59% of shoppers prefer to buy products from brands they trust. But despite that, less than 10% of B2B companies say that their branding strategy is consistent.
That shows that while it’s clear that most customers want a strong connection with a brand they can relate to, few companies have a consistent strategy for boosting brand awareness and forming stronger bonds with their audience.
And that can be a problem, especially when you consider how expensive it can be to attract new customers compared to retaining old ones.
The good news is that building brand awareness through digital marketing isn’t that difficult, even if you’re operating on a limited budget. In fact, with a bit of creativity, even small brands can create memorable experiences that will allow them to compete with large corporations.
With that in mind, let’s look at a few helpful tips for increasing brand awareness and building a loyal following of customers.
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Create a Brand Your Audience Actually Likes
This might seem obvious, but you need your customers to like your brand and what it represents if you want them to buy from you continually. No amount of marketing will compensate for a generic, offensive, or plain confusing branding strategy, which is precisely why so many companies fail to attract and retain customers they would like to sell to.
However, you can avoid some of the more common pitfalls by adopting a simple but incredibly effective approach to building brand affinity. Instead of trying to make the correct assumptions about what your audience wants, you could prioritize asking for feedback and basing your decisions on direct insights you get from your best customers.
Having a brand your audience can connect with is an integral first step that will set up your entire branding strategy. When you have a brand, that’s 1) different from others, 2) appealing to your audience, and 3) in line with what you’re selling, you can expect much better results throughout your digital marketing efforts.
Focus on High-Value Content
Content marketing remains an indispensable part of an effective brand awareness strategy. When you create high-value content, you have the perfect opportunity to showcase expertise, display your brand voice, and highlight the things that make your company different and ideally suited for your customers.
But in order to get the most of what content marketing can offer, you need to understand how to use it the right way. It’s a given that you should use a grammar and plagiarism checker, avoiding duplicate content and trying to bring a fresh perspective to whatever topic you are covering.
At the same time, focus on creating content that has a higher chance of getting shared and spread throughout the web. This way, it will work not just by engaging your current customers, but also by helping new prospects discover your brand and what it has to offer.
Make sure to fully utilize social media when spreading your content, encouraging shares, and repurposing content to fit each platform’s unique format. You could even remake your articles into short and engaging videos that you can use in your promotions or build an audience on YouTube.
Finally, consider how you could map out your content to ensure that customers can find something relevant to them at each step of their customer journey. While it’s good to create beginner-level content for the top of the funnel, you should also create high-level and detailed content around more advanced subjects if you want your audience to keep coming back for more and continue to engage your brand.
Associate Your Brand With Positive Experiences
A brand is not just a collection of digital marketing communications that gets people to respond. In fact, while that’s important, the initial enthusiasm can quickly turn into anger if you cannot follow through on your promises and uphold the image you create about your company.
Consequently, for brands that want to build brand awareness that’s positive, prioritizing actual customer outcomes should be a crucial part of all processes.
For one thing, that means having a seamless customer support process where your customers can engage your representatives on the platform they feel comfortable on. Your team should also be trained to maintain the brand voice, image, and values throughout all communications so that your relationship with each customer gets continually reinforced.
At the same time, it’s crucial to deliver on the promises you make as a company. If you are positioning yourself as a leader in the field, you can’t expect people to buy into a product that’s obviously below what the competition has to offer. However, if you decide to differentiate your brand, make sure you have the goods to back that choice up.
Bottom Line
In a world where customers are becoming more aware of who they buy from, building brand awareness is more critical than ever. Only companies that are willing to forge long-lasting relationships with their audiences can expect to withstand changes in the market and achieve sustainable growth.
And with the strategies listed above, you can discover what your audience truly wants, engage them with a variety of content marketing tactics, and follow through on the expectations you set out every step of the way.
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