Did you know that 59% of people buy from brands they already know?
If you want more sales for your business, you need more brand awareness. Learning how to grow a brand may sound easy, but it’s certainly not. Brand awareness is how you connect with customers and earn their trust.
Growing your brand is a numbers game. It can take between 5-7 times for a person to remember your brand. You might need more exposure if you are in a highly competitive industry.
Do you want to know what it takes to build a sustainable business? Check out these branding tips that show you how to grow your brand.
1. What Is Your Brand?
Do you know what the definition of a brand is? It’s not your tagline or logo. It’s not your company name. A brand is hard to define because it’s not tangible like your business name or logo. It’s how people perceive and relate to your company. With that in mind, how do people perceive your brand now? Do they think of low prices or mediocre customer service? Then ask yourself if that’s how you want people to perceive your brand. If it’s not then look at what you want your brand to be.
One way to close that gap is to list your company’s values. Customers like to do businesses that share their values. How you define your brand is important because it lies at the center of the rest of the steps in growing your brand. It’s how you’ll create messages that resonate with your intended audience. You have the essence of the brand down. Now figure out the type of brand you need to have. For example, if you’re a speaker or a thought leader, you need a personal brand. You might need a product brand and a business brand. Learning the types of brands and which one applies to you help you further your brand strategy.
2, Get to Know Your Target Market
Getting to know your target market is the most important step in marketing a brand. You have to make sure that your brand truly connects with your intended audience. At the very least, you should know their basic demographic information. Things like age, gender, where they live, and household income are general demographics. Dig under the surface and really get to know your customers. You need to learn what motivates them to purchase your product.
Understand what they really want. For example, someone who buys a vacation package isn’t just buying a hotel and airfare. They’re buying an unforgettable experience. Sometimes, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you have a luxury brand, why would someone buy from your brand? Oftentimes, people turn to luxury brands for status. In the fitness industry, clients spend billions on products and training to lose weight. Their deeper motivations are to feel attractive and confident.
Take these examples and research your target market. Learn what their deeper motivations are.
3. Craft Your Brand’s Voice
If your brand was a person, how would they talk? That’s what’s meant by your brand’s voice. It’s a style of communication that connects to your target market. Why is this important? If your audience is primarily women, but you talk to them as if you’re talking to men, it wouldn’t resonate with them. Your brand voice can be smart, funny, playful, or anything you want. It does have to stay true to your values and brand perception.
Once you have your brand’s voice, you can start to create content for your audience. It’s challenging because as a writer, you have a certain voice. You have to put that aside and put yourself in your brand’s shoes so to speak. Do you want a great example of how to connect your brand’s voice to your content? Look no further than the State of New Jersey.
The state’s official Twitter account sounds just like someone from New Jersey does. It’s witty and charming at the same time. It’s also a huge hit, gaining a lot of attention and a big following.
4. Get on Social Media
Social media is one of the best ways that small business brands can compete with large corporations. You don’t have a huge advertising budget, but you do have time. At this point, you have a clear vision of your brand and a voice. It’s time to use it. Pick one or two social media channels. They must be the two favorite channels of your target market. If there are five networks that your audience uses, still stick to a couple of them.
You want to set yourself up for success. Spread yourself too thin and you won’t grow your brand. As for the content, get creative. You can do a mix of stories, testimonials, images, and videos. You can even live stream events periodically. Don’t be surprised if you get little engagement at first. Keep posting, and staying safe on social media at the same time. You’ll gain momentum and people will start to engage and follow your brand online.
5. Customer Service as a Brand Strategy
What’s an easy way to grow your brand? Have your customers tell everyone they know about your business. The best way to do that is to deliver incredible customer service each and every time. You don’t need a huge ad budget. You don’t need to be a huge business.
For example, an HVAC company installs a new unit. They see that the previous installation wasn’t installed properly. Instead of leaving everything as is, they educate the customer and fix the problem without additional charges. The customer is thrilled with the installation because went out of your way to help them. They reward your good work with positive reviews and referrals.
Think about ways you can wow your customers. It’s a simple and effective way to grow your brand.
6. Infuse Data Into Your Brand Strategy
There’s no way you’ll know if you’re successful unless you measure results. As you learned earlier, brand awareness is intangible. How can you measure if you grow a brand or not? You can conduct surveys of your target market. You can also look at search data and website traffic. If people are searching for your brand and vising your website, you can assume that they are familiar with your brand.
7. Leverage Partnerships
Are there influencers and other brands that have the attention of your audience? These are competitors in the sense that you market to the same audience. As long as they don’t sell the same product or service as your business, they can be helpful partners. You can expand your reach by having other brands and influencers tell their audiences about your business. You can do this through paid sponsorships or partnership agreements. For example, you can co-host a webinar or summit with another business. You could be a guest on podcasts or write guest posts for websites. Before you jump on the influencer bandwagon, you want to make sure that it’s a good fit for your business. Make sure that they share your values and messaging.
If you don’t do the research first, you could end up destroying your brand’s reputation.
8. Keep It Consistent
What’s the hardest part of a brand awareness strategy? Having a ton of channels and keeping your message consistent. You can’t create a long Facebook post and then copy and paste it onto other social media channels. You have to tailor the content for each channel while keeping the message consistent. People expect consistency not just in the message, but in the visual aspects of your brand as well. Consistency also helps your visibility on social media channels. The algorithms seem to favor accounts that post at least a few times a week. People come to know when they should expect new content from your brand.
Keep following through and the algorithms and customers will trust your brand more and more.
Read next: Business Remodeling Tips: Elevating Your Business Space
Grow a Brand and Make a Difference
You started your business because you love to help people and you love what you do. If you want to do that, then you have to learn how to grow a brand. It’s how people will learn about your business and grow to trust you. That leads to sales. The branding tips in this article give you the structure you need to grow a brand. Even small business brands can benefit.
Be sure to check out the other articles on this site for more business and lifestyle tips.
