust and become a household name. 

Sales and Conversions 

Let’s face it. Customers are, by nature, quite conservative when it comes to parting with their money. No matter how good the product is. It is easier for a customer to continue buying from a familiar brand than switch to a new brand.

So, how do you get them to make that shift? Well, like most big brands have done. You build brand awareness and convince the customer that you are worth it with consistency and valuable offerings. 

Consider This: Brands like Netflix, Spotify, and Prime Video had tough competition in battling the viewership of regular theatres. 

The Result: Today we see the hard-earned results of their consistent brand awareness campaigns. Watching a movie is now all about choosing from these platforms rather than going to a theatre. 

Create Product-Market Association

This is one of the biggest advantages of brand awareness. Studies show that customers ask for brands rather than actual products if you do your marketing right. Proof for this can be seen in how Band-Aid is no longer just a brand. When someone needs a plastic bandage, they ask for a Band-Aid.

Similarly, Google is now a verb and not just the name of a popular search engine. 

Brand awareness builds brand equity and implies that you are the default and prime-runner in your industry rather than just one of the players in the market. 

Market Expansion 

When you have a widely recognized brand, expansion becomes a cakewalk. For example, consider McDonald’s’. It is the top franchise brand in the world. The company has an outlet in almost every corner of the world. 

The company’s strong brand-building exercise has made it easy to enter any market, no matter how diverse it is from its home ground. The brand has an instant recall value, aided by its brand awareness activities, including digital marketing. 

Wherever McDonald’s goes, the customer base is ready even before the store even opens.

Building Brand Awareness for your Business 

We think we have given you enough reasons to dive into creating a brand awareness strategy for your brand. 

So, we are sure you are wondering, are there any concrete steps you can take to achieve this abstract goal? 

Well, yes.

Kimp works with many businesses around the world, designing both online and offline content to build brands that make impressions on their customers. We create unique but relatable identities for these businesses and make their value shine.

Below we’re sharing some of the learnings and insider tricks from these experiences. Read on to find out how your brand can tackle building brand awareness. 

Create a Unique Identity

More than 70% of marketers admit that they use social media marketing. These marketing efforts are mainly for brand building. So, how do you ensure that your brand stands out in the crowd?

Today, the explore pages on every Social Media site is filled with promotional posts and advertisements,

So creating a unique identity for your brand in all forms like the brand name, logo, tagline, and USP is non-negotiable. 

If your industry has a set color tone or imaging, use those as starting points. But then try A/B testing to create your own unique look and feel. One that plays to consumer preferences, but adds something fresh as well. This could mean trying different fonts, variations of your brand’s color palette, or even playing with imagery. In turn, this uniqueness may well be the reason your customers remember you and come back to you for more. 

Have a consistent voice across all Platforms

Customers have short-lived memories and are constantly bombarded with information on every social media platform. Even outside the internet, the average newspaper or magazine carries advertisements on virtually every page. 

So, it is important that you stay consistent in frequency, messaging, and imaging to leave an impact upon the customer. It takes around 5-7 instances of brand encounters to form a lasting impression.

Consistency in design and messaging is also vital if you want customers to associate your brand with your product(s) or service(s). 

Kimp Tip: When you launch a new brand or product line, opt for a professional designer to create the design assets and marketing materials. Social media branding will become a breeze with these high-quality design aids. 

Connect with your Audience 

Humans are very emotional beings. We think with our heart more than we think with our brain. Shopping, in particular, is quite an impulsive and emotional process for many.

Knowing this, it becomes important for a business to connect with its audience on an emotional level. Brands that are personable and socialize on social media leave a lasting impression on their customers. 

To form a deeper and more meaningful connection with their audiences, major brands often leverage graphics and techniques like color psychology. Color psychology tells you the different colors people usually associate with different emotions. You can use this to leverage your designs to invoke desired emotions amongst your potential and existing customers.  

Kimp Tip: If a color isn’t a part of your brand’s color palette, you may still be able to incorporate it as an accent. Or there may be a different color that complements your brand colors, while inspiring the emotion you want to inspire. Speak to your designer about your goals for a design, and how you want it to make people feel. This will help them design accordingly.

Invest in Storytelling

Stories, sell. In your pursuit to connect with your audience, invest in a narrative that portrays your role in your customers’ life in detail.

You can start by talking about the market. Add in something about the demand gap that you wish to fill. And then reinforce how you are their absolute choice for a solution.

Narrations that have emotional connections and display a value proposition for the end-user hold the power of swaying them from their favorite brands. All you need to do is show them why. 

Kimp Tip: Your copy is important. But it’s only as effective as your designs. Powerful copy can become that much stronger when accompanied by compelling graphic design. Or professional marketing  videos that provide irrefutable proof to the consumer about your value proposition.

Videos are one of the most powerful and well-received content forms over the internet. Similarly infographics also pack a powerful punch, with quick and effective summaries of your story. 

Build a community 

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes more than a village to build a brand. When you go all out on social media marketing and advertising, you need your tribe of followers or community to back you and support you.

Have you seen how passionately people argue between Apple and Android? That’s the power of community building. Today, the news about the latest updates on these operating systems spread from these communities rather than the official platforms. 

This is how you can also leverage the power of communities for brand awareness. 

Launch exclusive products for your followers, share updates with them first and create value for them so that they bring more people into the fold. Consider doing this over social media posts, blog updates and email marketing. Follow these steps and you’ll have a community of your own in no time. 

Leveraging Digital Marketing and Design to Build Brand Awareness

Thanks to the power of digital marketing and the internet, brand awareness is no longer unmeasurable. Or just approximate. Though brand awareness can be achieved through offline measures, as well, your online tactics will give you more precise data and feedback.

When it comes to building brand awareness online, it’s important to remember that the online world is very visual. In fact, visual content marketing is one of the biggest trends in content marketing right now. So, it is smart for a business to leverage the powers of graphics and digital marketing to build brand awareness. 

Let’s take Pepsi for example. Recently, on National Burger Day, it launched a very interesting campaign called #betterwithpepsi. The brand shared pictures of burger packaging and pointed out where their logo appeared on them. Within minutes, it was trending and being shared by customers all over.

The creativity in revealing something most of us have never noticed, on designs we see all the time, made this post a must to share.

And the campaign increased the chances of someone getting Pepsi the next time they went to Wendy’s or Burger King, or McDonald’s to spot the Pepsi logo in the packaging.  

ALL burgers go #BetterWithPepsi…even when we’re not on the menu, we’re always in the picture. 😉 Try for yourself this Friday on #NationalBurgerDay and the Pepsi is on us pic.twitter.com/6KRF77ONnf

— Pepsi (@pepsi) May 26, 2021

Pepsi leveraged visual content at the right time and made National Burger Day all about them. That’s the power of design.

Visual content such as images, GIFs, Infographics, and Videos are much more shareable on the internet than text. They have cross-platform compatibility that you can leverage to build brand awareness seamlessly. 

And the more you create and consistently share, the more you’ll be able to figure out what resonates best with your audience. 

Kimp – A Design Partner for Building Brand Awareness 

Excited to make your brand the next big sensation?

Choose only the best for your business: A team of passionate designers working to bring out the best design to make your brand shine.

Choose Kimp.

Kimp has worked across industry verticals and launched some stellar campaigns for our customers.

Check out our customers’ Kimp reviews and sign up for the free trial today.