28 Feb
Brand awareness is the way in which consumers recognize and remember your business. The greater the brand awareness you have, the more audiences will be familiar with your logo, messaging, and products.
For those marketers and business owners out there who like to gauge success with neat and tidy numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers.
But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for business success and overall marketing goals.
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness represents how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. Brands with high brand awareness are generally referred to as ‘trending,’ ‘buzzworthy,’ or simply ‘popular.’ Establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your company and products, especially in the early stages of a business.
Brand awareness might seem like a vague concept, and in truth, it is. For those marketers and business owners out there who like to gauge success with neat and tidy numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers.
But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for business success and overall marketing goals.
Why is brand awareness important?
Brand awareness is important because it helps audiences understand, recall, and become comfortable with your branding and products. If you can build brand awareness among your target demographic, you can help your brand become top-of-mind when these consumers are ready to research and make a purchase.
1. Brand awareness fosters trust
In a world where consumers rely on extensive research and others’ opinions before making a purchase, brand trust is everything. Once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought — which then bridges the gap between trust and loyalty.
Brand awareness establishes that brand trust. When you put a proverbial face to your brand name, consumers can trust easier. Brand awareness efforts give your brand a personality and outlet to be sincere, receive feedback, and tell a story. These are all ways that we, as humans, build trust with one another. The human/brand relationship isn’t any different.
2. Brand awareness creates association
When you’ve had a papercut, I bet you’ve put on a Band-Aid. When you had a pressing question, I’m sure you’ve Googled it. or When you needed to make a few copies, I’m guessing that you Xeroxed them. And when you’ve packed for a nice picnic, I’m willing to bet you grabbed a Coke to drink. Am I correct? Most likely. But … notice how some of the words above are capitalized. These are brands, not nouns or verbs.
Speaking in brand-less terms, Band-Aid should be referred to as bandage, Google as a search engine, and Xerox as a copier. But it’s more fun to refer to the brand itself, even if we aren’t using their specific product.
That’s what brand awareness does. It associates actions and products with particular brands, subconsciously encouraging us to replace common words with branded terms. And before you know it, simple paper cuts or picnics are doing the marketing for us.
3. Brand awareness builds brand equity
Brand equity describes a brand’s value, which is determined by consumer experiences with an overall perception of the brand. Positive experiences and perception equal positive brand equity, and the same goes for negative notions. Here are a few valuable things that come from positive brand equity:
- Higher prices due to higher perceived value
- A higher stock price
- The ability to expand business through product or service line extensions
- Greater social impact due to brand name value
How does a brand establish (and increase) brand equity? By building brand awareness and consistently promoting positive experiences with the brand. Brand awareness is the foundation of brand equity.
Once a consumer is aware of a brand, they start to recognize it without assistance, seek it out to make a purchase, begin to prefer it over other similar brands, and establish a loyalty that not only spurs on other purchases but also inspires recommendations to family and friends.
That is why brand awareness is so important. It establishes trust with your customers, creates positive associations, and builds invaluable brand equity that allows your brand to become a household name and consumer staple.
Building awareness with Facebook Ads
If you want broader audiences to see your ads, then Facebook is definitely the ad platform to run your campaigns on. This social medium boasts 2.74 billion monthly active users while 1.84 billion use Facebook daily. Naturally, the platform has gathered a large crowd of over 200 million businesses that use it to reach out to existing and potential customers.
However, Facebook ads are not just about quantity — quality targeting also plays into the hands of the advertisers. For example, if you run a brand awareness campaign on Facebook, the platform automatically targets people who will remember them.
Many marketers talk about brand awareness vs reach. Here’s how they are different: the former is about targeting people who are more likely to pay attention to the ad, while the latter is about reaching out to as many people from your target audience as possible. These are the Facebook brand awareness ad formats you should consider:
1. Page likes campaign
On Facebook, your Page is the first place where your prospects (potential customers) look for information, especially for social proof. That is why people most definitely will check the number of likes on your page.
