Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness: Brief Summary
Brand awareness is a term from market research that describes the awareness of a brand. The percentage value assigned indicates how many of the respondents recognise a brand. For more in-depth research, brand awareness is divided into three levels.
Brand Awareness: Detailed Explanation
Brand awareness is an important consideration for a company because, in many situations, it can be the deciding factor for a purchase. Brand awareness is very important, particularly in “low-involvement situations”, where the buyer pays little attention to the product because of the price or other circumstances. In such cases, most consumers go for the “tried and tested”, i.e., well-known names and brands.
However, there are other situations in which brand awareness is important, for example, in business-to-business marketing, or B2B marketing for short. Here, many measures are based on the customer’s trust in the company – and trust can only exist if the customer knows the company or the associated brand.
In the business-to-consumer sector, brand awareness primarily helps with retaining customers for the long term. Through brand awareness, the customer is able to assign a certain image to the brand and then usually also associates certain – preferably positive – emotions with it. In turn, this creates brand trust and leads to the customer reaching for the brand’s products again and again. Ideally, they even become brand ambassadors who recommend the products to others based on their own convictions.
The dream goal in terms of brand awareness is when the brand name becomes a generic name – in other words, when the brand replaces the term that is actually used for the product. Well-known examples of this are “Kleenex”, “Perrier”, “Sellotape” and “Walkman”. However, in areas with already established products, it is difficult to achieve such high brand awareness. But, with new developments, this goal is definitely achievable – but extremely difficult due to the rapidly increasing emergence of imitation products.
Brand Awareness in Three Stages
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much room for manoeuvring when it comes to brand awareness – either people know the brand, or they don’t. But it is not quite that simple because what also makes a difference is how quickly people remember the brand or whether they need a little help to come up with the name. Therefore, a distinction is made between three levels of brand awareness:
- Top of Mind
- Unaided Recall
- Aided Recall or Recognition
“Top of Mind” means that people remember the brand immediately, i.e., it is mentally present for them. In the case of “Unaided Recall”, people come up with the brand name, but it takes a while until it comes to mind. This level of brand awareness is still useful for companies, but brand awareness often no longer comes into play, especially in situations where a purchase decision is made quickly. In the third stage, “Aided Recall” or “Recognition”, people do not come up with the brand on their own. But if it is mentioned to them, they recognise it. This type of brand awareness is particularly useful when the customer has little product knowledge but can make a purchase decision at their leisure.
Brand Awareness in Online Retailing
At first glance, one might think that brand awareness plays only a minor role in online retailing. After all, thanks to Google, users have a huge selection of products at their fingertips with just a few clicks. Not only that, online prices can be compared in seconds, plus descriptions and reviews make it easier to weigh up the advantages of certain products.
Despite all these possibilities, the awareness of a brand actually plays a very big role when buying online. This is because products on the internet cannot be held in hand and examined. This is very important for most buyers, especially in the case of clothes or shoes, as well as electronic goods, as the feel of the buttons and switches is perceived to give an idea about the quality of the product. If such a “manual” examination is not possible, most customers rely on well-known brands. This is because, in their minds, buyers unconsciously associate a certain minimum level of quality with a well-known brand.
Accordingly, many SEO campaigns are aimed at increasing brand awareness. The idea behind this is quite simple: the more often the brand name appears on Google or in social media content on Facebook or other portals, the more often it is recognised by users. However, as well as these relatively simple optimisation measures, there are various other ways to increase brand awareness.
Measures to Increase Brand Awareness
As mentioned above, advertisements such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads are a very simple way to make a brand better known. Unfortunately, this option can also be quite expensive, as Google AdWords charges hefty fees if advertisements are placed for highly competitive search terms.
Optimising one’s own site according to SEO standards is usually more cost-effective and also contributes to brand awareness. In addition, there are many other – mostly quite inexpensive – ways to improve brand awareness, such as:
- Referral programmes
- Guest posts on other sites
- Freemium products
- Social media competitions
- Giveaways
Referral programmes are based on a very simple principle: the customer receives an additional benefit if they recommend the product or service to others. Such programmes are particularly suitable for digital products because it is comparatively easy to check whether the customer has really recommended the product. In principle, however, they can be used with all types of products and services. A good example of a successful recommendation programme is the offer from Dropbox, a cloud storage company. Here, every customer who persuades a friend to use Dropbox receives additional cloud storage. This referral programme has contributed significantly to the spread of Dropbox, especially in the early days of the company – and, thus, also to brand awareness.
Guest posts are particularly useful for companies that rely on social media content because good content is shared more frequently on social network platforms like Facebook. If a company manages to publish a knowledgeable article about a certain topic on someone else’s Facebook page, this effect is amplified. The reason for this is quite simple: if others think the article is so good that they publish it on their own page, it automatically appears more valuable to readers, so they will be more inclined – albeit unconsciously – to share it with others.
Another way to increase brand awareness is to offer freemium products, where a free version is available in addition to a paid version, usually limited in function or scope. As long as the free version is not too limited, users will naturally recommend the product to others – after all, who would say no to a free, high-quality product? Of course, not all new users will opt for the paid version, but some of them will – and others will better remember the brand name, thanks to the freemium product.
Social media competitions are also a good way to increase brand awareness. Companies can opt for very simple options, such as a competition, or for more elaborate campaigns, such as a competition in which users generate their own content. The advantage of hosting a competition on a social media platform is that the whole thing can very quickly become self-perpetuating – the first users draw the attention of others to the content, who share it again with others, who also forward it … and so on.
An absolute classic in terms of brand awareness is giveaways, i.e., free gifts that come with the actual purchased product. For example, these can be items such as ballpoint pens, notepads or credit card-shaped LED torches. Even digital giveaways, such as fancy designs for social media profile pages, are possible. Giveaways have two key advantages: they are usually very affordable, and they get used if they are useful, so the brand name is always on display.
Conclusion
Brand awareness reflects the familiarity of a brand and is a decisive factor in purchasing decisions for various situations. Brand awareness plays an important role in online retailing, particularly since the customer is not able to take the products into their hands and examine them.
The possibilities for increasing brand awareness are very diverse and can range from social media competitions and SEO campaigns to online advertisements via Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.
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