Brand Awareness: The Ultimate Guide for Small Business Owners

Apple, McDonald’s, and Home Depot — these are household brands. You might not be a customer, but you definitely know their products.

These companies weren’t always popular. Apple nearly failed before it started. McDonald’s began as a small-town burger chain. And, Home Depot started as a half-baked idea in a coffee shop.

All of these companies relied on their products to build brand awareness and become the giants they are today. In this post, I’ll show you how you can mirror their success and use the same marketing techniques to build brand awareness for your small business. Let’s get started.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how easy it is for customers to recognize your business. It’s how closely they pay attention to your company and how they perceive your products and services. Businesses with great brand awareness can often generate more sales because people are more familiar with and invested in their products.

Brand awareness is closely tied to customer loyalty. People who follow your brand are more likely to choose you over a competitor. A strong brand identity helps you develop customer relationships because it makes your business more personal, in some ways – it gives you a personality and a tone of voice that people can associate with your brand and, sometimes, resonate with. That creates strong emotions toward your business, which becomes part of your brand identity.

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For example, I love Nike. When I think about the brand, I think about the athletes it sponsors, the commercials on TV, and the tons of high-quality Nike products I own. To me, Nike is synonymous with sports, athletics, and style – that’s why I continue to buy from this company.

Brand awareness also lends itself to customer acquisition, which is the process of attracting new customers to your business. New buyers are likely to go with brands they’re familiar with because they often trust companies they know more about.

Take Sephora, for example. I don’t buy makeup for myself, but if I wanted to buy it as a gift, for example, I would go to Sephora because I’m familiar with this brand. I know it’s a major distributor, and several friends shop at its stores. This brand awareness elicits positive feelings about Sephora even though I have no experience with the company.

That’s not an accident, either. Sephora has a strong brand awareness strategy and wants people to think about its brand this way. Let’s review why this strategy is important and how you can create a similar effect at your company.

Brand Awareness Strategy

A brand awareness strategy is a plan for building branding awareness and how your company will measure its success over time. A good brand awareness strategy involves multiple communication channels, complementary marketing campaigns, and feedback collection systems that help you improve your advertisements and techniques.

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We’ll explain the different ways to build brand awareness in the next section, but for now, let’s review the metrics or data points you should use to measure your success.

Brand Awareness Metrics

Metrics are data points that describe your business performance. They’re important because they provide insights that help you improve marketing campaigns.

Here are the metrics you should track for a brand awareness strategy:

• Social Media Followers: Your social media followers are the people who like or follow your social accounts. You can find this number on your account page or business profile.

• Social Media Impressions: Impressions are the number of people who saw your content. Most social media sites have built-in reporting tools that show you this number.

• Online Presence Score: This free tool measures your online presence and provides insights on improving brand awareness online.

• Website Traffic: Website traffic is the number of people who visit your website during a certain time.

• Branded Search Volume: Branded search volume is an SEO term that describes how many people search for phrases or topics related to your business. To measure search volume, you’ll need a tool like Semrush.

• Customer Feedback: Feedback helps you understand how people feel about your brand. The better your reviews are (and the more positive reviews you have), the more people will want to shop at your business.

• Customer Referrals: Customer referrals are recommendations to shop at your business. If you have a lot of referrals, it means people trust your brand.

• Ads Analytics: If you’re advertising on Google or social media, you should also track your performance there. Ad managers like Google Ads have built-in reporting features that show how many people saw your ad and clicked on it.

Now that you know how to measure brand awareness, let’s discuss how you can build it and grow your business.

1. Research your target audience.

The best place to start your brand awareness campaign is with research. Your “target audience” describes the people you want to promote your business to. Knowing as much as possible about your target audience is important because it will help you create effective marketing campaigns.

Here are some things you should research about your target audience:

• Demographics (age, location, occupation, etc.)
• Challenges
• Goals
• Likes & Dislikes
• Buying Habits

You should also create a buyer persona. A buyer persona describes your ideal customer and is a resource to refer to when designing ads and campaigns.

Your buyer persona will help you identify the best marketing channels, the pain points your customers are experiencing, and the right messages to persuade them to buy your products.

2. Build a brand with values.

It’s hard to build brand awareness if you don’t have a consistent brand. But, what exactly is a brand, anyway?

Your brand is what you want customers to think of your company. It includes physical assets like products, packaging, and logos, as well as conceptual features like your vision, mission statement, and culture.

Your brand represents your company. It should be clear and consistent so customers know exactly what to expect from your business. For example, all of John Deere’s products are green, so you know they’re from John Deere as soon as you see them. When people see a big green tractor, they immediately think of this brand and its values like community, agriculture, and more.

I can’t even resist hopping in one of these things when I see them at a county fair.

Brand values are important because they help you relate to customers. Sure, green tractors are cool, but John Deere customers don’t care about the color of their machines. They appreciate the brand’s commitment to quality and their excellent customer service.

Your business should identify its brand values and promote them to your customers. That will help you create effective marketing campaigns that resonate with your target audience.

3. Use multiple marketing channels.

If you want to grow your brand, you should use multiple marketing channels, such as social media, websites, local listings, and more. These channels help you reach more customers, giving you more people to advertise and interact with.

