Today, audiences are bombarded with thousands of marketing messages, new businesses and brands, "innovative" new tools that promise more productivity, privacy, ease of use, security, and efficiency.
So how does your brand stand out amid this marketing noise? Enter the brand awareness campaign.
Brand awareness refers to how memorable your brand is to your target consumer. It's how easily people recognise your brand when, for example, they hear your brand name or see your logo. Below, we'll discuss what brand awareness campaigns are and some helpful tips and tricks to craft effective awareness campaigns.
What is a Brand Awareness Campaign?
A brand awareness campaign aims to improve a brand's "recognisability" to its target audience. This could mean:
Consumers having knowledge of what your brand is known for
A social media user knowing that your ad will be funny or motivational when it comes across their feed
Customers consciously choosing your brand or content over other cheaper or more accessible options
The goal of an awareness campaign is that your ideal consumer forms the right impression and associations with your brand. A successful awareness campaign will showcase your unique selling point (USP) and demonstrate why you're different from the competition.
There are three main reasons for creating an awareness campaign:
1. To control how your brand is viewed/perceived. While you cannot tell people what you think, you can influence their perception of a brand and nurture positive associations.
2. Awareness campaigns help build trust between the brand and the ideal audience. Why does this matter? According to recent studies, trust is the second most important factor when deciding to shop with a new brand (naturally, price is first). Thus, it is well worth the effort to build relationships with the audience built on trust.
3. Trust can lead to customer loyalty. On one hand, happy and loyal customers recommend your brand to friends and family, increasing your number of customers and sales. On the other hand, over time, loyal customers reduce the cost of customer acquisition. Win-win either way.
5 Tips for Building An Effective Brand Awareness Campaign
Here are some helpful tips that will improve the success of your brand awareness campaigns.
1) Know Your Target Audience
The first step in setting up an effective brand awareness campaign is to understand who exactly it is you're trying to reach. Campaigns without clear targets are campaigns that fail.
To start, look at your current audience/customers. Who buys your products, consumes your content or follows you on social media? These are the people who already identify with your brand, so it would be worth it to look at what they have in common. What matters to them, what problems they have, where they live, what they are interested in.
The next step is competitive research. Where do they shop? Who else do they follow? Chances are that your customers also engage with and buy from your competition, so spend time gathering intel.
Armed with the data on your research, you can build a profile for your brand's ideal customer. This is who your campaign will focus on and who you will have to appeal to.
2) Market in the Right Channels
A good brand awareness campaign isn't only about who you target, but where you target too. Where does your ideal customer spend their time? Are they spending hours watching TikToks or streaming content on Twitch? This again emphasises the importance of the research conducted in the first step on the ideal audience and where the campaign will have the most impact.
The optimal solution is to target your marketing in the channels that your audience spends the most time in.
Say you're a designer and you know your audience are heavy Instagram users. Armed with this insight, you can craft multiple marketing assets that are compatible and effective on Instagram: videos, images, and Reels.
3) Set Achievable Goals for Your Campaign
The next stage of the campaign is to set S.M.A.R.T. short-term and long-term marketing goals. Consider:
What do you want to achieve from your campaign?
How this campaign fits into the overall plans for your brand?
What strategies can best help you achieve your goals? (e.g paid social, social media, influencer marketing, traditional channels such as TV or radio)
How you'll track your progress?
Having concrete goals will give you a clearer picture of what success looks like and reduces the risk of you running a campaign without direction.
4) Launch!
Congratulations! You have put together a well thought out brand awareness campaign, and you did it right. Push that "Post" button and let the magic happen.
While the campaign is live, be sure to engage with your audience online and highlight your brand's personality. The stage is yours!
5) Track Your Results
How will you know if your campaign is working? Well, you review the measurement success criteria against the live results.
The specific metrics you measure will vary depending on the marketing strategy used. For example, if you are running a campaign on Instagram, you're likely to track metrics such as likes, shares, and comments. If you ran a campaign on paid ads, you'll likely use Google Analytics to track your click-through rates (CTR) and conversions.
The important thing is to measure your results and implement strategy changes if necessary.
A bonus thing to keep in mind is that marketing is an iterative process. Running a campaign is a continual process of compiling data, deploying the campaign, tracking the data, analysing the results, and starting all over again.
Closing
A brand awareness campaign helps you show how prospects perceive your brand. With the right campaign, you can influence what people think of your brand and ensure they remember you for the right reasons!
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