In general, a Brand, what it does at best is occupy a specific position in the minds of the customer, in order to generate value for the firm or to the firm, many a times, both of them.
Brand
Awareness, is generally measured by how well your customers are able to
recognize your brand as compared to other brands. It can also be described as,
“degree of consumer recognition of a product by its name.”
For What Use?
So, brand
awareness pertains to differentiating your brand from your competitors
in order to make a specific position, with respect to how much easily the consumers
are able to recognize your brand. The higher brand awareness of your
firm, the higher you are putting, the barriers of entry for your competitors.
Thus, a highly recognizable brand can add to profitability and profit
growth of the company, giving them a position to occupy relatively higher
share in the market.
How beneficial is
it?
There are
umpteen number of methods, tactics and strategies available at marketer’s
disposal to increase brand awareness.
86% of B2B
marketers have used content marketing in the year to raise brand awareness.
Increasing
brand awareness and engagement are the biggest objectives for mobile
advertising.
According
to Talkwalker, The Global State of Influencer Marketing, 2019, “The main
objective of influencer marketing for marketers is increasing brand visibility,
with 65.8% responders agreeing on this.”
The firm
may resort to any number of practices, but unless it has created a long-term
sustainable strategy to generate value for its firm, from which the consumers
can benefit, the campaign for brand awareness can never gain the amount
of success it is supposed to.
Why Brand Awareness?
In
Marketing Management, we read it as, “the science of choosing target markets
and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering and
communicating superior customer value.”
As a
manager with growth mindset, you want your company to grow, progress and
expand. Thus, for growth, expanding customer base is important. First
reason for brand awareness is thus to reach a greater number of people
and subsequently convert them into consumers of your brand. Today’s time, more
important aspect is to make the brand more and more visible to the public.
Well, more
important aspect is to build brand equity. Brand awareness is a vital
factor in building brand equity for the company. Brand equity is, “the added
value endowed to products and services with customers.”
Having a
strong brand itself has many advantages –
·
Higher
financial market returns
·
Increase
in customer loyalty
·
Increase
in effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns
·
Brand
extension opportunities
For a
successful brand awareness campaign multiple and simultaneous efforts
are required in promotion of the differentiation factors and value generating
factors of the company. Your brand awareness can be measured in both qualitative
and quantitative metrics.
Earned
Media
Direct
Website Traffic
External
Links
Blog Shares
Search
Volume
Brand
Mentions
Thus, above
metrics can help you keep track of brand awareness. These metrics can have a
benchmark, with which we can compare the future results.
Brand Awareness
creates a recognition for your brand in the market. Recognition of brand means
that your customer can differentiate between your brand and other similar
brands in the market.
It does not
merely to know the name or having recalled seen it before, Brand Awareness
implies customer can associate the name, logo and other brand symbols in
his mind.
One of the
interesting theories presented by Philip Kotler is, ‘CCDVTP.’ It stands
for Create, Communicate and Deliver Value to a Target market as a Profit.
Creating
value means product management which can include tangible and intangible
products. By communicating value, we arrive at brand management. To
deliver value is called customer management which involves reaching the
customers via different means.
Use of Social Media for brand Awareness
Social Media provides a good platform to promote your brand.
If you are looking for opportunities in India, then it won’t be surprising to
know that there are over 700 million internet users in India and on top
of that, there are over 370 million people using social media,
out of which 250 million are active users of social media. Now,
to reach that kind of mass, you need a new marketing approach, to pursue it on
the digital platform.
No only that, social media now provides an excellent
platform to interact with the customers and respond to their needs. We
have observed examples from past where distressed customers have been taken
care of by the brands.
There are number of Digital Marketing Courses you can take
to upgrade your knowledge on Brand Awareness
KPIs you can use to measure Brand Awareness
Impressions - An impression is counted each
time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google
Network.
Click Through rate (CTR) – CTR is the number of
clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown.
Avg. Cost Per Click (Avg. CPC) - The average amount
that you've been charged for a click on your ad. Average cost-per-click is
calculated by dividing the total cost of your clicks by the total number of
clicks.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - A way to bid where you pay
per one thousand views (impressions) on the Google Display Network.
In the End I Would Like To Say...
Brand Awareness forms essential part of any Digital Marketing campaign and overall success of the Marketing strategy of a company.
As long as people remember your brand and has positive associations with it,
your company will be a success.
References
1. KOPP, CAROL M. Brand Awareness. Investopedia.
[Online] 21 April 2019.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brandawareness.asp.
2. Stahl,
Stapehanie. success-differentiators-b2b-research. www.cnotentmarketinfinstitute.com.
[Online] Content Marketing institute, 22 october 2019.
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/10/success-differentiators-b2b-research/.
3. Summit, Open
Mobile. Open Mobile Summit 2017. www.brandquaterly.com. [Online]
30 November 2017.
http://www.brandquarterly.com/event/open-mobile-summit-2017.
4. Kotler, Philip.
Marketing Managemnt. s.l. : Pearson, 2018. 978-93-325-5718-5.