16 Powerful Steps to Build Brand Awareness for Your Business

Building a business is hard work. 

Building brand awareness is the first step in the long journey to success. Where does one begin? To quote Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter, at the beginning of course! 

Learning how to build a brand begins with the passion it took to get it started in the first place. Without awareness, a brand is lost in the mix of all the other brands in the market. 

It may seem overwhelming to some who are just getting started, so we are here to help you with the steps to take to build a successful brand. 

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Here is what we will cover to help you successfully build brand awareness: 

• Brand Awareness vs Brand Recognition
• Tone and Voice Consistency
• Keyword Research and Targeting
• Public Relations
• Social Brand Awareness 
• Event Building 
• Webinars and Podcasts 
• Shareable Content 
• Brand Partnerships 
• Team Transparency 
• Influencer Marketing
• Referral Awards
• Paid Advertising and Promotional Marketing
• Offline Marketing 
• Discount Codes 
• Friends and Family

Let’s dig into how to build a brand, successfully. 

1 – Know the difference between Brand Awareness vs Brand Recognition

What is brand awareness and why is it important? 

In lamen terms, brand awareness is getting the word out to the world about your products and services. In formal business terms, brand awareness is the level of familiarity that consumers have with a brand like a name, logo, and the colors that might be associated with it, as well as its product or service itself. 

The difference between brand awareness and brand recognition is simple. Brand awareness is when you are becoming aware of something new. Brand recognition is when you’re realizing the value a brand has. 

First, you want to get your product or service out there, then you want it to be recognized as a valuable source.

According to Marketing Tutor, brand recognition is when a customer is emotionally attached to a brand. It all begins with good brand awareness. 

Now, let’s dive in to learn how to build a successful brand step by step.

2 – Keep the Same Tone and Voice Consistency

Before you even begin to build your brand, you need to be sure who you are as a business. Building a brand starts with being consistent about what you are selling. 

Why is building your tone and voice important to brand awareness? Harriet Cummings of distilled states “it’s an expression of the people behind the brand”, which is pretty important. 

There are many choices when it comes to getting your brand in front of your audience. What does your target market want to see when it comes to brand colors, logo and even your name? It boils down to how well you know your target market. 

Do your research!

Find out where your audience shops, what they share on social media and what types of brands they love. This will help you be consistent with your own brand choices. 

Once you have chosen your brand basics, it’s time to place your brand characteristics everywhere you can!

Every page on your website should reflect your tone and voice. Every post on social media should include your brand colors. Use it everywhere, every way you can! #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

3 – Stay Up-to-Date with Keyword Research and Targeting

Most business owners are not analytical geniuses or SEO masters. If you are, you have a leg up in the brand awareness category! 

When you are taking steps to build a successful brand, it all begins with the keywords you would like to be ranked for. We are not going to take you down the SEO rabbit hole, however, it is a core necessity for success to learn the importance of SEO. 

There are several awesome tools out there to learn how to do this successfully. Check out Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs and of course Google Analytics. You can gain valuable insights into what keywords work best for you, how searchable they are for your audience and how competitive the space is. 

Once you have chosen your primary and secondary keywords you would like to target, it’s time to put them into play. Be sure you don’t use them in a “spammy” way and be organic as you can when using them.

4 – Know About Public Relations

Never underestimate the power of the press! Public relations is not dead, especially when you are trying to learn how to build a successful brand. 

Creating brand awareness through public relations can be done in a multitude of different ways. The number one thing you need to get out there is the announcement that you are actually out there. 

Shout your brand to the world!

Build a beautiful, creative and engaging press release to reach the masses with your new business. It’s the best money you will spend to start brand awareness. You may have to spend money to make money in the beginning, but it will be worth it. 

If you need to learn how to make an impactful press release check out this awesome article from HubSpot along with free templates and examples. 

5 – Monitor Your Social Brand Awareness 

Building a social empire is not going to happen overnight. Take one step at a time and start simply by opening up the right accounts to reach the right audience. 

Again, this will take research to be sure you are targeting the right social media platforms to reach your target market. Creating social media accounts is the portal to which you will reach the world. 

Be sure to set up your social profiles with the consistent tone and voice of your brand. Using your logo, linking your website, creating a catchphrase, using a fun personal back history – all are equally important.

Be human!

These are humans you are reaching out to, be human! 

6 – Be More Visible at Events 

It’s important when learning how to build a successful brand that you actually introduce your face to the world in real life. 

The endless conferences, charitable events and sponsoring opportunities are out there. It is up to you to pick the events that will benefit you the best. If you have the funds to sponsor an event, do it! Showing good faith when building your brand is a nice way to start out. 

If you can send team members to conferences and meetups, you can build brand awareness out there on a personal level. Make some business branded t-shirts, print those business cards and get out there! 

7 – Use Webinars and Podcasts 

Right from the start of building your brand, you need to catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to webinars and podcasts. Don’t be overwhelmed by this! They are a lot of fun and can build everlasting partnerships. 

Create a valuable list of people you would like to feature on a webinar or podcast. Along with that, create a list of topics that will help drive your keyword ranking up. There you have the beginnings of a beautiful marketing strategy. 

Webinars should be held monthly and podcasts should be held weekly. This takes a lot of energy but the results all go towards the end goal of building your brand. 

Most importantly, have fun it!

Here are some tips to create a highly effective webinar by eLearning Industry. Enjoy the process as much as the results. 

8 – Create Shareable Content

We all know content is king. Creating content should be right up there with choosing your logo when building brand awareness. 

The benefits of blogging are endless! However, when you begin to build a business, it is important that your content is not only informative, it’s creative, engaging and shareable. 

What drives your audience to share content? 

They have to get emotionally attached to it, remember? 

Be sharable as a business.

We know that blogging takes time. We know that starting a business means that you may not have a lot of it. You can check out these tips on increasing productivity by writing faster by yours truly. We’ve got your back. 

Create graphics, infographics or images that are clickable, tweetable and shareable. Use GIFs that make people laugh or get interested. Create a hashtag that is only yours. You can even create a custom Boomerang just for your team. 

9 – Build Great Brand Partnerships 

Isn’t this what brand awareness is all about? Building lasting partnerships, creating relationships that make connections to the world? Yes! 

How do you build partnerships without being salesy or greedy? You offer something of value to these potential partners as a show of good faith. You can offer services, discounts, time or even interviews in order to show the value of your brand. 

Often times, just shouting out their company on social media or connecting with them through content is a great start to building brand partnerships. Check out these failed brand partnerships (and a few that worked) to learn what not to do by Urbo. 

Pick your partners and send them some love! 

10 – Create Team Transparency 

Everyone loves a good origin story! How else would we connect with the brand if we don’t learn who’s behind the vision? 

Introducing your team to the market is a crucial step in building your brand. If you have created a team you’re proud of, it’s time to show that team spirit to your market. 

Create a unique way to brag about your teammates online and in person. Your “about us” or “team” landing pages on your website can be a major website traffic builder simply by how creative you can be with it!

Here are 50 ways you can showcase your team in creative ways to build your brand by the experts at Canva. 

11 – Invest in Influencer Marketing

It’s not enough these days to just create content. 

You can’t spit out a 400-word blog article and expect it to go viral. Let’s be real! You should pour your heart and soul into your content, it will be your most valuable asset when building your brand. 

Once you have written an amazing blog or social post, what is the best way to optimize influencer marketing? Going back to the basics of what we have learned thus far, it’s to be human.

Humans love compliments! 

Reaching out to influencers or experts in your industry is a great way to build a successful brand. When creating content, lift up these experts in your blogs, social media posts or even on your website! The Carebears said it best, sharing is caring. 

12 – Use Referral Awards

The best type of business is word of mouth referrals, right? 

Building a successful brand means that you will have the chance to award your loyal fans and followers that refer business to you. 

You know the drill, the ad says ‘refer a friend get $10 off’. It’s a solid tactic that has been proven to work over the course of many years in brand awareness marketing. 

Our advice to you is to be creative with it! Engage your referees with something that will bring value to them. Creating a valuable offer will be what makes the difference in the quality of referrals.

Here are six killer customer referral program ideas by friendbuy. We hope those referrals roll in by the dozens. 

13 – Use Paid Advertising and Promotional Marketing

We’ve established that creating brand awareness means that you may have to spend money to make money. The power of paid advertising and promotional marketing could be on the top of that list. 

Learning how to build a successful brand means that Google (and most likely Facebook now) need to know that you exist. Getting on Google’s good side means that you may need to get your brand in front of the right people through paid ads.

What’s better than investing a little into Google so that your brand gets in the right hands? 

The one piece of advice we have here is that you don’t need to have paid ads running on Google, Facebook or Twitter all the time! Run ads on a 30 day time period and evaluate the results to be sure they are worth the effort and budget allotted.

After you get up and running, switch to organic traffic building through content. Boom! 

14 – Try Offline Marketing 

Don’t underestimate the power of a hand-written card! 

Believe it or not, there are more than digital ways to build your brand. What? Direct mailing isn’t dead yet? Small Business Trends says nope! 

If you want to go old school and create mailers, postcards or flyers about your business, that still works for a certain generation or demographic.

For example, maybe your product is for a new parent, and you want to target mothers. In that case, you could do an insert in a baby magazine, or you could post flyers on a mom forum. 

Don’t underestimate the power of snail mail!

If you want to go modern new school and create a personalized note, save the date or fun invitation, that may work for a certain generation or demographic as well! The ideas are endless if you have the funds to produce, print and mail.

15 – Use Discount Codes and Specials 

There are so many ways to show your audience love.

Share good content, post regularly on social and go to in-person events are all a good start. However, sometimes you have to select a few lucky participants to give discount codes to. 

What is one of the best ways to learn how to build brand awareness? Give things away at a discount. People love discounts! 

Specials can run on days that apply as well. Fourth of July? Run a special! Throw in a discount, put it on social, share it with your friends and cross your fingers.

Learn the importance of when to use discounts plus some tips for marketing with Digital Doughnut.

16 – Look to Friends and Family

The best companies are the ones that are proud of who they are and who they surround themselves with. The power of friends and family is strong when you are learning to build your brand. 

Building your email database is key to learning how to build a successful brand. You can’t force people to submit their email addresses so you will have to start with people that trust and support you. 

Reaching out to friends and family needs to be with sincere care, tact, and genuine heart. Please don’t order your Uncle Ted to buy your product or service. Ask them to support you with the same passion that compelled you to start your business in the first place. 

Wrapping Up 

At Bramework, we are bloggers that want to help you blog better. 

Our platform uses an AI content creator to increase your search ranking and get you seen by your right audience.  We want to help you get more click-throughs, more subscribers, and more engagement in a fraction of the time it takes you to create your blog post.

We are passionate about content marketing. 

If you have questions about building your brand, brand awareness, blogging or just want to say hey to the Bramework team, please reach out to us! 

What ways have you learned to build a successful brand? We want to hear from you. 

Happy writing friends! 

Bramework 

UP NEXT: How to Convert Social Media to Sales for Your Business (7 Easy Steps)

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