How to Increase Brand Awareness: 9 Proven Strategies

Whether you’re launching a brand new business or committed to growing your established one this year, you need to be thinking about how to increase brand awareness.

This is so simple, but it’s worth stating: Before customers can buy your products, recommend your services to their friends, become loyal advocates, or even just follow along for your content, they need to know your business exists. That’s why brand awareness is essential: It’s foundational to building any business.

I’m going to break down some examples of excellent brand awareness marketing to help with your own planning. Let’s get to it.

Contents

• What is brand awareness?
• Why brand awareness is so important
• 9 strategies to increase brand awareness
• Brand awareness examples for inspiration
• How to measure brand awareness

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is the degree to which people are familiar with a company. Most often, this refers to their familiarity with the company’s brand, which means how easily they recognize the logo, remember the company’s name, know the products—or even hum the jingle.

It could also mean how readily people connect a brand with certain values. For example, you could be merely aware of the World Wildlife Fund but completely confident in the organization’s commitment to conservation. That’s excellent brand awareness.

The consistent logo helps with brand awareness for the World Wildlife Fund.

Now, the connection between a non-profit brand and what it stands for is a cleaner line, especially in the case of a huge, long-standing organization like the World Wildlife Fund. But those aren’t the only kinds of organizations associated with brand values. Patagonia has a strong connection to conservation, as well, and environmentalism in general; Bombas has a mission to help people in need.

These associations with core values are great, especially as differentiators. But remember, the most important things are the most fundamental: recognizing your logo, knowing your name, and understanding your product or service. That’s critical.

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Why brand awareness is so important

Brand awareness keeps your company top-of-mind for people. These people can be your customers, or they may not be yet. This brand awareness translates to a few big benefits:

1. Higher sales. People buy from brands they know and trust. Brand awareness and familiarity help build that relationship and establish that trust between your company and your audience. In fact, 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands they can recognize.
2. More effective marketing. When your audience is aware of your brand, they are more likely to notice your marketing. For example, if your logo appears in a list of sponsors for an in-person community event, you’re more likely to be remembered by someone recognizing your logo than by someone seeing it for the first time.
3. Better relationships. When your audience knows your brand and remains tuned into your marketing, you’re building trust and goodwill. These are the foundations of good relationships between a brand and a consumer.
4. Stronger reputation. It can’t be understated that brand awareness can build a long-term reputation. When you have solid relationships and a strong reputation, your audience will shift from brand awareness to brand affinity or even loyalty. This ensures your customers will keep coming back and recommending you through word-of-mouth.

Brand awareness is so important because of these significant benefits, which are all clear ways to grow your business. They’re also especially impactful for small or local businesses.

How to increase brand awareness

Now that we’re clear on what brand awareness is and why it’s beneficial, let’s get to the strategies for building it. Here are the most effective ways to get started.

1. Define a clear brand identity

In order to be recognizable, your branding needs to be consistent. That’s why the first step to increasing brand awareness is defining a clear brand identity.

To get started, your brand identity should be:

• Easy to read in full color as well as all white or all black.
• Considerate of the color palette. Your brand colors need to be consistent throughout your online presence—website, social media—as well as any physical locations, including brick-and-mortar stores, signs, or vehicle wraps.
• Set to a specific font or set of fonts. This will help people recognize your marketing materials.
• Consistent with imagery style. This sounds more complicated than it needs to be. Do you use black-and-white images? Do you use cartoons or realistic depictions? Define your style and stay consistent.

Brand colors can be iconic and recognizable, even out of context.

In addition to creative assets, you’ll also want to document what your brand offers, who your audience is, and what makes you different from your competitors. This should be accessible and easy to understand for your audience, since this is information you want everyone to have.

Finally, you’ll want to spend some time on your brand voice and your brand personality. Are you funny or authoritative, casual or professional? Do you share memes or strictly informational content? Defining your voice and personality will keep your content consistent, which will help your brand become more recognizable.

2. Establish a strong online presence

In order to increase brand awareness, you need to establish a strong, consistent online presence.  That means creating and maintaining a company website, accurate business listings, and social media profiles on the platforms relevant to your audience.

Ensure your contact information, branding, and messaging are consistent across social media profiles, your website, and listings, including your Google Business Profile.

3. Create valuable content for your audience

Content marketing is a great way to build and increase brand awareness. SEO and social distribution help new people learn about your brand if they’re looking for this content. And if your content strategy is effective, the people looking for your content are strongly aligned with the people interested in buying from your brand.

