If you’re looking to grow your small business in 2022, you’ll need to build as much brand awareness as possible. Brand awareness refers to how familiar your ideal audience is with your company and what it does.
If consumers don’t know or trust your brand, you won’t be in the running when they plan to purchase products or services just like the ones you offer. So what can you do to increase your brand awareness and attract the attention of your target audience?
Let’s take a look at five ways you can build brand awareness, increase your conversion rate, and create a loyal customer base.
- Get the word out about your brand on social media
Social media is among the most potent tools for drumming up brand awareness that generates leads, because it allows you to interact directly with customers. And, essentially, the more active you are on social media, the more users will hear about your company’s products and services.
Plus, if someone keeps seeing your business on their social media feeds, you’ll be top-of-mind when they are ready to purchase services or products like yours.
Here are some ways you can effectively engage with your audience on social media to boost your brand awareness:
- Create, join, and participate in relevant forums and Facebook groups to get in front of your target audience.
- Host polls and surveys to get to know your followers.
- Invite users to engage with your brand using a unique hashtag.
To ensure you are getting the most out of your social media activities, it’s also a good idea to use a social media analytics tool that will assess the performance of your posts. The data you collect can then help to guide you when it comes to what kinds of content you focus on creating, and even what times of the day you should be posting.
Maintain a constant and predictable presence to keep your brand in the minds of your target audience. Don’t flood their feeds with post after post, but share relevant content and ask for your followers’ opinions. This will help you build a solid social media presence to support your brand awareness efforts.
- Boost your SEO to rank for relevant queries
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves taking steps to help your website rank higher on relevant search engine results pages or SERPs to ensure you get found by your target audience. SEO incorporates on-page optimizations like keyword research and off-site optimizations like link building to help you boost your visibility.
One key SEO practice is keyword research. This is the process of identifying the terms that your ideal customers type into Google when they’re searching for products, services, or even content like yours. You can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush for this, and look out for terms with high search volumes but low competition for the best results. You can then incorporate these words or phrases into the copy of the web pages they are the most relevant to. This will give search engines a better idea of what you sell and write about, so they can recommend your business to the most appropriate people.
The higher up your website is on the SERPs, the more likely customers will click on it and get to know your brand. This is also typically a cost-effective way to build up your brand because it can offer a fantastic ROI, since it is a long-term strategy that can help drive qualified traffic to your website over time.
- Incentivize referrals so existing customers send more business your way
You can turn your existing customers into ambassadors who will boost the awareness of your brand by giving rewards to current customers who refer their friends and family to your company. You can do this by providing discounts for each referral or giving a monetary amount for each new customer who makes a purchase through your referral program, for instance.
Let’s look at a company that does a great job of building its business with referral incentives.
Self Financial, an online credit-building tool, uses its referral system to offer customers $10 for themselves and their referral if the new customer creates an account and makes their first payment. They make it easy for customers to refer their friends with unique referral codes, and they clearly show at the top of the page that they will give each customer $10 whenever they refer someone to their company.
You can use a similar strategy by incentivizing referrals to your business. This tactic can help drive more sales and build your brand awareness since customers will be more likely to share your products and services with their network online.
- Give PPC marketing a try
Pay-per-click or PPC marketing is an advertising strategy where you will only pay a fee each time your ad is clicked, which makes it very cost-effective.
Although, since you’ll be paying for each click, you’ll only want qualified leads to click on your ads to conserve your ad budget. Be sure to conduct customer research through surveys and polls with current customers to find out where you should be showing your ads and test different ad copy to find the best messaging that speaks to your audience. You should also monitor your conversion rate to ensure your ads drive as many sales as possible. As you run PPC campaigns, you should keep a close eye on which demographics typically convert and what they buy, too, so you can adjust your ad copy, geographic targeting, and target keywords based on how your ads perform.
PPC marketing will also generally help raise awareness of your brand because, even if people just see your ads and don’t click, they may be encountering your brand for the first time. They then might come back to you when they finally do need your products or services. This means PPC marketing is a great way to build your brand awareness and drive more qualified traffic to your site throughout the year.
- Regularly publish content your audience needs
One of the best ways to build brand awareness is with a robust content marketing strategy, since your content can build a relationship with customers as they search for specific information online. Content marketing involves attracting, engaging, and retaining your ideal customers through high-quality content that answers questions and alleviates pain points that your customers experience.
To get the best results from your content, you should optimize it for search engines by incorporating keywords with high search volumes and low competition. You can also search through forums related to your niche to understand the questions and issues your customers are asking about. Then, you can aim to address these in your content.
Focus on creating a diverse collection of content like blog posts, videos, infographics, and downloadable resources to address the needs of your customers.
For example, FreshBooks, an accounting software company, offers its users free invoice templates.
Because the company’s ideal audience is made up of small business owners and freelancers, this is a fantastic asset that prospective customers will get a lot of value from. Many business owners struggle with creating professional and practical invoices, so this resource addresses a real pain point that the brand’s customs have.
People looking for help with invoicing are likely to come across these templates when doing their own research. This will introduce them to FreshBooks. Then, when they need more help with their accounting, the company will be on their minds. This is why creating free resources your audience really needs can be such an effective strategy for generating brand awareness and qualified leads.
Another great example comes from Tipalti Approve, which is a company that helps business owners streamline procurement and purchase requests.
They regularly publish valuable ultimate guides their audience needs. For instance, their guide to indirect procurement is a great resource for users looking for information on this topic. The article dives into several aspects of procurement to help educate business owners on everything from how to distinguish between direct and indirect procurement, the skills a procurement professional needs, and procurement strategies.
Covering this topic within their content is a very smart move for Tipalti Approve because the people who are most likely interested in their services are likely carrying out their own research into this subject. As a result, this piece of content increases the chances of prospective clients coming across the company through relevant search engine results pages when looking for useful information in this area.
This means this particular article is a great resource for raising brand awareness among the business’s ideal customers.
Our final example of valuable content that can raise awareness of a brand comes from ScrapingBee, an online proxy rotating tool.
Their in-depth introduction to Java web scraping offers excellent information to users of all experience levels, so they can learn more about web scraping with Java. This piece of content does a great job of diving into different tools and examples of web scraping with Java, and the in-depth content could help ScrapingBee rank highly in the search results for several terms their target audience types into Google when researching the subject. Not only will this help them drive more qualified traffic to their site, but it can also improve their general brand awareness since prospective customers are likely to come across the company when looking for information in this area.
You can use the same strategy by thinking about your target audience and what content they will be searching for. Choose topics that address their common questions and pain points. You should also focus on creating a diverse portfolio of content and producing it consistently. This will help build your reputation and increase your brand awareness.
Summary
Brand awareness can make or break your small business. While you don’t need billions of people to recognize your logo, you need to make your presence known so your target audience will keep you in mind if they are thinking about investing in products or services just like yours.
While there are no quick fixes, using these simple methods will put you on the right track to building brand awareness that will increase your conversions and generate ROI.
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Author bio & headshot:
Aaron Haynes is CEO and co-founder of Loganix. The company is an SEO fulfillment partner for digital marketing agencies and professionals, which provides the services businesses need to improve their online visibility and grow. If you liked this article, check out the Loganix blog, where you’ll find more SEO guides full of expert advice.
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