10 Simple Ways to Increase Your Brand Awareness

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Brand awareness is everything. Mega-successful companies like Nike and Apple wouldn’t be where they are today if their marketing team didn’t aggressively market their brand. So how do you go about marketing your company?

There’s no single method; rather, it’s a cumulative effort of implementing tried and proven ways to get your company name out there.

1. Make Your Story Known

Yes, customers are looking for the best products and services at the best prices. However, they’re also interested in the people and story behind the brand. You may have noticed that most websites have an “about us” or “our story” section where they relay the company’s history and how it came about.

Tell your story; while you shouldn’t make it into a sob story, you should try to portray your company as one built from the bottom up through hard work, risk taking, and making sacrifices.

2. Send Useful Tips

You should have a company newsletter. Use it to regularly send informative content. Newsletters should not be used to endlessly promote your products or services. This is, of course, unless you’re offering some sort of special, such as a limited-time discount, which customers will most certainly appreciate.

Most newsletters, though, should contain useful content, such as how-to posts, tutorials, or any type of content that can embolden the reader in some shape or form without having to make a purchase or sign up for your service.

3. Use Infographics

Don’t be shy about using infographics that help back up your content or claims. Infographics generate far better results compared to simply stating a statistical fact and including a link to the source. According to one study, in fact, the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than plain text. This information, in fact, was taken from an infographic, which you can check out here.

Including infographics in a newsletter or blog post may also increase chances that the content will be shared. This was proven in this study.

4. Be a Guest Blogger

You should already have a regular blog on your website. Aside from your own blog, though, you should also actively write as a guest poster for other blogs. Most competing companies probably won’t let you post on their site, but you can look up people who run a blog in your industry as a hobbyist.

Contact these people, requesting to post as a guest. It’s a win-win situation: the blogger gets to take a day off from writing, and you get exposure from that blogger’s followers.

5. Experiment with Pull Marketing

Pull marketing refers to any type of non-invasive marketing. By non-invasive, this means techniques that don’t make customers feel like they’re being sold to. Cold calling, for example, is the very definition of invasive marketing (also known as push marketing).

So what constitutes pull marketing? Organic SEO practices is a prime example, as is providing informative content through blogging, which was just mentioned. Essentially, you’re letting customers come to you rather than approaching the customers directly. Social media is yet another example of pull marketing provided that you don’t go into promotional mode.

6. Biddable Campaigns

As effective as organic SEO is, it’s also quite competitive especially if you’re in a saturated industry. This is why you should consider Pay-Per-Click. This can be done either through Google AdSense or through Facebook’s own PPC ads.

Biddable campaigns are especially useful if you’re having trouble getting your site ranked on the first page of the search engine for competitive keyword phrases. PPC is definitely a method to incorporate if you can set aside a budget for a campaign.

7. Author a Book

Writing a book is time-consuming, but luckily, publishing written work complete with an ISBN is easier than ever with the advent of online publishing platforms. By authoring a book within your industry, you cement your name as a legitimate figure in your area of expertise.

By promoting the book or even giving it away for free, you ultimately also promote your brand. For exposure, be sure your company’s name is included in the author section. If you’re a regular blogger, then you have what it takes to release a full-length book.

8. Host Your Own Radio Channel

On YouTube, enter any subject followed by the word “podcast.” You will more than likely find at least one channel with a radio show on that topic. If you have the gift of the gab, then a podcast is a great alternative to a blog or can serve as companion material to your written posts.

Subjects can be anything industry-related, such as trends, breaking news, a how-to, debate with a guest, or an announcement. Upload podcasts on both your company site and YouTube.

9. Wear Your Logo on Your Sleeve

You do have a company logo, don’t you? Market the logo wherever possible, both online and offline; some places to display your company brand includes:

• Business cards
• At the bottom of your email signature
• Event swag
• Digital signage during company events

Think about it; logos like Nike, McDonalds, and Apple are so simple yet globally recognized. These companies at one time were young startups. They got to where they are by aggressively displaying their brand, and they did it before the days of the Internet.

10. Host an Event

If your company is local, then your main demographic will, of course, be local. If this is the case, then what better way to meet your audience than by hosting a get-together? This makes for a more personal way of getting to know the people that just might become your biggest consumers and brand advocates.

Consider a high-profile venue and bringing in a fairly well-known guest speaker. Of course, you’ll have to promote your event, and that’s a good thing because promoting your event also entails promoting your brand.

Brand awareness is all about getting your name out there, and there are numerous ways to do just that. It’s a gradual and ongoing process, but as the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

You may also like: 5 Perks of Social Media Marketing

 About the Author

Dan McCarthy has worked in the event management industry for five years and is currently an event manager for the UK-based company JD Parties. His portfolio includes many successful event planning projects for companies across various niches. He is currently a regular contributor to his company’s blog site. Follow him on Twitter at @DanCarthy2.