The key is making valuable, relevant content. Think how-to guides, tutorials, industry insights, and customer success stories. All of these work as videos as well as guides or blog posts. And while there’s lots to say about AI and content marketing, the fact of the matter is that blog posts were still among the top five content formats marketers are investing in this year.

So create content—including blog posts—that help your ideal customers. This will help with brand awareness, and it’ll help establish your company as a trusted resource over time.

Darn Good Yarn—a small, independent company selling recycled yarn—has tons of tutorials across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

4. Establish a social media strategy

Social media platforms now account for more than 60% of product discovery. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram serve as primary research tools for many global internet users, especially Gen Z. You need to make sure your brand is active to take advantage of the discovery opportunities.

But instead of trying to be everywhere, focus on the platforms your customers actually use. Consider your demographics, then determine where it makes the most sense to be online and active.

For your strategy on any social media platform, you’ll want to make sure to:

• Post consistently.
• Engage with comments and messages.
• Share behind-the-scenes content.
• Showcase customers and employees.
• Use local and industry-relevant hashtags to increase visibility.

All of these will help keep your profile fresh and give your content the best chance at discoverability—which is the best chance for growing brand awareness.

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5. Ask for customer reviews

Over 90% of consumers read online reviews at least on occasion, and the majority of consumers report that these reviews influence purchasing decisions. To increase brand awareness, you want your business to have tons of reviews, testimonials, and recommendations online.

Plus, these reviews and testimonials can be great social content for you, like this example from Lou’s Custom Exhausts.

You can start by encouraging happy or repeat customers to leave reviews on platforms including Google, Yelp, and Facebook. If you have industry-specific platforms—think G2 for software or OpenTable for restaurants—make sure you’re on there, too.

And remember, customer reviews are extremely effective for increasing brand awareness while also building trust with potential customers. Over time, a strong collection of reviews can help your business reach new audiences and strengthen your reputation in the marketplace. All the more reason to start asking for reviews.

⭐ Reviews can directly impact your brand awareness! Learn how to get more reviews here, complete with tips to boost ranking, reputation, and revenue.

6. Try co-marketing

Co-marketing is a powerful and cost-effective way for small businesses to expand their reach. By partnering with complementary businesses that serve an audience similar to your own, you can introduce your brand to potential customers who may not have discovered you otherwise. Because customers already trust the businesses they support, these partnerships can help build credibility and awareness more quickly than traditional advertising alone. You just want to make sure your businesses align so that you offer value to the audience.

Your co-marketing could be a campaign with a discount, swapping promotions in email or a newsletter, or co-hosting an in-person event—and this last option leads us nicely to the next strategy for building brand awareness.

7. Host or join events

Events are a perfect opportunity to increase brand visibility and build meaningful connections with your audience. That’s probably why up to 75% of marketers identify in-person events as more valuable than other marketing activities.

If you’re a local business, joining a local fair, sponsoring a community event, or even participating in a town holiday could be a great way to get your name and logo in front of potential customers.

You could also collaborate with other organizations or industry leaders to host an event. Take these examples from The Paper Mouse, a small stationery store in Newton, MA. The events below are hosted by the store, feature name brands to draw in new visitors, or include experts for guidance.

8. Encourage word-of-mouth referrals

88% of global respondents trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel. This makes sense. When I see the same influencer ads over and over again for sunscreen and laundry detergent from brands I haven’t heard of, I’m skeptical. But I know my best friends from college and their taste in so many things, so when one of us recommends a sunscreen or a laundry detergent, I’m up for trying it. Sometimes I even buy it right away (Blueland laundry detergent, excellent recommendation).

You can tap into this word-of-mouth marketing to increase your brand awareness with a referral program. Create incentives for your customers. Ask them to share reviews. Offer discounts for both your current customers and their word-of-mouth referrals.

9. Solidify your brand story

People connect with stories. More than products, more than designs, more than company names. People are drawn into stories, and they remember them. Be sure to solidify a compelling, memorable brand story. This should include the origin story, the inspiration, and the mission.

Source

While this doesn’t directly increase brand awareness, it does help with word-of-mouth. If people who know your brand find it memorable, hopefully, they’ll be more likely to recommend or reference your company when the time comes.

Brand awareness examples for inspiration

We’ve included examples of ads, marketing assets, and brand elements throughout this post, but more inspiration—plus why it works so well—can only help with your own brand awareness campaign planning.

So, here are brand awareness marketing examples I love.

