Brand awareness is at the heart of any successful marketing campaign. If your brand resonates with potential customers and sticks in their minds, they’ll immediately think of your company when they come to buy products. But building a solid brand is so difficult and it takes a long time to do it properly. Sorting out your social media profiles and injecting a bit of a personality that connects with people is a good way to do it, but people often focus on that and nothing else. While it’s important that you get your online presence spot on, it’s only one of a wide range of techniques you can use to build brand awareness. These are some of the best ones that you might not have tried yet.
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Referral Programs
Referral programs are a great way to get your customers to do the leg work for you. Essentially, you offer them some kind of incentive to get their friends and family to engage with you. For example, if you’re running a subscription service of some kind, you can give people a discount on their next month’s payment if they get a friend to sign up using a referral code that you give them. Or you could give people money off vouchers for products if a friend buys something from you as well and quotes a referral code. This is so effective because the benefits pass down the line. For example, person A buys a product and likes it. Then you email them and say that if they refer a friend, they’ll get a discount on their next purchase. So, they tell their friend, person B about it and they come to buy something as well. That’s one extra sale you’ve made from the second person. But person A still has that discount code so they’re probably going to buy something with it, that’s another sale you’ve made. Meanwhile, person B is enjoying the product they bought and they think that they’ll take advantage of the referral service and so they get a friend involved and the cycle continues. Before you know it, you’ve got a group of people interested in your brand off the back of one single sale.
Branded Freebies
This is such an old method of marketing but it’s still so effective. Getting people to recognize your brand on sight is your aim here and exposure is the easiest way to do that. The best way to expose people to your brand on a regular basis is to distribute promotional products like bags, pens, keyrings, USB sticks and whatever else you can slap a logo on. You can get a big range of products from online companies like Dynamic Gift, the possibilities are endless. You need to think about what your target demographic is and what products they’re going to use on a daily basis. Every time they pick up that pen or use your branded tote bag, your brand is sticking in their mind.
Event Marketing
Event marketing is a great way to get face to face with your customers and promote your brand. Setting up a great stall at a trade event with thousands of people walking by gives you a lot of exposure in a relatively short period of time. Appearing at a marketing event lends you a certain legitimacy because customers tend to assume that only the best companies in the industry attend those kinds of events, even if it’s not true. It’s also a great way to meet with any potential collaborators and put yourself on their radar. This could come in handy later.
Collaborations
Other companies may be further along than you are when it comes to branding and you can piggyback off their success through collaborations. If you can find a company that isn’t in direct competition with you but appeals to a very similar target market to you, you could both increase your brand awareness by collaborating with one another on a marketing campaign. For example, if you’re running a company selling cooking equipment, you could partner with a company that sells ovens. It stands to reason that the target market for both of those products is people that cook. If you create a joint marketing campaign, their customers will be interested in your brand and vice versa. It’s a great way to increase brand awareness a lot without spending too much extra money. However, you’ve got to be careful when you’re choosing a company to partner with. It’s important that you check out their financial history and meet the people you’ll be working with a few times. You don’t want to get into a partnership with a company that is going to be difficult further down the line.
Car Wraps
This is a marketing tactic that is shamefully underappreciated, partly because people think that it comes across as tacky. But car wraps with your branding on reach so many people every day and they’re so cost-effective. There are a lot of businesses, construction companies, for example, that use branding on their vehicles all the time, but it works for any business. If you’re already driving to and from work anyway, why not advertise yourself along the way? The amount of people that you drive past every single day is massive and anybody that sees the car parked out and about is reached as well. Compared with the one-off cost of putting a wrap on your car, that’s a lot of people to reach. There aren’t many other marketing techniques that will reach that many people with your brand for so little financial input. It’s also a good thing to do if you’re offering company cars to your employees. If you’re going to supply a vehicle for them, you should get something back from it and put some car wraps on there as well.
Also Read
Social media is a great way of pushing your brand and you need to use it well, but don’t limit yourself. Use all of these great techniques alongside your social media and you’ll start increasing brand awareness in no time.