Of course, many page likes do not guarantee skyrocketing sales, nor do they heavily influence your marketing. Yet, if a person sees your ad and decides to check your page, as few as 47 likes will most probably raise some eyebrows.
If you are just starting your marketing on social media, the ad campaign with the Page likes Facebook ad goal comes in handy. Bear in mind that even though such a campaign is about your brand, the design and copy should clearly explain the benefits of your products or services for the customer. Make sure that the image is eye-grabbing and the copy answers people’s question: “What’s in it for me?”. Try to understand what benefit a Facebook user will get from your page and then communicate it. Such a benefit can be anything from DIY videos (using the products you sell) to inspiration for great looks (combinations of the clothes from your store).
While this ad may attract people with the photo of a messy flat lay of the objects that can be found in almost every purse, combined with the copy, it explains that the brand Cult of Culture helps people create stylish looks with clothes and accessories.
2. Boost posts
Another way to use Facebook for your brand awareness objective is by boosting your page posts. This way, you can demonstrate your brand not only to people who have already liked your page, but also to their friends, family, or even a new audience.
As for the format, you do not need to reinvent the wheel here — you already have the posts published. Simply go through the feed of your page to spot the most popular posts. Underneath, you can see how many people have been reached and how many of them are engaged with each update.
Don’t just choose any post — make sure that it is a reflection of your brand and the value it drives to people.
3. Carousel Ads
Carousel Ads are probably one of the best ways to effectively and compellingly communicate your brand to potential customers. This ad format displays several cards that you can use for different purposes. First, you can showcase what your brand offers.
Also, you can create a carousel with photos under the same theme to tell a story: a journey, a fashion collection, a solution to the problem, etc. As a result, you will build a deeper relationship with people. To cement your brand in the memory of prospective customers, combine images with videos in your ads, or use only videos in each card. Thus, you will be able to communicate even more information and increase the engagement rate.
4. Video Ads
Video is known to be one of the most popular types of content on Facebook, and its popularity is only increasing. People are predicted to watch 100 minutes of video daily in 2021. 92% of advertisers recognize video as a crucial element in their marketing strategy. The best part is that you don’t even need to know how to make videos — Facebook’s free dashboard for social media Creator Studio lets you create short clips right in the Ads Manager.
Since people prefer watching short clips to reading posts, video ads help you catch people’s attention and communicate your brand’s message. The optimal length of the video is about 15 seconds.
To make the most of your ad for brand awareness, publish a video on your page and boost this post to gather some likes. After you do so, create a Brand awareness campaign with this post as a creative. It will have more credibility than a newly created ad.
Even though you use an existing post, you can still add a button in your ad creative. All the reactions that such a video gathers will remain in the original post. You can reuse this video post any time in the future — and it will feature all the likes from the previous campaigns.
Building awareness with Instagram Ads
Instagram advertising audience is smaller than the one on Facebook. However, it still has over 1 billion monthly users, leaving such platforms as Pinterest (459 million) and Twitter (353 million) far behind. This makes Instagram ads a great way to enhance your brand’s awareness, especially if you use them together with Facebook brand awareness ads.
Without further ado, let’s address the next big question: if the advertising goal is to increase awareness, what type of ad should be run on Instagram?
1. Image Ads
Originally, Instagram was a place to quickly share photos. Maybe that is why, 10 years after creating the platform, photo content still works better, reaching twice as many people as videos. This is why image ads on Instagram are arguably the most optimal way to increase brand awareness.
2. Instagram Stories
These are rather an ad placement than an ad format, since you can post both images and videos. However, promoting your brand with Stories ads are worth talking about if you want to increase brand awareness. They are interactive, engaging, and less formal.
Also, there is a great trick you can use to increase your brand awareness without overspending your budget. All you have to do is ask people that see your ad to check out the profile (click on your logo in the upper left corner of the screen). Since you pay only for people following the link, this tactic will save some of your ad budget. To make sure that the users go further down the funnel, add a CTA in your bio (ideally, a link to your website or a landing page).
