Brand awareness
What is brand awareness?
Brand awareness is the ability of a specific brand to stay in consumers’ minds, and the level of knowledge consumers have about it (the product offering, its history, values, etc.)
In other words, brand awareness is the feeling that a particular brand evokes in a consumer’s mind. Not only whether they remember it, but also whether it brings back any kind of positive or negative memory, and what they know about it.
1. The levels of brand awareness
There are four levels used to classify brands according to their awareness, which is a very simple way for us to identify both ourselves and our customers:
Dominant brand
It is the only brand that comes to mind when we think of a specific product category, and it even makes the product category itself take on the brand’s name in the consumer’s mind.
For example, this is the case with Kleenex, which, despite being a brand of tissues, has become the word used for tissues in general. The same goes for the company Bimbo, since we use the term “pan Bimbo” to refer to sliced bread, and “pan Bimbo” is used by default for that product category.
Top of mind
This would be the first brand that appears in our mind when a specific product or product category is mentioned.
Some examples of top-of-mind brands would be: Coca Cola for soft drinks; Nike for sports shoes; Pascual for milk; Titleist for golf balls; etc.
Spontaneous recall
This level includes the brands that consumers can recall from a given product or service category without any effort.
For example, when thinking of airlines, many can be recalled easily (Iberia, Ryanair, British Airways, EasyJet, etc.), or when thinking of mobile phone manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc.)
Aided recall
This is the lowest level of awareness, since the consumer knows the brand but needs prior exposure to recall it, whether by hearing or seeing its name.
For example, a computer user could name several brands without much effort, such as HP, Apple, Lenovo, Dell or Sony, but if they were then shown a longer list of brands including others such as Acer or Asus, they would remember and recognize them immediately even though they hadn’t initially recalled them.
2. How can you improve brand awareness?
Improving brand awareness is very important for any business, and specific actions must be taken to achieve it. Although every business and sector has its own peculiarities, these points are generally applicable for improving it:
- Choose a suitable name and logo. To stick in users’ minds, you need to pay special attention to both the name and the logo (shape, typography and colors), since they are two of the aspects that can help us stand out from the competition.
- Tell interesting stories. We all like listening to stories, but they have to be good stories. That’s why you should analyze your buyer persona and offer them stories they can identify with.
- Work on content marketing. It is vital for brand awareness, and there are many ways to do content marketing. Some of the most common are: collaborating with industry or general-interest blogs, creating buzz on social media, publishing interesting content on the corporate blog, sending newsletters, etc.
- Simple, attractive website. Your website is your business’s calling card, so make sure it is easy to navigate and, if it allows online purchases, that the buying process is easy and fast. A good first experience lasts over time and makes customers come back.
- Take part in events. Whether online or in person, whenever you have the chance to attend trade shows and events, do it. The awareness you gain through face-to-face contact is very important, as it allows you to build a very lasting relationship of trust and closeness.
3. Tools for measuring brand awareness
There are various ways and tools to measure brand awareness objectively. Some of the most widely used tools are:
- Google Insights for Search. One of the best tools for measuring brand awareness, because it lets you compare search patterns in specific regions and time periods, as well as filter by category.
- Google Trends. It lets us see how often something is searched for during a given period of time, and compare several terms. It also allows filtering by language, country, etc.
- How Sociable. It measures a brand’s visibility on social media, giving a numerical value for it. It is widely used as a benchmark against the competition.
- Google Keyword Planner. Although it is a tool designed to select keywords for an SEO strategy, it also lets us gauge brand awareness by providing information such as: number of local searches, term suggestions and match type.