Brand awareness – a quick reminder
Building a brand, or in other words the identity of a business, is a coherent and thoughtful process of creating its image. Fixing the fact of its existence as well as specific emotions and associations with which the brand wants to be identified in the minds of consumers.
Activities that make up branding, i.e. building brand awareness, begin at the stage of finding an appropriate name for the planned undertaking – a company, brand or service – and continue throughout its existence on the market. All of this is done in order to maintain contact with existing customers, attract new ones, build a market position and support sales results.
Brand awareness is nothing but a measure of its familiarity. Brands with a strong market position are recognizable – consumers associate their name, logotype and other elements of visual identification, they know what they are famous for, what products or services they offer and what values they identify with. Achieving such a state is extremely difficult, but also crucial from a business point of view, as branding to a large extent shapes the choices made by consumers.
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another
As a rule, the effects of efforts made in the field of brand awareness building are assessed by means of surveys on two levels:
Unaided brand awareness – the ability to recall a brand or product in response to a specific cue. This measure assesses how large a percentage will indicate our brand as their first choice (top-of-mind) brand for a specific product category.
Aided brand awareness – a measure to assess the percentage of people who are familiar with a brand, but who were previously presented with a list of brands or logos.
What is brand visibility?
Part of the process of building brand awareness is brand visibility. It should be understood as a frequency at which the target audience can see the brand on various marketing channels. This is especially important today, when many of our lives have largely shifted to the digital world. However, the challenge is to create coherent marketing communication, design eye-catching creations and reach the target group.
How can we effectively measure brand visibility? This is not an easy task, yet it is extremely important because ongoing monitoring and taking appropriate remedial action translates into a positive impact on a company’s performance in the long run. It allows us to assess the effectiveness of the actions taken and to allocate the marketing budget in the most optimized way.
Brand visibility is most often measured by:
Viewability,
Video Completion Rate,
In-View time.
What is also worth mentioning is that brand visibility is also about eliminating fraudential traffic, which means delivering marketing content to real users not bots. RTB House has achieved the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) Certified Against Fraud Seal for adopting industry best practices to reduce the negative impact of fraudulent traffic and improving brand safety in digital advertising.
Brand awareness and brand visibility – the main differences
Brand visibility and brand awareness are two different, yet intertwined issues. By brand visibility we should understand the frequency with which people have the opportunity to come into contact with the brand. The purpose of such action is clear – to attract the attention of customers, encourage contact, convince them to make a purchase, etc.
Brand awareness, on the other hand, is the level of awareness of a brand among its target audience. It is a measure that answers key business questions – how many consumers recognize a brand and can associate it correctly with its product or service.
Several ways to achieve brand visibility and awareness in the marketplace
When planning a marketing strategy, it is worth bearing in mind that brand visibility and awareness can be built in many different ways and using many different methods. It is worth focusing on, among others:
SEO – optimizing your website for keywords is a chance to reach many new customers. Consumers looking for a particular product or service may go directly to the website of a brand they know, but very often they use search engines to help them. Effective identification of the keywords they use during such searches can have a very positive impact not only on the number of views of the company website, but also in conversion.
Obtaining a high position in search results is not an easy task, let alone a quick one. However, it is worth taking up the challenge and showing patience when competing for keywords, as this tactic allows the company to reach consumers at the moment they potentially express interest in its offer.
Advertising – relying only on customers brought to the site by search engines is generally insufficient, so it is worth supporting yourself with advertising. Broad advertising campaigns, implemented on many levels, allows you to reach mass audiences and build brand visibility, but also requires the involvement of significant funds. The key to success, however, depends on proper planning and optimization of the advertising campaign in order to maximize long-term benefits for the brand. Luckily today modern technology provides great help in this matter.
An effective way of utilizing a marketing budget is undoubtedly taking advantage of artificial intelligence-enabled solutions that optimize online ads – namely contextual targeting. Deep Learning can analyze user information in fractions of a second and decide not only which ad creative to present, but also whether its display is likely to trigger the desired action.
As a result, the marketing message reaches the precisely defined target group, the ads appear in the appropriate company, the conversion rate skyrockets, and the marketing budget is finally optimized, not burnt out.
Social Media – an important marketing channel that supports building a strong brand. Both popular brands, directing their offer to the mass customer, as well as luxury brands, addressing their products or services to a narrow audience, take them into account in their branding strategies. It is important to get to know the preferences of your target group and make sure to be present in those media that are used by your potential customers. An appropriately designed strategy, regular publication of engaging content and engagement in interaction with users have already led many brands to success, so it is worth taking advantage of this opportunity.
Public Relations – building and maintaining good relations with journalists allows the marketing message to reach a wide range of potential consumers of our products and at the same time stay in their consciousness for longer. Similar effects can be achieved by engaging influencers. Thanks to large reach and credibility in the eyes of their observers they are able, in a very short time, to reach a large group of potential customers with a product recommendation.
The key to success, however, is choosing the right people to promote – journalists or influencers – not necessarily the most popular, but those with whom we would like our brand to be associated.
Sponsorships – a way to become known in the target group’s consciousness is also sponsoring various events – usually sports events or concerts. This is a method worth considering both for popular brands that want to reach the masses and for niche brands that through supporting certain initiatives can ensure their proper exposure and often also additional publications and mentions in the media
Partnerships – an equally interesting marketing technique, which supports building a recognizable brand, is signing a partnership agreement with another organization or person (e.g. a respected sportsman). The purpose is to increase brand exposure, enter a new market, reach new groups of customers or add value to a product or service.
Do you have to choose between brand visibility and brand awareness?
Designing and effectively implementing a coherent marketing strategy leads to improved brand visibility and, consequently, to increased brand awareness among the target group. Therefore, there is no need to separate the activities undertaken and focus on each of these areas separately.
What is important is to create a strong and well-thought-out branding – built on the values with which the brand wants to be identified. It is also important to maintain the consistency of communication across all the used channels. Adherence to these principles, combined with ongoing monitoring of the results of actions taken, will certainly bring us closer to the goal, which is to build a strong and recognizable brand.
If you have any questions, comments or issues, or you’re interested in meeting with us, please get in touch.
