Before your target audience can engage with your business, they need to be aware of your brand. The need to boost brand awareness is the first step in any sales funnel, so it should be one of your top priorities. Many business owners assume that people will stumble across their brand when they’re looking for related products and services or that ‘word will eventually get around’. However, you can’t assume that your target audience will find you.
Instead, you need to be proactive and put your brand front and centre. If you don’t, your competitors certainly will, so why miss out on the chance to acquire a customer and complete a sale?
Fortunately, increasing brand awareness needn’t be as difficult as many people assume. With these three winning marketing methods, you can boost brand awareness in no time and reap the rewards:
Billboards and large format posters
If you want to gain maximum exposure, billboards and large format posters in high traffic areas are certainly effective. You’ll reach a wide range of people via this marketing method, which is ideal for brands that are aiming to engage a variety of demographics.
Furthermore, large format posters and billboards are an excellent way to increase awareness in specific locations. If you run a local business, for example, your target audience may live or work within a certain distance of your premises. By renting space on billboards within the area, you can raise brand awareness amongst your specific target audience.
Social media
Social media usage is increasing all the time. What’s more, people across all demographics are using social media more frequently and for longer periods of time. Promoting your brand on social media platforms gives you an efficient way to get your message out there. Furthermore, you can use a less formal tone on social media and allow your target audience to really see the personality of your brand.
Pro Tip: Before starting a social media campaign, do your research and find out which platforms are most popular with your target audience. If your potential customers spend more time on Twitter than Facebook, or vice versa, you’ll know where to invest the majority of your time and ad spend.
Outreach, placements and influencers
Many people assume that influencer marketing is something new, but businesses have been relying on endorsements from well-known individuals to raise brand awareness for decades. Although influencers may be a relatively new form of celebrity, the concept behind influencer marketing is one that’s been tried and tested many times.
Securing placements with influencers, bloggers and reviews is a great way to increase brand awareness on a large scale. Working with people and businesses that already have an established audience allows you to tap into their base and increase your own reach.
Broaden your professional network and you’ll find that offline publications, as well as online platforms, are eager to work with up and coming brands. Simply ensure that your target audience and the audience of the influencer, publication or placement are similar enough to warrant a partnership.
Brand Awareness: What’s Next?
Increasing brand awareness ensures that people know about your business but this alone won’t generate income. Now, you need to engage your target audience and encourage them to move towards the next stage of the sales funnel.
With various different concepts out there, your sales funnel will be unique to your business. However, most companies move from awareness to interest or discovery. Here, people go from being aware of your brand to being interested in it or taking steps to discover more about it.
Providing your brand awareness campaign is effective, you should notice an increase in the number of enquiries you get, the volume of website traffic and the number of mentions you get on social media.
Then, it’s simply a case of the user building the intent to make a purchase and making a decision to initiate a transaction. While the sales funnel can be drawn out in some industries, in others customers can move through the funnel in seconds, providing they have the right encouragement.
Increase Brand Awareness Now
The need to grow and boost brand awareness is something you should be doing consistently, if you want to acquire new customers. By choosing a range of offline and online marketing methods to achieve your goals, you can maximize your results and increase your ROI. With accurate monitoring, you can even lower your marketing budget and hone in on the methods that give you the best results.
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