5 Proven Ways to Improve Brand Awareness in 2023

Many marketing professionals and brand managers wonder how to build brand awareness effectively and sustainably. Fortunately, some proven methods exist to create a brand awareness strategy that will put you front and centre of your customers’ thoughts when they need your products and services. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the best ways to build brand visibility, and why it’s essential.

Why is Brand Awareness Important?

Brand awareness can be considered a more in-depth cousin of brand recognition. Good brand recognition is when somebody recognises your brand instantly from your logo or other factors. MyNewsDesk describes this as:

“Brand recognition represents how well consumers can correctly identify your brand based on visual and auditory factors such as logo, colours, music, sounds, packaging, etc., without hearing the brand name.”

For example:

All of these are undoubtedly instantly recognisable, but brand awareness goes further than that. Brand awareness incorporates your values, and your audience, and evokes an emotional response when somebody sees it. The above organisations are also great examples of very strong brand awareness.

When we see the Nike tick we think of professional athletes, young and cool customers, and cutting-edge sports equipment. Likewise, the Apple logo evokes feelings of sleek design, new technology and a professional user base. What’s more, strong brand awareness creates trust in your customers and increases the effectiveness of any marketing activity you do. In turn, this helps increase sales and referrals from your existing customers. Finally, it also makes them less likely to look to your competitors when they come to make another purchase.

Put simply, brand recognition and brand awareness are crucial to long-term success.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

There are several tried and tested ways to improve your brand awareness, regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C organisation. So let’s get started.

1. Create a Brand Awareness Strategy. This is always where you should start before undertaking any tactics to increase brand awareness, otherwise, you run the risk of wasting time and money with tactics that don’t suit your brand or audience. To understand how to achieve your goals, you’ll need to define:

   • Your values and messaging
   • Your target audience
   • Your vision
   • Your aims and objectives
   • Your brand guidelines

   Loosely, these are considered your brand identity. We’ve also already written about the core elements of a B2B marketing strategy, which is a great resource if you want more in-depth information.

2. Ensure everything you put out is consistent across all channels. Update your website and your marketing assets, and ensure that everything that goes out on social, via email, via video or on any other channel is consistent with your branding and key values. This will ensure users are reinforced with the same messaging and build a consistent picture in their heads.

3. Tell a story. People like stories. They create a narrative and put a human touch to your brand that people can relate to. Many people are aware that Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage, or that before becoming an electronics behemoth, Samsung was a grocery store in Taegu, Korea. Communicate why your organisation started, how and why you solve people’s problems, or frankly, anything that gets people interested. The only caveat is that it has to be true.

4. Content Creation & PR. If you have a story to tell, the way to do it is to get it in front of people. Create content that will resonate with your audience, in a format that they will consume. Depending on your industry this could be short or long-form text content, podcasts, videos, blog posts, social media posts and more.

   It’s important to understand where your customers spend their time online, which publications they read, who they engage with and the types of content and subject matter that seem to resonate. This way, you can give yourself the best chance of building brand awareness with them. An effective PR strategy to engage with relevant industry publications and influencers will further increase trust.

5. Social Media Activity & Monitoring. Social media is one of the best places to increase brand awareness and presence. We’ve discussed posting the right content, in the right places, to the right people but what does that mean? You need to ensure you:

   • Choose the right platform(s)
   • Be personal and not too salesy
   • Share resources that make people trust you
   • Tell your story
   • Make it shareable
   • Engage with influencers and notable industry figures
   • Interact with your audience
     
     

Building brand awareness can take time, effort and patience, but it’s a long term strategy that will ultimately pay dividends. By creating strong brand awareness, your customers are more likely to remain loyal for longer. Creating an effective brand strategy is not always easy, and engaging with a branding agency throughout the process can help increase its effectiveness and efficiency.

At Withbrand, we have years of experience creating brand strategies for B2B clients across the tech and IT sectors. Don’t hesitate to contact us today to discuss your requirements, and how we can work together to achieve your goals.