5 Ways to Increase Your Brand Awareness
Branding yourself is one of the most important things you can do to establish and grow your business. After all, who is going to buy from you if they don’t know who you are? As the old saying goes, you are only as strong as your reputation. The better your brand recognition, the greater your business’s chances of success. As such, you need to work hard to build brand awareness in the eyes of customers, clients, vendors, suppliers, partners, and suppliers alike. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Here are five effective ways to increase brand awareness.
Reputation Management
The first and most important way to increase brand awareness is to build and manage your company’s reputation. When customers are unsure about where to purchase products or services from, they will often go with companies that have a good reputation. Bad or damaged reputations can be very hard to overcome, but it’s important to create a strong and positive one. One of the best ways to do this is to get your company’s name out there in the public sphere. This can be done both officially and unofficially.
Official Branding
An official branding effort will consist of activities such as creating a logo, choosing industry-related branding colours, and coming up with a tagline that will appear on business cards, advertisements, and stationery. Make sure that your branding efforts are consistent and follow the correct format so that everyone associated with the company knows what to expect from you. You should also update your branding as needed to reflect any changes in your company or industry.
Unofficial Branding
Unofficial branding is also known as guerrilla marketing. This type of branding uses all of the same elements as official branding, but in a more off-the-cuff manner. You may have seen unbranded coffee shops and unbranded gas stations in your neighbourhood. These types of places exist because they understand the importance of branding and are willing to go without an official logo in order to reach customers. You can do the same with your small business.
Creating a Strong Branding Strategy
While it’s important to come up with a concept and an image for your brand, it’s even more important to choose the right target audience and the right products/services to sell. This will help you to better align your efforts with your goals. Once you’ve decided who your ideal customer is, you can begin to create a branding strategy that will help you reach them. In order to create a successful branding strategy, you’ll need to do the following:
