What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is a metric that measures how widely known your brand, goods, or services are. There are many levels of brand recognition, from simply having seen a company’s product to knowing and remembering a company’s name.
Simply getting their “foot in the door” is a good place to start for new businesses in terms of gaining more consumers and increasing their exposure over time.
How Brand Awareness Affects Google Search
There is a two-way relationship between brand awareness and Google search. For example, social media trends can directly impact users’ perception of certain brands. We saw this recently with the rise of fidget spinners. They first became popular on social media, and then people started searching for them on Google.
When fidget spinners became popular, we observed a significant increase in searches for “fidget spinners.” However, once fidget spinners went out of style, the number of searches decreased rapidly. Consequently, if you want to improve Search visibility and attract organic traffic to your website, it would be beneficial to include content marketing as part of your strategy. The more people are aware of your brand, the more likely they will search for you on Google.
Search Engine Optimization Can Expand the Population Who Recognizes Your Kitchen Cabinets Showroom
Utilizing SEO strategies can also help you with brand recognition. You might not be well known yet, but you can direct people to your website using non-branded search terms. For example, if you just launched a new invoicing SaaS for business owners, even though your brand name isn’t being searched on Google yet, you could focus on keywords like “small company invoicing software” or “how to make a business invoice.” By doing this, visitors will have their first encounter with your brand on your website.
What This Means For Your Brand
Simply put, content marketing is essential to driving website traffic and brand awareness. Your content strategy shouldn’t just be about placing your name on as many platforms as possible; it should also focus on increasing the amount of organic traffic coming to your site from search engines.
Content marketing can help your brand:
- Attract more followers on social media
- Generate social/referral traffic to your website
- Form strategic brand partnerships
- Improve the organic ranking of your website
- Earn high-authority backlinks to your site
- Improve customer retention over time
These are just a few of the many benefits of content marketing for brand visibility.
Write SEO Content That Also Fosters Brand Recognition
I firmly believe that, as an SEO content strategist, producing versatile material is key. not only will the following methods improve your brand awareness, but they may also support increasing traffic and visibility on other platforms.
1. Get to Know Your Target Customers and Their Wants
Your content won’t be successful unless you figure out your target market and the audience you’re hoping to reach with your brand. If you don’t do this, there’s a risk that you’ll make the wrong kind of content for the wrong people on unsuitable platforms-which would end up being a colossal waste of time.
With the invention of many market research tools, it has become simpler to find your target audience and figure out how much they are interested in brands comparable to yours. Out of all the options available, Google Forms is my favorite for this purpose. Here’s how to conduct quick and easy market research:
Create Google Form with the following questions:
- What is your #1 struggle when it comes to [primary topic of brand]?
- What solutions have you tried already to solve this problem?
- What issues did you have with those solutions?
- If you were to define your ideal solution, what would it be?
- What are you hoping to accomplish by [solution]?
To develop your corporate message, survey individuals who would be interested in your product or service. Collect responses from at least 10 people to get a variety of feedback. Tally the answers to see what is most important or common among respondents. This information will help you fine-tune your messaging and understand who is more likely to use your products or services.
Google Analytics is a great tool for long-term content engagement tracking, but an initial survey will give you a better idea of what your audience actually wants. Don’t make assumptions – get feedback from the people who matter most: those consuming your content!
2. Make Your Brand Stand Out by Defining its Unique Selling Proposition
Your brand will only be remembered if you offer something unique that your company does better than others. This could show up as a more practical way of handling customer complaints, being less expensive, offering outstanding customer service, or any number of other qualities we would label as ‘unique selling points.’
Your USP is the core of your marketing strategy. By differentiating you from others in the market, attracting ideal customers, and giving people a reason to buy from you, it becomes the heart of all decisions related to promotions.
3. Optimize Your Granite Store Website for Search with Non-Branded Content
If you’re just starting out, it’s unlikely that many people know about your brand yet, especially if you’re trying to go national. You can take advantage of this by using non-branded search terms to drive traffic to your site. For example, let’s say you have a kitchen remodeling company in New Jersey. Even though people might not have heard of it unless they walk past it, you can still use SEO both online and offline.
If you want your website to succeed, then optimization is key. By making sure that your web pages are aligned with popular search terms, you can bring new users to your site and improve your ranking in local listings.
4. Building Better Business Partnerships Through Content Marketing
If you want your new business to be successful, it’s important to form close partnerships with other business owners. Referrals and word-of-mouth marketing are powerful tools that shouldn’t be underestimated. Face-to-face networking is always beneficial, but your content marketing can also help you reach out to others who share your interests. Here are a few ways to use content to build industry partnerships:
- Join Facebook groups and share insights with other industry professionals.
- Post informative video content and engage with other business owners in the comments.
- Conduct email outreach to form third-party publishing opportunities.
- Invite business owners to contribute to or be interviewed on your blog.
By networking with other companies, you reap many benefits. For example, you expand your company’s list of references and gain access to another organization’s audience. Additionally, this process can be repeated as often as necessary to achieve your desired goal – whether that is increasing brand awareness or recognition.
