To become an industry benchmark and lead customers to trust your company or brand, numbers are not enough. Having a large following on social networks or a lot of visibility on any channel in many cases is not enough to convert by getting customers and earnings. Beyond the technique, a major role in winning and retaining users on the web is played by brand awareness.
For those unfamiliar with the meaning of this term, building brand awareness or brand knowledge means increasing a brand’s recognizability and notoriety as well as its reputation (and we often hear about brand reputation as well). In order for this to be possible, one has to work hard on one’s brand identity and audience; it makes no difference whether one is doing personal branding or working on the recognizability of a company.
This course of action to increase one’s audience and build loyalty scares many people, but it is actually not something impossible. And sometimes a large investment is not even necessary. Hiring a brand manager or a famous brand ambassador as the big giants do is therefore not an indispensable strategy to follow, and in this guide we will share with you 5 strategies to increase brand awareness and authority of your company on the web without owning exorbitant or unobtainable resources.
Storytelling for brand awareness
Do you want to effectively build lasting brand awareness for your company?
Then tell a great story. Show your audience that you are close to them, that you understand people’s needs, and create human connections with them to let them trust you. Indeed, the spirit and heart of any business is human connections. The storytelling is the best way to empathize and connect with people and build your corporate identity.
A brand story is the best way to start storytelling: we are talking about simply telling the story of your brand, what its mission is and what goals it wants to achieve to fulfill it. A compelling story must be original and captivating to capture audience. It must motivate the audience to follow the brand and leave them with something useful. There are 3 main methods by which storytelling can be done effectively: blogging, social networking and influencer marketing.
Blog to increase brand authority
Creating a corporate blog (just like this one) and including storytelling in the editorial plan can be very useful to have a tool that is always good for attracting audiences. Articles on a blog do not disappear into thin air among many posts after a short time as happens on social networks or other channels, but remain on the website and can also rank on search engines.
It is therefore a potentially everlasting resource. Placing corporate values and benefits within narrative elements in an article is the perfect way to do storytelling with a blog. But for this content to easily gain visibility, there is also a need for other types of articles that easily bring us users. We are thinking, for example, of informational content such as guides, tutorials, market research, and so on.
Content that is often searched for by users on search engines and on which they might happen upon without the need for our intervention. Through this content, using links or leveraging the authority the site has gained on search engines, we can direct users to our storytelling articles that we will then use to increase brand awareness.
Social network
While blogging is a useful strategy in the long run, storytelling on social networks is one of the best strategies to increase our brand awareness in the immediate term. A post on Facebook, LinkedIn or other platforms gains visibility much more easily in the short term because users see it appear on their walls or receive notifications if they are already followers of our brand.
Those with a small following can increase brand awareness with social networks by making a storytelling post to go for paid promotion through sponsored posts. In fact, social networks offer built-in tools to promote paid posts and get them to as many people as possible.
Influencer marketing
If someone famous or otherwise with lots of followers advertises our brand, our brand awareness can skyrocket in no time. Of course, if done in the right way. This is why we recommendinfluencer marketing.
There are many influencers who agree, in return for payment of larger or smaller sums or in exchange for reciprocal advertising, to sponsor a brand. However, it is necessary to analyze the profiles of influencers to identify the suitable one, otherwise the strategy may be counterproductive.
A suitable influencer is someone who does not sponsor solely for money, but because he or she is convinced that a particular brand deserves to be sponsored. It must also be an influencer who works in the same industry as the company or person for whom you want to increase brand awareness.
Interacting with the public to build brand awareness
What better way to build brand awareness can there be than to talk directly to your audience? Listening to the needs of those who follow us or are interested in our brand, giving them advice and making them feel closer to us can build their lifelong loyalty and buy them an unimaginable amount of trust.
One can interact with the public in many ways, but we believe that when one is on the Web, the most effective ways to show the public how close we are to them and how valuable our services are are two, namely the following.
Creating a community
The communities online Are the strength of brands. The biggest one. A community can build a company’s brand awareness on its own. Building a community, especially a loyal one, can be extremely arduous. But once built, it is a gold mine for any company or brand. There are a number of ways to build a community on the Web: we list some of them below.
- Creating a social page;
- Create and grow a group on Facebook or other social networks;
- Create a YouTube channel that speaks directly to users or followers;
- Create a discussionforum.
Managing a community can be time-consuming. To best optimize it, you need to identify the goals to be achieved, create a team to manage it if it becomes large, think about a netiqutte (a code of conduct), an editorial plan, and participate in conversations as much as possible, as well as reward the most active members.
Reviews to increase brand awareness
Finally, one of the elements that leads many people to immediately trust a company even if they do not know it is positive reviews on the web. On platforms such as Google My Business and on social networks, but also on popular websites such as Trustpilot (or TripAdvisor for tourism and accommodations), you can create a profile of your company to appear on search engines and get users to leave reviews. By offering good services and inviting users to leave positive reviews you can increase your brand awareness without any substantial investment.
We hope these strategies for building your brand awareness have been helpful to you. Should you need help in managing your brand reputation or using all the tools you need to build your brand, you can explore our customized solutions on the Oltrematica website or contact us directly from the Contact.