How to increase brand awareness before, during, and after the holidays
Consumers do not buy the first time they connect with or are exposed to a brand.
Start with brand recognition and establish trust with frequent exposure over time to become the brand your customers know and love. The first phase in a two-pronged marketing plan is brand recognition.
The holidays are almost approaching, and if you want to convert as many clients as possible during your busiest season, you need to start with brand awareness.
The Fundamentals of Brand Awareness
Brand recognition, recall, and remembering are all components of brand awareness. It extends beyond simply knowing you exist or what your brand is to your ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Customers must understand who you are and what you have to offer.
Campaigns to raise brand awareness
Brand Awareness initiatives familiarize viewers with your brand. Greater familiarity increases your brand’s chances of joining a consumer’s “consideration set,” or the limited group of brands that people evaluate when purchasing in your category.
According to a BVIMSR study, “despite quality and price differentials, individuals picking from a group of brands with notable awareness differentials exhibited an overwhelming preference for the high awareness brand.” They also made decisions faster than the non-awareness subjects and tasted fewer products.” Prioritize brand awareness as a long-term, always-on approach because it creates memory structures that sales activation activities can later use to trigger.
Brand awareness, contrary to popular assumption, is more than simply exposing potential buyers to your company as many times as possible; it is also about communicating your brand’s values, personality, and distinct goals. According to an eMarketer survey, 64% of shoppers mention brand values as the key reason they have a relationship with a specific brand, and 59% of consumers prefer to buy new products from companies they already know. Make brand recognition a major focus for your brand this holiday season in order to generate clients with:
- A more recognizable brand is more likely to be chosen.
- Paying higher money for a more familiar product provides comfort.
- Sensitivity to unfavorable quality disparities is reduced.
- Increased confidence and trust in a well-known brand.
Now that you understand the fundamentals use these tactics to launch your brand awareness campaign!
Understand Your Customers From Every Angle.
Brand awareness should be linked to a long-term investment in customer lifetime value (LTV) as well as a reduction in recurring client acquisition expenditures (CAC). How do you do it effectively? This begins with activating your data and developing a comprehensive perspective of your consumer so you know what’s working, what isn’t, and how you can iterate and optimize accordingly.
Where do you acquire your data for brand awareness campaigns? You most likely already have it. Utilize first-party data!
MightyHive, a programmatic firm, discovered that marketers were only utilizing 47% of their company’s first-party data potential on average. The rise of walled gardens confuses matters even more: marketers rely on these platforms to get their brand out there, but they may not be your ultimate source of truth.
Choose systems that allow you to link your abundance of first-party data with second- and third-party data sources so you can see what’s influencing traffic across all of your marketing channels. You not only get to develop a picture of your consumer, but you also get to build a direct relationship with them, which increases customer lifetime value.
Make Creativity a priority.
In other words, effective advertising creativity pays off. Your advertisements should be eye-catching in one of two ways (or both if possible):
- Unusual, intriguing, odd, or downright bizarre. In this category, brands like Liquid Death reign supreme.
- Relevant, meaningful, and practical. Consider a brand that openly teaches and distributes knowledge, such as TikTok for Business.
Ads with these components are more likely to persuade viewers to interact with the ad itself, but they are also more likely to linger with the viewer after they have gone away. Interactions with your brand on a regular basis generate and reinforce emotional memories and responses. This is also why consistency is so important!
The difference between a click and a scroll away can be determined by the creative.
Connect via several channels.
Before a sale, there are an average of 56 touchpoints. You want to make a real connection with your audience every time. However, it is more than just optimizing for the channel you are using. Developing an omnichannel strategy is the most effective approach to delivering a consistent customer experience that fosters trust, authority, and loyalty.
The first step is to select the appropriate channels. You should use the data at your disposal to determine where your customers spend the majority of their time. For example, did you know that 40% of young people do not use Google Search or Maps to find things like restaurants, according to a Google executive? Instead, the younger generation is going to TikTok or Instagram for such searches. If you’re marketing to a younger demographic, you might want to invest more extensively in TikTok or Instagram.
Here are a few channels to add to your marketing mix for brand awareness if you’re trying to add more channels to your well-established 56 touchpoint plan.
Social networking sites.
You still have time if you haven’t used social media as a brand recognition tool. Both sponsored and organic social media activities might assist you in making true connections with your audience.
Organic
Social media efforts are excellent for communicating directly with your clients. Customers, both present and prospective, can contact you directly and informally to discuss:
- Your goods/services.
- Concerns about customer service.
- Upcoming updates and releases
Anything!
The best thing about organic social media is that your audience can treat you like a buddy they follow: they may simply want to connect with you.
