The term “brand awareness” describes the ability of potential buyers to recall or recognize a popular brand when choosing or purchasing a product. It also includes the ability of consumers to quickly and easily identify a brand by individual characteristics.
Consumer awareness of a brand has a direct impact on sales of a product, so significant attention should be paid to the marketing campaign to increase brand awareness. The competitiveness of products and the prospects for the long-term growth of the brand depend on the popularity of the brand.
How brand awareness works
Few consumers really understand the quality of the products they purchase. In fact, people are more likely to believe advertised features or reviews. Standing in front of the store counter, customers choose those brands that they have heard or read about somewhere. Most people prefer familiar brands.
That is why a high level of product awareness gives the brand an advantage over lesser-known products. The higher the popularity of a brand, the more likely it is that the buyer will remember exactly about it at the time of choosing goods from one category.
Types of assessments of the level of brand popularity
Brand awareness can be measured within a specific segment or target market. It helps to build the right brand promotion strategy and choose communication channels.
Pre-assessment of awareness is always one of the first steps in brand promotion. There are three levels of awareness.
1. Knowledge with hints
This is the weakest level of brand awareness among consumers. Buyers can remember the brand only through direct contact – by seeing the logo, and packaging, and hearing the name or slogan.
2. Knowledge without prompting
At this level of product awareness, consumers list the brand among other brands in a specific product category. This means that the brand is quite clearly imprinted in the memory of the consumer, and evokes a specific associative array.
3. Top of mind
This includes the first 3-4 brands that the buyer remembers in a particular product category. Usually, a person chooses just from these several brands. They have already firmly established themselves in the mind of a person and have even become common nouns. These include, for example, the popular brand Pampers – all diapers in a row are called “pampers”.
Being on Top of mind is an ideal indicator of the level of brand popularity. This means that the products of this brand are the absolute market leader and buyers not only recognize them but can easily remember them.
Recommendations for assessing brand awareness
In order to find out how popular this or that brand is, it is necessary to conduct a survey. It is best to do this in a mall or supermarket. For example, to assess brand awareness in the coffee market, it is necessary to compile a list of all possible brands that are present in this segment. When assessing the level of awareness, one should first ask what brands of coffee the consumer knows. This will help to immediately identify Top of mind brands. After that, consumers can be given various prompts, allowing them to select those brands from the list that they have heard about.
First steps on the way to a popular brand
You can achieve high brand recognition and memorability through advertising, participation in exhibitions, etc. Before proceeding with the direct promotion of the product, you need to go through several preparatory steps.
Step 1: Studying the target audience and market research
At the preparatory stage, you need to get to know your competitors and potential buyers well. Best of all, a detailed market analysis, which is carried out by marketers, will help with this. The research will reveal consumer preferences and the main criteria when choosing a product.
Step 2: Target Designation
You need to clearly understand the goals of the advertising campaign. For example, at the initial stage of brand formation, there may be such goals:
- Increase the number of loyal customers.
- Create a positive image of the company.
- Expand your target audience.
- Increase sales by the end of the year.
It is necessary to set very specific goals (for example, “increase profit by 232%). Without their clear formulation, it is impossible to correctly describe the stages of an advertising campaign.
Step 3: Defining evaluation criteria
In order to evaluate the success of a brand awareness campaign implementation, it is necessary to draw up a set of criteria for evaluating it . These can be indicators such as the number of new customers, buyers who came for the second time, etc.
Ways to increase brand awareness
Usually, the work on increasing brand awareness consists of the following key stages:
A high level of brand awareness can be achieved in the following ways.
Promotion with souvenirs
One of the most effective ways of promotion is the use of souvenirs. When a brand is part of a shopper’s daily life, they will easily recognize and even remember it. The company logo can be put on clothes, stationery, key chains, and all sorts of other things that people use on a daily basis.
Using seasonal trends
As the seasons change, consumers change their preferences a little each time. For example, in summer they drink 3-4% less hot coffee, but they consume more ice cream. In winter, on the contrary, the demand for ice cream falls, but for hot cocoa, it grows. These examples are successful for brands that represent the restaurant business, but manufacturers of ordinary goods and services cannot vary their production so much and constantly change something.
Simpler methods come to the aid of such brands – the use of a seasonal label, packaging redesign, product decoration, and other relevant attributes of the season. This attracts the attention of buyers the most. They easily recognize the brand next time and wait for the release of ” seasonal novelties “, even if only the wrapper changes.
Advertising
The easiest way, but also effective. Here, a company can choose from a variety of modern ways to advertise their brand or a specific product: from spectacular outdoor advertising to hidden advertising on social networks.
Participation in exhibitions or conferences
It is best suited for brands that do not produce goods but provide certain services. Unlike advertising, at the exhibition, the company has the best opportunity to show its advantages to a specific target audience. To do this, you need to prepare an effective presentation and choose a good speaker. It is also worth stocking up on bright and memorable handouts, including promotional samples and souvenirs. All people love small unexpected gifts and will definitely appreciate them.
In developing a strategy to increase brand awareness, the marketing experts of the inGenious Guru digital marketing agency will best help you. Contact our phone managers and we will be happy to put together the best way for you to increase brand awareness.
