What is the first brand that comes to mind when you think about having a drink or buying a new smartphone? What if I tell you that with the right tools and strategies, your brand can be the first to pop up in your persona's mind when they think of your segment? Top-of-mind awareness – or TOMA – is a critical concept in market research that measures how high brands rank in the consciousness of consumers. 77% of people refer to specific items by brand names, and the first brand that comes to mind when consumers think of a particular niche, product or industry has achieved the top mind awareness. Achieving this status isn't easy, but the closer your brand gets to it, the stronger it becomes. That's why your focus must be on creating brand awareness. Brand awareness is how you can gain the public's trust, influence their decision-making process, target new demographics and reduce overall marketing spending. As a result, you will get more sales faster. The core value of brand awareness is trust. Once consumers bond to your brand, they're more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought, which develops loyalty over time. Before we get into the tips on how to build brand awareness through campaigns, you must take a look at your performance indicators first to understand how high your current brand awareness is. These include: That is the foundation to see where you should focus the most. Done that, let's go deep into the step-by-step on how to increase brand awareness with campaigns: Your brand's voice is how people will recognize you even though your branding is not entirely showing. Authenticity is impactful and can lead to a significant boost in brand awareness. You develop a strong voice by: Treating your brand as a person and using storytelling to showcase your story, core values, and features will create your brand's personality. The natural step is to infuse it into your marketing efforts. We are sorry to tell you that just selecting a bunch of brand colours and fonts isn't going to deliver the best results. Instead, the best visual strategies understand the principles of visual marketing and use these to their advantage when crafting a compelling and strategic visual presence. Visual marketing is the act of harnessing eye-catching images, graphics and video to communicate messages and sell products and services. With the right visual strategy in place for your campaign and brand, you'll never again produce a piece of visual content that inaccurately portrays your brand or message. It is a mistake to believe that only online marketing is effective. It is indeed a handy tool, but you should also consider that in our daily life, we are more active out than inside and constantly see out-of-home advertising. Traditionally this includes everything from billboards to bus shelters, benches, and everything in between. Nowadays, many different types of outdoor advertising media are available, so one of them can be helpful for your business. Just be aware of each option, its benefits, and if it fits your business strategy. OOH has a positive effect as a complement to digital advertising. Did you know that people who see an OOH campaign are 17% more likely to engage with the brand through mobile devices? This translates into higher awareness and engagement through social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. Let's say you're in the headset business. You might set up your SEO around keywords such as 'buy headset,' but raising awareness around your brand goes beyond raising awareness for just your products. People interested in products and services like yours have more questions than 'where to buy a headset.' You must write content for all the other questions they might have. Consequently, you'll start popping up in those first search results, and you can get more clicks on your brand awareness campaign if you focus on the right questions. Friends, family and influencers we follow closely are more likely to recommend us assertively, as we already trust and know them enough to make a purchase based on their opinions. A referral program is a system that motivates previous customers to suggest products or services to their families and friends. This is especially interesting as 49% of U.S. consumers say friends and family are their top sources of brand awareness. Airbnb has been doing it very well. Their approach was a success because they streamlined the sharing and shopping experience and leaned into their users' desire to help, using A/B testing to prove that positioning the reward as a gift to a friend produced better results than a message emphasizing receiving compensation for yourself. Referral programs to boost brand awareness aren't just for large companies. Many products and services can be promoted if planned thoughtfully. Moreover, it can be way cheaper than other marketing options. A campaign focused on engaging current customers with your referral program can lead to excellent results. If you want your personas' attention, ask them to create or interact with content somehow instead of just consuming it passively. Whether your goal is to drive more traffic to your site, get more social media followers, or grow your email list, you can achieve it by running a successful online giveaway. With a giveaway, you won't only make the day of one lucky winner, but you can introduce your brand to a whole new audience. Make sure you choose goals for your giveaway contest and pick a fantastic prize. The better the prize, the higher the engagement! You also need to determine the giveaway contest rules and find a giveaway plugin to create the contest. With a little incentive, you could create a giveaway or competition that gains traction through shares, all while increasing brand awareness in a fun way. You can combine the data you get from brand tracking with sales data, advertising reach data, web traffic data and social media data to get a complete picture of how your brand awareness campaign has performed. For example, if you want to measure awareness, you should use metrics like reach, volume, amplification and exposure. Similarly, it would be best to use metrics around comments, retweets, participants and replies to measure engagement in a social media campaign. Follow these tips on your next brand awareness campaign, and you'll find an engaged audience that recognizes your brand among competitors and becomes a loyal fan. The Weggo team can help you define the best strategies for your business and how to invest in each of them. Schedule your free strategic call today!But how do you do that?
1. Have a strong brand voice
2. Create a visual strategy that represents your brand
3. Invest in out-of-home advertising
4. Double down on SEO, content marketing and social media impact
5. Start with referral programs.
6. Organize contests and giveaways
7. Track and measure your brand awareness campaign