5. Benefits of Guest Posting for Your Business
If you just created your business, then it’s most likely that your website doesn’t have a high Google ranking. Domain age and the amount of content are some elements that contribute to this. Although, you can use other websites with good authority and influence to help yours improve. This is done by:
- Create a list of industry-related websites which may be likely to publish your content (think: small businesses, not Forbes).
- Reach out to the publisher or business owner via email, asking if you can contribute blog content on a periodic basis. Specify that this is not for linking purposes but to share your industry experience.
- Once accepted, write content on topics that your audience would find valuable (again, keep your USP in mind). However, avoid being self-promotional.
- Share this content with your growing audience. See the results of publishing your content on larger platforms.
Did you know that “guest posting” can help promote your brand and expand your reach? If you have a tiny audience, guest posting is an excellent way to get more people interested in what you do. By guest posting, you’re able to share your experience with others, as well as market your content strategy.
6. Take Advantage of Influencer Marketing
You can expand your follower base significantly by employing influencer marketing, as many e-commerce brands do. Find some industry leaders who might be willing to give promote your brand in exchange for freebies or other rewards. Do some research to find these people but don’t just pick anyone–really consider if they have the ability to help you reach more people first.
7. Let Data Drive Your Content
The success of your content marketing relies on using data to drive your content. The “publish and pray” method hardly works as a true strategy. Hence why we begin your content plan with audience research.
There are many tools you can use to help you interpret user data and use this to inform your content strategy. Some of these tools include:
- Google Analytics – for performance insights, user demographics, and user behavior.
- Google Search Console – for keyword performance, click-through rate, and positioning.
- SEMRush – for keyword research, competitor analysis, content analysis, and backlinks reports.
- Heropost – for social media engagement, impressions, and brand awareness.
I suggest monitoring these tools on a weekly basis to see how your platforms are currently performing, what content is driving the most awareness of your brand, and how users are engaging with content on your website.
8. Diversify Your Content Strategy
When you are first starting out, it’s nearly impossible to know which platforms and which types of content will resonate most with your target audience.
Truly, you will need to diversify your content strategy to see which strategies have the most impact on your particular brand.
Really, your content should serve the purpose of communicating your values as a business. This relates back to your USP, as defined in Step 2.
Then, you can use different types of content to engage your audience:
- Videos.
- Blog articles.
- Podcasts.
- Infographics.
- Social media posts.
- Live videos.
- Guest posts.
- Interviews.
- Tutorials.
- Email campaigns.
- Paid ads.
- Hosted events.
Your analytics will reveal which types of content people engage with the most over time. This will help you figure out what stuff to put out the most and which ones to eliminate from your content plan.
9. Utilize Social Listening Tools
Sentiment analysis employs machine learning to “listen” to conversations users are having online and determine how people feel about your brand awareness strategy. This can be highly valuable because you get to see if people view your brand positively or not.
It also gives you the opportunity to shape the narrative yourself. With the newfound ability to understand consumers better, many brands see success by changing their perspective and drumming up more awareness online.
10. Establish A Content Publishing Strategy
Your content strategy won’t get you very far unless you are consistent with your publishing schedule. If you’re not, then you might miss out on some great opportunities to increase brand awareness campaigns awareness. If you are inconsistent in your messaging, you may confuse your audience about what your brand is about.
If you want to be consistent with your content, try establishing a publishing schedule that includes planned topics and dates. This will help hold you accountable for any future posts. Additionally, by having a record of all previously published content, you can avoid duplicating efforts in the future.
11. Own Branded And Non-Branded Conversations
The appeal of being the only person speaking about your boost brand awareness is high, but it’s essential that you’re also part of non-branded conversations.
- Are you sharing your knowledge on certain industry topics?
- Are you asking users what they are interested in or what they are struggling with?
- Do you weigh in on recent trends?
The objective is to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in your sector, not just your own. The more you can “talk shop” with your audience, the more likely they are to come into contact with your company.
12. Don’t Forget The Follow-up
Your content does you no good if it’s not seen, which is why follow-up after initial publication is essential. Staying top-of-mind with your audience may include:
- Following up with email subscribers via email.
- Running retargeting ads to website visitors.
- Initiating conversations with your social media followers.
- Following up with existing customers.
- Responding to comments and messages.
- Checking in with your professional contacts and partners.
Make sure your brand is seen by users more than just once. A content, social media marketing strategy that involves multiple touchpoints ensures that users will engage with your brand awareness campaign, fostering a relationship built on trust–one that can turn into a paying customer.
Content Marketing Insights To Grow Your Remodel Business
Too often, business owners rely on “strategic” content being restricted to social media and hoping users will organically come across it. However, your content strategy can actually be much more effective when you use market insights to inform it.
The right audience, the right keywords, the optimal strategy for linking and formatting your text, and a slew of other factors can all be considered as part of your content planning. This ensures that you reach the appropriate people with the correct information at the ideal time – and that they are still thinking about your business until they are ready to make a purchase.