Here are the marketing channels that you should consider for your brand awareness campaign:

• Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.)
• Websites
• Email
• Local Business Listings
• Print Ads
• Podcasts
• SMS messaging

If you’re looking at this list and wondering how you will manage these all at once, don’t worry. Here’s where marketing software comes into play. Marketing software, like a social media management tool and an online listings manager, combines your marketing channels together, making them easier to manage and track.

4. Invest in SEO.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is critical to getting discovered online.

When people ask me, “What is SEO?” I tell them that it’s the process of marketing your business on search engines like Google. It’s what you do to get your website to appear when people search for your company online.

For example, when I search for “best dentist near me,” here’s what I see:

The companies that appear first all have great reviews – that’s important for SEO. They also have updated online listings, so Google knows when these businesses are open, where they’re located, and which ones offer the services I’m looking for.

Several other factors will contribute to your SEO strategy. To learn more, check out this blog post about SEO for small businesses.

5. Create branded content.

Content marketing is another effective way to build brand awareness online. Content is a digital or physical marketing asset created by your business. A social media post is a piece of content. A YouTube video is also content. This blog post is even a piece of content – you get the idea.

Content marketing allows you to talk about your business or industry. You can inform, update, or entertain your followers to keep them interested in your brand.

For example, this electrician has a YouTube channel where he tells people about his business. He reviews tools, shares stories, and creates compelling content that keeps his followers coming back for more. He’s not outright promoting his business, but he is building brand awareness through content marketing.

6. Think beyond your products.

There’s a time and place to promote your products, but brand awareness campaigns are where you should get people to fall in love with your business instead. Rather than pushing your latest deals, think beyond your products and consider how you can solve your customers’ problems.

For example, our social media page shares tips for business owners who want to grow their brands. We share videos like this one, which features advice for improving marketing, sales, and customer service at small businesses.

We also provide webinars and podcasts led by small business experts. These resources help our customers manage successful businesses and work to improve our brand awareness at the same time.

7. Collect customer feedback.

Customer feedback is important for brand awareness for two reasons. First, it tells you what customers think about your brand. You can see what they like and dislike and make changes to improve your business over time.

The other reason is for SEO. Did you know that if you have a lot of good reviews, you’re more likely to appear on search engines like Google?

It’s true. If you Google, “plumbers near me,” the top results will all have good reviews.

And, that’s not limited to Google. Business listing websites like Yelp, Nextdoor, and Tripadvisor all use reviews to rank their search results. While it’s not the only thing search engines are looking for, it is an important factor in discovering your business online.

Tip: Need more online reviews? Use this free Google Review Link Generator to ask customers for reviews.

8. Publish content regularly.

Publishing a blog post isn’t going to change your website overnight. The same goes for social media, YouTube, and other marketing channels. You have to have a consistent presence on these sites if you want to build brand awareness online.

Here’s where some folks start to feel a little intimidated. You’re busy; we get it. But, it’s actually easier than you think to publish content regularly. With tools like a social media calendar and automated review software, you can maintain a consistent publishing cadence across all your marketing channels.

Not to mention, AI tools can help you manage your workload over time. Here’s one from Thryv that creates eye-catching social media posts:

9. Partner with other brands.

Partnerships are a great way to connect with businesses in your area. If you’re a B2B company, partnerships grow your professional network and increase brand awareness with your target audience. Other business owners will seek out your brand because you’ve created strong relationships with professionals they trust.

Contractors are a great example. The more they build their network, the more they get considered for contracts and jobs. People become familiar with their output and are more likely to include them in future projects. These relationships are vital not just for brand awareness but also for a contractor’s bottom line.

10. Pay to advertise online.

One surefire way to increase the reach of your brand awareness campaign is to advertise online. Paid advertisements like Google and social media ads are an effective way to instantly generate attention for your business. You can boost social posts to a wider audience or target specific phrases people enter on search engines.

For example, here is a Facebook ad for Thryv. We promoted it to people who don’t follow our brand on Facebook, but might be interested in our products.

Here’s another example of a paid ad on Google. Notice how the “Sponsored” tag above the link shows that the company paid for this ad spot.

Online ads are effective because they promote your business to people who may not be familiar with your brand. They’re great for building brand awareness if you have the budget and resources to create them.

11. Utilize offline marketing strategies.

So far, we’ve mostly discussed how to build brand awareness online. However, your brand awareness strategy should include offline marketing tactics like postcards, mailers, and billboards.

These advertisements keep your business relevant and top-of-mind for your customers. For example, when I commuted to work, I saw this billboard every single day:

Source

Billboards and signs are easy to overlook once, but when you see them daily, they slowly engrain an image in your head. I can still picture the ads for Shen Yun, a touring ballet performance that would be advertised on this billboard. I had never heard of this show before, but the billboard did a great job of creating brand awareness.

The Importance of Brand Awareness

The importance of brand awareness can’t be understated. If you want to grow your business, you have to make people feel connected to your company. Your products and services are how you close the deal, but your brand is what opens the door to marketing opportunities. Follow these tips and start creating a strong brand that attracts new customers and drives lucrative sales over time.