Best campaign strategy for brand awareness

Imagine the following. DYou have started your own business. You want to sell your products or services online. You want to see results. Perhaps you have already started advertising, but are not seeing the desired effect? You are not alone – far from it.

It's easy if all you need is a digital strategy called sales, sales, sales.

Unfortunately, this rarely works in practice. So what can you do? There is an old saying that goes, “You can't put the cart before the horse.” This is a good analogy when it comes to brand awareness. Your potential customers need to get to know you or your product before they say yes to your business. Trust must be built. This is created through brand awareness.
That is what this blog post will focus on.

What is brand awareness?

But first things first. What is brand awareness and how does it work?
Brand awareness is how well your target group knows your brand. It's how recognisable your brand is to your target group. Like, when they hear your company name, see your logo, or come across your products or services.

How do you build brand awareness if you are a new company? You do so through careful and strategic planning.

Below, we will outline various strategies for brand awareness and explain their importance. We will go through the steps you need to take to build your own branding through various campaigns across channels.

With brand awareness, you are trying to ensure that your target groups have the right impression of your brand. You want them to associate your company with a specific product or service.

For maximum effect, try to promote your unique selling point (also known as USP) to your target audience and thereby “argue” why they should choose you over your competitors.

But who actually spends money on brand awareness?

Honestly, all businesses can benefit from focusing on brand awareness. Whether you have a start-up or are simply trying to rebrand an old company, you can benefit from brand awareness.

Why should you focus on brand awareness?

This is important for three primary reasons. Firstly, a cross-channel strategy gives you control over how people ultimately perceive your brand.

Secondly, brand awareness helps build trust among your target audience. Why is this important? According to 53 per cent of respondents in a recent survey, trust is the second most important factor in deciding whether to buy a new brand (price comes first). What do we get out of it? Brand awareness helps you build successful relationships with customers based on trust.

Finally, trust builds customer loyalty. On the one hand, loyal, happy customers will promote you to their network, bringing you more customers in the long run. On the other hand, your customer acquisition costs will be reduced.

Now we have some of the theory in place. But how do we execute it? We need to know which channels are best suited to building the campaigns. That's why I'm going to list 8 tips for building an effective brand strategy.

1. Understand your target audiences

First, you need to know who your business is targeting.

To begin with, you can start by analysing your existing customer base. Who chooses your products/services or follows you on social media? These are the people who already identify with your brand. Analyse what they have in common. Think about what matters to them, what problems they have, and how your products help them. Also look at data from Google Analytics, if you have the opportunity to do so.

You can also conduct market research. Where else do your customers shop? Who are your biggest competitors? Chances are that your target group also shops with them, so take the time to investigate. It will pay off in the end.

Analyse your results and build a “profile” of your ideal customer. What do you want them to associate with your brand? Your findings should form the basis for your future campaigns.

2. Focus on the platforms that your target audience uses most

A good brand awareness strategy isn't just about who you target. It's also about which platforms you target. Where is your ideal customer? Do they watch videos on YouTube or are they on Instagram? Again, it's all about researching your target audience and identifying where your campaign will have the greatest impact. Who knows – maybe the most qualified target groups are on TikTok.

I recommend choosing one or two platforms and designing campaigns that suit them. For example, if you choose a Facebook campaign, you should choose a memorable message and preferably have video material as your primary content. If you choose Google Ads, you can cast a wide net via display campaigns and “style” the content with animation and sharp messages. But it is important to have a common thread running through all of this and preferably have the same messages – or at least test the same messages.

3. Set clear goals for your campaign

Then set some specific short-term and long-term goals and decide on the following.

• • What do you want to achieve with your campaign?
  • how the campaign fits into your broader, long-term plans for your brand
  • What strategies you will use to achieve your goal, e.g. PPC ads, social media posts, influencer marketing, etc.
  • how to track your progress

Without specific goals, you risk spending resources on campaigns without direction or a clear purpose. Every successful marketing strategy begins with a defined goal or outcome. Therefore, take the time to reflect on your objectives.

4. Collaborate with complementary brands

A brand partnership with a complementary brand is beneficial for creating value, increasing your exposure and expanding your audience reach. You should not choose a direct competitor, but rather a company with a similar target audience or a target audience you would like to expand towards.

Take, for example, the collaboration between IKEA and Sonos. On the surface, their target groups appear very different. But when you look closer, both companies operate primarily within the four walls of the home. You can imagine building your Sonos speaker like an IKEA table or placing your Sonos speaker somewhere in the living room, just like an IKEA lamp would be placed.

In other words, both brands evoke similar impressions, which is exactly what we are looking for in a brand awareness strategy. The collaboration between Sonos and IKEA is successful, even though they do not have the same core target group. It is successful because Sonos associates itself with IKEA and sends a message that it is not only suitable for tech enthusiasts, and IKEA gains exposure to high-end target groups who may not immediately be looking for IKEA products. Choose a brand you can collaborate with to best showcase your USP.

5. Be active online

In a competitive market, consumer engagement is highly valued. Whether you respond to reviews on Trustpilot, answer messages via customer support, or simply “like” user-generated content on Instagram, it adds value and customer loyalty over time.

Remember that while you are building your brand's presence, you also need to make the right impression. Do you want to be known as a responsive and engaging company that cares about its users? Then start communicating!

Also, make sure you create regular content. If you can't write daily content on social media, you can at least engage users 2-5 times a week to build momentum behind your social media accounts. It's a lot of work and requires a lot of resources, but it's well worth the effort.

6. Highlight your company's “personality”

The whole point of brand awareness is to influence how people perceive your brand, so highlight your company's “personality” every time you publish content. Keep your personality consistent, and you will bring your target audience one step closer to doing business with you by influencing the optimal associations.

Remember, your business is unique. Therefore, use your campaign to highlight what makes it so special.

7. Improve the customer experience

For 80% of users, the user experience is just as important as the products companies sell. This means that if you want to leave a positive, lasting impression on your customers, you should work on improving the customer experience on your website.

86% of customers would actually pay more for a better shopping experience and

91% of customers return to companies that offer good experiences. For example, the company Lomax often includes gifts with their deliveries, which contributes to a good customer experience. Finally, UX-focused companies are on average up to 60 per cent more profitable than others.

In other words, your strategy shouldn't just be about talking up your business. It should be about showing customers how you can help them and why their needs matter to you. Not sure how your current user experience stacks up? Encourage customers to leave reviews or send feedback so you can see how you can improve.

Although it is impossible to optimise all feedback, you can note common themes and identify areas for improvement. Although no one likes negative reviews, they are actually an important tool for improving the business in the long term. After all, you cannot solve issues that no one tells you about.

In short, you can easily increase your brand awareness by prioritising the customer experience and showing users how much you value their feedback.

8. Track your results

How do you know if your strategy is working? You probably don't, unless you list criteria for measuring your success. The metrics you measure will vary depending on the marketing strategy you use. For example, if you run a campaign on YouTube, you can track metrics such as the number of exposures, view rate and clicks. If you decide to use Google Search, you can use Google Analytics to track your KPIs and continuously improve performance by reading the data.

A few final comments – now it's time to get started!

A successful brand awareness strategy allows you to shape how potential customers perceive your business. With the right strategy, you can directly influence what users think when they hear about your brand, and you can ensure that customers remember your brand for the right reasons.

In other words, it is the backbone of a successful marketing strategy, and it is surprisingly easy to implement. But if you are still a little unsure about how to get started, feel free to contact me.