Increasing brand awareness: how successful businesses do it in the digital age

If you’re looking for new ways to drive high levels of brand awareness, you’re not alone.

Competition to grab consumer attention is fierce. Especially in the saturated online market. And this can make it a real challenge for brands to stand out.

In this post I’ll be showing you some effective ways to combat this and also looking at what successful businesses are doing to build brand awareness.

Cause marketing

Most of us tend to prefer people who stand up for what they believe in. It’s a clear indication that they have shared values and that they’re trustworthy.

And research suggests that we feel the same way about the brands that we interact with. With 56% stating they’d stop buying from unethical brands and 91% reporting that they’d switch to using a brand that supported a good cause.

This explains why we’ve seen a rise in brands using cause marketing – advertising with a strong political message – in recent years. Think Lynx’s “Boys don’t cry” campaign or Lush’s decision to abandon social media.

Of course, you don’t need to do something quite so radical in order to boost your own brand awareness. Even something small, like providing your workforce with reusable water bottles to help reduce plastic use, sends a strong message to consumers that you’re passionate about a cause and willing to take action.

Branded merchandise

Though marketing budgets are increasingly shifting to digital advertising, there’s still plenty of power in classic brand awareness building tactics – like giving out branded promotional items.

In fact, a recent study found that 71% of people will remember the name of a business they’ve received a promotional product from. And 76% will have a better opinion of them. In our experience, we’ve found useable branded products – think notebooks, pens and promotional mugs – to be particularly effective for this.

That said, though many brands see success with free promotional giveaways, it’s not the only option. Consider manufacturing brands – like John Deere and Caterpillar – who’ve created popular branded workwear ranges that not only provide additional revenue, but also allow loyal fans to advertise their brand on-the-go.

Brand consistency

Our Business Development Lead, Nelson Paterson, recently posted his thoughts on the importance of brand consistency. And his conclusions are echoed by research, as brands with consistent messaging have been shown to get 3-4 times more visibility and earn 23% more revenue.

While brand consistency has a lot to do with keeping colours, fonts and logos uniform across your marketing collateral, there’s plenty of other things that contribute too. Customer-service standards, office-culture and, of course, the quality of your clothing and merchandise all play their part.

Imagine if a prestigious law-firm – like Osborne Clarke – were to hand clients cheap or tacky corporate gifts. It would be inconsistent with the prestigious brand message.

But, since they give their clients luxury branded gifts, the expectations set by the messaging are met. And this creates satisfied customers and loyal brand advocates who will then share their experiences and contribute to continually increasing brand awareness.

Final thoughts

Of course, these aren’t the only ways to increase brand awareness in the digital age. But we’ve found them to be particularly effective for our clients.

If you’ve got some ideas of your own about how to build brand awareness that we haven’t covered here, we’d love to hear about them. So feel free to share your thoughts on one of our social channels. The links are just below.

Finally, if you’re feeling inspired and want to discuss ways to use merchandise, clothing or print to help boost your brand awareness, then follow this link to arrange a conversation with one of our experts. They’ll be happy to bring your bright ideas to life.