Not getting any traffic to your website or visitors to your brick and mortar?
Business owners know, the first step is “being found”…
…the more your potential customers become aware of you, the greater the likelihood of a sale.
In fact, 58% of consumers prefer to purchase from brands they’re familiar with—so you must build brand awareness to ultimately get sales.
So what you need to learn is how to increase brand awareness.
Awareness is the first step your target customer takes…
…because before someone purchases a product, an awareness event must take place.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- What is brand awareness?
- Why brand awareness is important
- The 1:Many Ratio
- How to increase brand awareness
- How to measure brand awareness
But it gets better, this guide will maximize the awareness of your brand with the 1:Many Ratio…
Keep reading to see how…
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with your products or services.
Ultimately the goal is to create and maintain an awareness of your brand so that you are always top-of-mind to your target audience when they search for your solutions.
It’s important to increase awareness…
Why is brand awareness important?
Brand awareness is important because it positions your small business as a viable solution when your target customers are in the Aware stage of the customer journey and you are in the Acquire stage of your funnel.
It’s there to kick-start the relationship, which is ultimately when marketing strategies are there to do.
Ultimately, awareness is the first step for the customer journey, so this is where you’ll reach a large segment of your target audience that matches up with your customer persona in order to acquire leads.
Now to your brand awareness strategy…
The 1:Many Ratio
The 1:Many Ratio is a marketing tactic that leverages existing audiences instead of approaching your target audience one-on-one.
You’ll use one of three marketing channels:
- Paid ads
- Content
- Strategic partnerships
How To Build Brand Awareness?
If you’re building brand awareness for the first time, you’ll want to focus on the minimum viable plan to create awareness faster with the least amount of effort.
What marketing channel should I choose?
From the SparkAccelerator ™ program.
The decision comes down to time or money…
If you’re just starting out and have money to invest in growth, I would suggest paid ads.
Paid advertising uses platforms with existing targeted audiences.
They bring in traffic rapidly and can scale higher and faster—because you are in full control over the targeting and budget.
Try these platforms:
- Search engine marketing (SEM) such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads
- Paid social such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and LinkedIn Ads
- Traditional ads such as print ads, direct mail, and other out of home (OOH) ads
If you’re just starting out and don’t have cash to invest, I would suggest content.
Content leverages other people’s existing audiences to bring them back to your business.
This approach takes more time and is not fast, but can build over time and bring a lot of traffic. If the content is valuable and SEO-optimized, you may see it rank high in search results on Google.
Publishers can also use their social media presence to share your content, adding another layer of traffic.
Try these platforms:
- Blog guest posting
- Podcast guest interviews
- Industry speaking events
Anyway to share your expertise to large groups of people is valid.
Now onto how to increase your brand awareness if you’ve already built some…
How To Increase Brand Awareness
If you’ve already built brand awareness and are looking to increase it, you’ll want to look at optimizing your existing marketing channel to see if you can squeeze more out or add in another.
What marketing channel should I choose?
I would suggest paid ads or strategic partnerships.
Paid advertising as I said above scales quicker and faster and bring near instant results (if dont correctly).
Scaling can be done two ways: depth or width.
Depth – test new audiences, offers, or messaging
Width – increase ad spend, test new ad types
Try these platforms:
- Search engine marketing (SEM) such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads
- Paid social such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and LinkedIn Ads
- Traditional ads such as print ads, direct mail, and other out of home (OOH) ads
Strategic partnerships means working with businesses that serve the same people you want to attract by creating win/win opportunities.
You can create referral programs together or joint ventures, such as product or service packages.
Try these business types:
- Influencers in your industry
- Technology or SaaS companies
- Professional service providers
Now that you know how to create awareness, how can you measure it?
How To Measure Brand Awareness
Always measure your results to see if your strategy is worth continuing or improving.
Depending on which marketing channel you chose, you’ll measure them differently…
Paid ads
If the goal is to create awareness, then the key performance indicators (KPIs) would be:
- Impressions – the number of times your ad was seen
- Clicks – the website traffic from the ad to your website
- Sessions (in your analytics) would be the equivalent if you’re also doing traditional advertising
- CTR – Click-thru rate shows the percentage of clicks from total impressions (a great way to see if the ad is engaging)
- Engagement such as likes, comments, shares is also good on paid social
Content
Content will vary on which type of content you chose:
- Traffic back to your website from any visitor
- Organic traffic from search engines
- Referral traffic from publishers that linked to your website
- Search terms – use tools such as Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools
- Branded – people searching from your brand name
- Category – people searching for product or service categories which you appeared for
Strategic Partnerships
Strategy partnerships will be reflected below:
- Deals won – how many deals you won with partners you reached out to
- Traffic back to your website from partners
- Referral traffic from their websites
Final Thought
Ultimately brand awareness should be created for conversions or sales—whatever desired end result you’re looking to achieve.
So always keep in mind when measuring your brand awareness, if it’s ultimately leading to that goal.