Organic social is also an excellent platform for asking your customers questions. This is an excellent approach to acquire information about your target audience in a low-pressure setting.
Paid
Contextual targeting, demo and interest targeting, and lookalike audiences are all options. These are all paid social ad methods that can be used to reach, engage, and convert new customers. Brand awareness is the first half of a successful retargeting campaign.
Consider a branded-holiday play or even an emotional story to tug at the heartstrings throughout the holidays. Begin here for Christmas campaign ideas.
With email retargeting, a tracking cookie collected by your website visitors is linked to their email address. This is an excellent technique to interact with users who expressed interest in your website but then departed.
While email can be used to retarget cart abandoners, the goal here is to increase brand awareness. Reinvest your brand at every touchpoint with your customers. This can include sending them values-based announcements, such as a charity drive in which you’re involved, or it can be as basic as ensuring that your tone and voice show through in every email you send.
Here are a few pointers to consider while producing email content for Christmas campaigns:
- Solve challenges while adding value if your goal is just to educate and inform readers. Your copy must provide customers with actual, practical value so that people regard your brand as a trusted resource and you can build a trusting relationship.
- Respect your reader and avoid the hard sale. Remember that your goal is to solve someone else’s problem, not to promote a product or service for personal advantage.
- Discover the why behind the product. If your content, on the other hand, focuses on solving the problems that your product addresses, you can develop a bigger narrative about why people should use your products and services.
- Prompt an immediate response. This material must create an immediate demand in order to entice individuals to do a specific action.
- Time-sensitive inquiry (e.g., webinar tomorrow, first 500 signups win)
- Don’t be left out (for example, 80% of marketers are updating their attribution models).
- Improve your outcomes (for example, automated campaigns have 26% higher click-through rates).
- Your account requires attention (e.g., Your ads need a refresh immediately)
Increase the Visibility and Reach of Your Brand
If you’ve opted to incorporate social media into your strategy, you can utilize hashtags to appear in their feeds on relevant channels. Using targeted hashtag usage, leverage your existing brand awareness to promote your holiday promotions on social networks. Make it unique and personal for optimum impact – it must reflect your brand voice and client expectations.
You might include a sweepstakes or other contest to get more #bangforyourbuck. Sun-Maid Raisins used one effectively in their #12DaysofSunmaid promotion. During the holidays, tying a giveaway to your brand can not only engage your existing fans, but also extend the word of who you are and what you stand for beyond your present audience.
TikTok and other social media networks allow hashtag material to appear in Google searches. When hashtags are used correctly, this results in increased exposure in organic search.
One of the most important weapons in the brand-building armory is consumer awareness of your organization. This goodwill has the potential to transform “meh” growth into hockey-stick growth. When combined with the holiday sales increase, it might jumpstart your growth even further.
Accept Transparency and Connectivity.
You understand the type of brand you want to be, but do your customers? Consumers must understand what you stand for if you want to rise above the cacophony of your competition.
This means that brands must take the initiative and make their principles known. According to SmallBizTrendz, in 2020, 70% of consumers want to buy from companies with which they feel connected on values. If you support a cause or have a strong set of values that drive your brand, utilize that to your advantage in your marketing. Just be aware that as you begin to embrace your beliefs on a marketing level, some customers will align with your brand, and others will drift away.
For brands that do not yet have that level of customer familiarity, it is time to establish brand awareness in order to capture hearts and wallets.
Don’t Forget to Effectively Measure Brand Awareness.
Every company, regardless of its size or personnel, has specific objectives. As a result, metrics are required to monitor their progress.
It’s critical to keep an eye on the right measurements. Here are three methods for measuring brand awareness campaigns:
Views of a Video Ad – The number of times a video was viewed in a certain timeframe. These times differ from channel to channel, so double-check.
Impressions – The number of times an ad has been served to your audience, regardless of whether they are a unique/repeat audience.
Reach / Unique Users – The total number of times your ad is displayed, regardless of whether or not it is clicked.
The key here is distinct. It is not the number of times your ad was displayed, or a post was viewed; it is the number of times your ad was viewed by a new and distinct person. The idea here is that the more people who see your ad, the more people will be aware of your brand and your product. Reach can also help you determine whether your ads are working properly. If your advertising has reached a large number of people but hasn’t resulted in a single transaction, it’s time to reconsider your creative or messaging.
On the other side, if your material has a broad reach, it suggests it is successfully reaching new users, which means it has a higher possibility of being shared and interacted with.
Increase Brand Awareness With Us
We can help you build your audience and revenue with a range of brand awareness advertising. You can develop your own brand awareness campaigns across the web, social media, and email in one platform, find the proper target, launch campaigns across platforms, and monitor your results across the entire funnel.