1. Mathnasium

Mathnasium is a K-12 tutoring center that focuses exclusively on math education, with franchise locations throughout the country. The brand’s social media features customer stories, celebrates employees, and shares valuable, repost-worthy content related to learning math.

Take a look at the video below, for example. Myth-busting is great for short-form video, and featuring a real-life instructor lends authenticity to the social post. Even better, the classroom background features the brand colors, and the instructor is wearing a company polo with the brand colors and logo. This all helps build brand awareness if someone is served this reel.

Plus, Mathnasium has a solid referral program offering parents a $100 gift card for any new family that they refer to the center. Another excellent way to build brand awareness.

2. Two Men and a Truck

Two Men and a Truck is a moving company that operates nationwide. The brand is known for its matter-of-fact name, which features prominently on the moving trucks.

These trucks with the same color scheme, bold brand name, and recognizable line-drawn logo are excellent opportunities for out-of-home advertising, an ideal venue for building brand awareness. This is especially true for a moving company. While it’s not a confirmed referral or an official testimonial, seeing these trucks moving real people does encourage trust.

Plus, Two Men and a Truck ensures its brand is memorable with a distinct and aligned set of core values, including the so-called Grandma Rule: “To treat everyone the way you would want your grandma to be treated.”

3. Autocamp

Autocamp is a boutique hospitality brand that combines camping-like experiences and natural surroundings with top-tier hotel amenities. Many of the properties feature Airstream trailers with rural backdrops, including the location in Cape Cod.

When this location opened, Autocamp secured local media coverage, worked with Boston-specific influencers, and hosted preview events for local media, partners, and business leaders. This

Source

4. The Roxbury Experience

The Roxbury at Stratton Falls is a boutique hotel with whimsical, over-the-top themed decor.

One of the fairytale-themed rooms at The Roxbury Hotel.

This hotel has built brand awareness by turning its customer experience into its primary marketing channel. Instead of trying to compete based on location or price, The Roxbury has created a distinctive, immersive experience in its accommodations. This makes guests want to recommend that one-of-a-kind stay—and share on social media.

A fairy-themed room at The Roxbury at Stratton Falls.

This is a great reminder that generating word-of-mouth and social media mentions can be a result of a truly exceptional customer experience.

How to measure brand awareness

Brand awareness is measured by assessing how many people know your brand, recognize it, remember it, and engage with it. That means the actual awareness isn’t always happening somewhere measurable. (If I *know* the brand when I see the logo from afar or recognize a label in a display, for example, no one can actually measure this unless I share or otherwise act on it.)

Still, you need to be measuring brand awareness to make sure you’re building it effectively. And there are ways to do that.

Run brand awareness surveys

First, you can run brand awareness surveys. These are the most direct routes for measurement, and they often ask respondents whether they recognize your brand from a list or ask for brand names without prompting to see if your company comes up. The con here is that it’s time-consuming and costly—plus, you’re only measuring respondents, which may not accurately reflect your audience.

Source

Track brand awareness marketing metrics

Second, you can track marketing metrics that suggest brand awareness. These include:

• Branded search volume: People searching for your brand name (or your brand name + reviews, etc.) is a good indicator of growing brand awareness.
• Website traffic: Direct, organic, and new visitors can all give you insight into growing brand awareness.
• Social media metrics: Take a look at reach, impressions, mentions, shares, and followers over time.
• Brand name mentions: Track your mentions in online forums, news coverage, podcasts, influencer mentions, and across other websites.

Measure share of voice

Another way that you can measure brand awareness is by tracking share of voice. This compares how often your brand is mentioned alongside or relative to your competitors. Your goal is to have a higher share of voice, so that you know your brand is being mentioned whenever possible. There’s a quick formula for this one: Share of voice = Total industry mentions / your brand mentions x 100.

Look at referral metrics

Finally, you can track word-of-mouth and referral metrics. Take a look at your referral traffic as well as participation and activity in your referral program. You can do this by tracking codes, and also by adding a simple prompt during checkout asking: “How did you hear about us?”

Start increasing brand awareness today

The best time to start building your brand awareness is, well, today. So take a look at these strategies above to see what you can get started with now—and then bookmark them so that you can come back and try the rest to keep growing your business. For more ways to boost your business’s brand awareness, see how our solutions can help!

Meet The Author

Céillie Clark-Keane

Ceillie runs content at Unstack, a no-code CMS built for marketers. Previously, she was the managing editor of the WordStream blog.

Other posts by Céillie Clark-Keane