Many businesses today operate within a crowded market, where it can feel challenging to stand out. But attracting both customers and job seekers requires a strong awareness of your brand, meaning businesses have to find smart ways to get noticed. Read on for a brand awareness definition, then learn why it matters, how to measure brand awareness and tips on how to increase brand awareness. When people recognize your organization's brand, you’ll see recruiting and hiring benefits, increased market share and greater customer trust and loyalty.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is a marketing term referring to how familiar an audience is with a brand and its attributes or its products and services. Ideally, this awareness of the brand is positive and distinguishes the brand from its competition. Band-Aid and Kleenex are popular examples of brands that have achieved ultimate brand awareness — they’re so well-recognized they’ve replaced the generic terms for bandages and tissues.
Brand awareness is different from (but related to) brand recognition and brand loyalty. Brand recognition is the audience’s ability to recognize and identify a brand, while brand loyalty is when people prefer buying the products or services of one company over another because of the company’s brand. Brand awareness is also closely related to the relatively new concept of employer branding, involving your reputation as an employer among both employees and job seekers.
Why is it important to increase brand awareness?
When people are familiar with your brand and its products or services, the benefits are plentiful. Brand awareness differentiates you in today’s busy marketplace and helps you increase market share, as customers are more familiar with your products and services than your competitors’ offerings. In fact, the most valuable brands in the world are often the most recognizable.
Having a recognizable brand helps you to build customer trust and loyalty, leading to repeat purchases and more interactions with your brand. Brand awareness also extends to recruitment and hiring, as having a strong brand is a good jumping-off point for building a robust employer brand. Your positive brand sentiment, or the things your organization does particularly well, can be used to assess and refine your employer brand, helping you drive candidate engagement and consideration.
How to measure brand awareness
The numerous ways to measure brand awareness fall into two categories: quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative methods use numerical data and include metrics such as website traffic, tracking backlinks to the company’s website and social engagement (including followers, likes, retweets, comments). Qualitative methods measure subjective value and include conducting customer surveys and using social media management tools for social listening. Brand management software can also be used to better understand your brand reputation and identify areas of improvement.
Wondering how to increase brand awareness? Start with these five tips:
- Tell your story. Storytelling is an effective way to expand awareness of your brand, and you can easily start by sharing your own company’s origin story. Stories are a powerful force in shaping human behaviour, research shows, and they can bring humanity and purpose to your brand. Sharing your company’s story can help humanize your business, distinguish it from the competition and help you establish credibility and trust with your audience.
- Stand for something. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays an important role in building a positive brand, as it matters greatly to both consumers and employees. Research shows 82% of Canadians are more likely to purchase products or services from brands whose values align with their own, while 77% of Canadians want to work for companies with a strong CSR program. In response to this, many companies are realizing CSR is no longer a nice-to-have, rather, it’s critical to incorporate their mission into everything they do and to take a stand. From adopting sustainable practices and employee giving and volunteering programs to introducing diversity, inclusion and belonging strategies, there are numerous ways businesses can truly live out their mission and, along the way, build better brand awareness.
- Focus on social media. In our increasingly digital world, social media is an important tool for building brand awareness. Consumers are increasingly using social media to interact with businesses, Jamie Gilpin, chief marketing officer of Sprout Social, tells Forbes, including discovering new brands, making purchases and recommending brands to their friends and family. Another benefit is that data gleaned from social media can help companies better understand what their customers want and need. If you’re not sure where to start with social media, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)'s free guide will walk you through establishing a presence, creating content and monitoring results.
- Be consistent. Building a strong brand and increasing brand awareness requires brand consistency, meaning the way you present your company and the messages it delivers are aligned. Consistency helps people recognize your brand, increasing trust and loyalty and distinguishing you from your competition. There are numerous ways to develop and maintain brand consistency, such as developing and following brand guidelines or using digital asset management software.
- Promote your Canadian credentials. Canadians are inclined to buy locally produced goods and services and are willing to pay a premium to get them, research from the BDC shows. “But too many businesses underestimate the power that made-in-Canada messaging can have in attracting and keeping customers,” writes Pierre Cléroux, vice president, research and chief economist at BDC. Consider touting your Canadian credentials, and that also goes for businesses selling in international markets, where Canadian brands also have a positive perception.
These five tips will help you to increase your company’s brand awareness, so you can stand out in today’s crowded market and attract both customers and job seekers to your business.
