Our second lesson in #Marketing101bySMG is branding, brand awareness, and brand recognition.
Brand awareness is how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognize it. Establishing brand awareness is valuable when marketing and promoting your company, products, and services. If your target audience doesn’t know or trust your brand, how will you ever increase your customer base and sales?
Building a well known company through branding is not easy, but is a crucial part of any business strategy. Here are 3 easy steps on how you do it.
1) Make sure all corporate materials match. Ensure you’re using the same logo, and color schemes on anything that will be seen by a customer. From emails to banner stands to business cards, your corporate materials need to have consistency.
2) Be seen and heard everywhere. In other words, meet your customers where they are. From social media, to radio, to Google, to sponsoring events in your community. This presents a reality of similarity, which builds trust. It shows customers and consumers you are well known, easy to find, and value the same things they do.
3) Promote reviews and referrals. Reviews and word of mouth referrals are incredibly powerful. According to Pew Research Center, 72% of people get news from friends and family, making word-of-mouth the most popular channel for sharing experiences. According to a survey from Hubspot, 70% of people trust consumer reviews online. This is possibly the most important step in building brand awareness and recognition.
Having a well known brand results in a larger customer base, and that goes right to the bottom line.
Some things to think about this week:
Does your company have a well-known brand?
Do your corporate materials match?
Do you promote reviews and testimonials?