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5 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness Today
Your brand is all about how your customers perceive your company.
Think Apple. And you probably think innovation, simplicity of design and cutting edge technology. Think Nike, and you’ll have the persona of an athlete that makes the sport ‘cool’ in your mind. Think Dyson, and you’ll think innovative, high-quality utility based electronic appliances. You get the picture.
But what if Apple distributed a bunch of poorly designed low quality USB flash drives with their logo on them as promotional products? Even though the flash drives would have their logo on them, they certainly would not fit in with their ‘brand perception’ would they?
What if Nike gave you professional fountain pens as promotional products? A brand that’s known to be ‘athletic’ in it’s persona would be confusing their customers by giving professional business-y promotional products, wouldn’t they?
That’s why, the SINGLE most important factor to help increase brand awareness is a unique persona.
A brand is a person. In fact, it’s legally accepted for a company to be a ‘separate entity’. Your brand is your company’s personality. It’s how your customers perceive you, so everything you do should be a direct or indirect manifestation of your brand’s persona.
In this article, we’ll cover a 5 strategies, all around your brand’s unique persona, that you need to keep in mind to increase brand awareness. Think of your brand’s persona as the ‘soul’ of your brand, with everything else revolving around it. Your product, your marketing and your customer experience are all extensions of your company’s soul, without which your brand has no chance of getting noticed.
So let’s get into it!
1. The Logo
Your logo needs to be distinctive, unique and simple. It’s what gives your brand’s persona a ‘symbol’ of representation. Even if your brand’s name isn’t mentioned, your customers should instantly be able to recognize who you are by looking at your logo.
Let’s examine a few logos, and what makes them great.
- Apple Logo: The logo speaks the brand’s name by itself. The company’s name is Apple, and the logo is an apple too. Simple, straightforward and memorable. The ‘bitten’ part of the apple makes it a bit unusual, eye-catching denoting something a bit different, which aligns with the brand’s philosophy of ‘think different’.
- Nike: The logo is a check mark. A tick. Again, it’s simple, and the one word that comes to mind when you see it is “done”. It reflects the brand’s persona of taking action, being focused and driven to do. Again, the logo is almost ‘self explanatory’ in nature.
- McDonalds: The logo is a simple “M” which makes it very noticeable. It’s yellow color gives it positive, happy and fun vibe. More often than not, it’s usually embedded in a red background, which gives it the ‘made with love’ appeal, and resonates with their punchline “I’m lovin it”.
Clearly, there’s a lot the logo depicts, and you need to pay attention to every aspect of it to be noticed, even in a short time span.
2. Influencers That Match Your Brand’s Persona.
Every dollar you invest in influencer marketing yields $6.50 in revenue. That’s how impactful influencers can be to increase brand awareness.
But, going back to the single most important factor to get your brand noticed, i.e. your unique persona, you need to ensure you pick the right influencers that match your brand’s personality.
For instance, Nike picks Tiger Woods as their influencer and brand ambassador as he makes the sport ‘cool’ and embodies athleticism and focus. Apple chooses Dwayne Johnson as their influencer because he’s totally got the vibe of a ‘cool athlete’. It all makes sense and their selection of influencers is all an extension of their brand persona.
Choosing influencers that align with your deeper values, persona and budget is time consuming, but very lucrative for your brand given the ROI it can generate for your company. Influencers have a large social following, so you need to ensure you’re getting noticed through the right people, for the right reasons, at the right time in the right way.
3. A Punchline That Shows What You Stand For
Your brand’s punchline should capture your unique persona in one sentence. It’s your brand’s soul, in words. It’s what gives your unique persona the words it needs to express who it really is. The most important thing about your punchline is that it needs to be authentic.
Some punchlines for you to consider are:
- Apple: Their punchline is “Think Different.”. That’s what Apple is known for, being the pioneer of innovation in consumer electronics. Their punchline encapsulates and expresses their brand’s soul, which reflects in every product they create.
- Nike: The punchline they have is “Just Do It.” It reflects athleticism, action, motion, speed and focus. It expresses Nike’s persona in words, which is authentically represented in all of their products, their marketing, and their customer experience.
Think about one line that will dictate everything you want your brand to be known for. Is it impactful? Is it something that you want your brand to be remembered for? If it is, it’s the one!
4. A Consistent Customer Experience
Your customer experience is what will decide how your customers perceive you. Right from the quality of your product, they way you market yourself, your customer service and everything else involved in serving your customers determines who you really are to your customers.
Going back to using Apple as an example, Apple’s products are user friendly, extremely well designed and ooze simplicity through innovation. Their retail store experience is enabled with technology, has the ambience of an innovative store made with high-quality furniture, exquisitely designed interiors and friendly staff. Their customer service revolves around solving problems for their customers in the most efficient and friendly manner possible. Clearly, the entire ‘chain’ of events a customer goes through while being an Apple customer is consistent with what Apple stands for and wants to be known for.
Developing this consistency throughout your customer experience is key to reminding customers who you are as a brand. It conveys to your customers that you are, who you really are, and you stick to it, so customers know what to expect from you. Through this consistency, your customers can’t help but notice you.
5. Be Where Your Audience Is
You can only increase brand awareness if you’re around the ones who you’d like your brand to be noticed by!
If your brand isn’t where your audience is, you’d be wasting your time and money. Think carefully about where your target audience hangs out, both online and offline. If you’re a sporting brand like Nike, you need to be at sporting events, online sport forums and sports clubs. If you’re a pet products brand like Pedigree, you need to be where pet owners hangout, like dog shows, pet stores, pet blogs and more.
To be noticed by them, you want to be where they are, at the right time. You might put a banner about your brand at a shopping centre, but maybe all that people do at the shopping plaza is buy groceries, so they’re probably not in the right frame of mind to notice what you do. Learn to strike while the iron is hot, so you can form a positive and memorable imprint on your customers minds at the right time and place.
In conclusion, there’s only one thing around which everything else revolves, i.e. your brand persona. Never ever forget who your brand is, because everything you do will be determined by who your brand persona is, including your promotional products.
Reach out to Good Things to explore how we can help with your promotional product needs.