3. Promoting Instagram business profile
You can increase the exposure (and thus, awareness) of your Instagram profile just as you promote your Facebook Page by running Page likes ads. The difference is that you create this ad right in the Instagram app by tapping the Promotions button in your profile.
Building awareness with Google Ads
Now that we’ve covered Facebook and Instagram social media and brand awareness building practices there, let’s focus on another large platform. Google has got massive reach: 78% of all searches globally take place here. There are 3.5 billion searches each day which amounts to staggering 1,2 trillion searches each year.
However, it’s not only Google Search that deserves your attention. Google Discover has managed to gather some pretty impressive audiences, too. At least 800 million people check the Discovery feed monthly. Yes, it is fewer users than on Facebook and Instagram, but it is over a hundred million more people than on TikTok.
Such popularity begs the question: which ad formats should you go for to raise brand awareness on Google Ads?
1. Responsive Search Ads
Responsive Search Ads are search results ads customized to match the search query. All that is needed from your part is a set of headlines and descriptions, and Google’s artificial intelligence will automatically test different combinations to determine the best-performing one.
To increase your brand awareness with such ads, target the name of your business, product names, or the copy used in your other ad campaigns.
This ad format is pretty cost-effective, as you are charged only when someone decides to hit the link to your website. When people see your ad but don’t click on it, your brand awareness still grows without you paying a dime.
2. Google Shopping Ads
Yes, the main objective of these campaigns is to increase conversions. However, Google Shopping Ads can also be a great way to boost your brand awareness. They are displayed with the images of your products, prices, the name of your store, and even the reviews to reinforce the positive image of your brand.
Your ads will appear next to other brands that offer products similar to yours. To keep up with the competitors, make sure your image is of high quality and shows your product well. Also, double-check that the prices are up-to-date. The incorrect price will most probably frustrate website visitors, and Google will simply stop showing your ads in case of a mismatch.
To stand out from the competition, feature the review score in your ad. If your website doesn’t have reviews from Google Customer Reviews or a partnered solution, you can add them in the Google Merchants Center by uploading a verified XML file with product reviews.
3. Google Display Ads
Google Display Ads are shown in the Google Display Network that features over 2 million websites. These ads are normally cheaper than the Search Ads as Display ads have lower conversion rate, which shouldn’t be a problem as conversions are not that important for brand awareness.
Even though it is “only” a brand awareness campaign, don’t waste the opportunity to get some traffic to your website. Add a visual element to your image that looks like a button to motivate more people to click on the ad.
4. Video Ads
Enticing and compelling videos will help you reach out to new audiences. There is a range of Google video ads that you can use for brand awareness:
- Skippable in-stream ads;
- Non-skippable in-stream ads;
- Video discovery ads;
- Bumper ads;
- Outstream ads;
- Masthead ads.
While the placement of the ads may be different, there are some general recommendations to be aware of when increasing brand awareness with videos:
- Catch attention right away. Start your video with a relatable problem, so a person can recognize themselves in your ad. Maybe, feature a familiar face in your video. Even though not every small business can afford the endorsement by Sofia Vergara or David Beckham, you can always team up with an influencer.
- It is no place for the hard sell. Don’t be too pushy and offer your products right away. Instead, focus on creating a connection with people by developing a storyline. The idea is to establish a longer watch time, as it translates into the increase of brand awareness.
- Don’t forget about CTA. Even if a viewer doesn’t take an action, a Call-To-Action button will still result in a brand lift. CTA may offer people to view your store, invite them to watch more videos or check out your brand on social media platforms.
Wrap up
Brand awareness is a powerful concept that can have a major impact on your marketing efforts, consumer perception, and revenue. Yet, it may come with a pretty big price tag, as you have to spend a considerable ad budget on reaching new audiences without seeing an immediate ROAS.
However, by running Ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google you can increase the recognition of your brand without breaking the bank. The process of setting up, running, and monitoring ads on Facebook and Google may be time-consuming and confusing.