Social media is undeniably a powerhouse in modern-day business. With a new generation of businesses created via the birth of social media, it’s something that will forever be around as long as the internet continues to exist.
Brand awareness is essential for any business to gain popularity, drive traffic to their platforms, and ultimately, build on the success achieved so far.
Whether you’re a new business with a brand to promote or you’re looking to navigate social media as a long-established company, it’s never too late to start investing.
In this guide, you’ll learn the following:
- The growth of social media
- Why is brand awareness important?
- 6 beginner tips for increasing brand awareness
- How to build on your success via social media
Social media is a wonderful place to connect and bring people together, no matter where they are.
The growth of social media
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be very familiar with all aspects of social media. There are umpteen different platforms with new ones cropping up every year and whilst some have stood the test of time, others have faded into obscurity.
Despite the social media graveyard of platforms, many have continued to thrive. Helping create success for many businesses and establishing careers of the ‘influencer generation’.
There’s expected to be a whopping 3.96 billion social media users worldwide in 2022. This is a 4.8 percent increase from a year ago. That’s over half of the world’s population that has access to a social media profile.
For businesses, many look to social media to help market their business. With marketers spending over $99 billion on social media advertising and marketing in 2020 alone, it’s a method of business promotion that’s valuable.
Why is brand awareness important?
Brand awareness is key for many businesses, especially when they’re just starting out. Having a reputation online can also help when it comes to launching new products or services. It can help influence and encourage users to convert to paying customers or for existing customers to make regular purchases.
Some of the ways that brand awareness can benefit a business include:
Increased sales
Any business would like to make more money and in order to do that, they need to make more profit. The number of sales can dramatically improve with more focus on raising brand awareness.
Improvements on market share
To have a bigger stake in the market a business operates in is always a benefit. With brand awareness, companies can build on their market share which only improves the company’s overall success and future stability on the market.
Reach business objectives and goals
Many businesses have a number of goals or objectives that they’d like to achieve. Whether it’s over the course of a few months, a year, or more. Working on brand awareness can be a great way of helping edge closer to those goals or milestones that the business has set for itself.
6 beginner tips for increasing brand awareness
With that being said, how can a marketer or business owner improve their brand awareness in 2022? There are plenty of beginner tips that can help get to grips on boosting your brand’s presence. This should serve as a great starting point and from here, you’ll be well on your way to brand success!
1. Assess your brand with a brand equity calculation.
Before you go diving in headfirst when it comes to building brand awareness, it’s good to do a brand equity calculation. Assessing your brand with a brand equity calculation can give you or your marketers a starting point on likable or persuasive your brand is when it comes to attracting new customers or existing ones.
Measuring your brand equity consists of a number of methods. For example, you could measure brand equity through brand lift. This involves A/B testing using branded and unbranded content. It can help to understand how much influence your brand name has in encouraging consumers to make a purchase.
2. Pay attention to Tiktok and other trending platforms.
There are plenty of growing platforms when it comes to social media. One of the most recent and fastest-growing platforms is Tiktok. Rocketing to success and somewhat influenced by the reality of the pandemic, it has gone beyond expectations and is considered one of the top platforms available.
With that said, Tiktok is certainly a platform that is worth taking full advantage of. Many businesses are starting to utilize it for advertising and to collaborate with others, whether that be influencers or using Tiktok’s discover page for trends. In fact, research done by The State of Influencer Marketing 2021, found that 48% of marketers ran influencer campaigns with interest in influencers rising up by 325% in just one year.
Read Unum’s guide to grow your platform
There are lots of helpful resources online at the moment as many businesses are keen to talk about this platform and share their knowledge. Unum’s guide is a helpful one for those who are looking to grow their Tiktok platforms in 2022.
It’s always good to keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to different social media platforms that are bound to crop up in the future. By staying one step ahead, you could end up catching on to a trend early and reaping the benefits of it.
3. Collaborate with the right influencers.
It’s good to collaborate with the right influencers when you’re trying to build brand awareness. The power of influencers nowadays is pretty apparent with 49% of consumers depending on influencer recommendations.
Despite some of the influencers giving others a bad rep, the proof is in the pudding that influencer marketing is worth doing. When building your brand awareness, consider working with influencers to promote your products or services, or just the business as a whole.
However, in order to make it work for your brand, it’s important to choose the right influencers. That means conducting some research on your target audience, looking at influencers who might have that reach and engagement, and how much you’re willing to spend on them.
4. Harness the influence of content marketing.
Content marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. From creating engaging content on social media platforms to promoting your latest products via your mailing list. It could be sharing valuable knowledge on your website’s blog page to guest posting on other popular sites.
There’s a lot of content marketing that directly benefits your brand’s presence online and offline. It’s good to look at where your target audience would typically be found and then hone in on those platforms with content marketing.
5. Understand what’s trending.
There’s always something trending online and it’s always worthwhile to make use of this when trying to improve your brand awareness. Many brands jump on the bandwagon of what’s trending, even if there’s not that much in relation to what the trend is vs what your brand offers.
However, being able to trend alongside the latest viral tweet, meme or video is going to get you some attention.
6. Brand your work
Finally, not all brands have the long-standing reputation of being easily recognizable. It means that branding your work is going to help consumers remember you, even if they don’t buy from you.
Make sure that you’re labeling your content with your brand logo or some form of branding that makes it instantly noticeable as being something your business has created.This is especially crucial for a cutting-edge AI design, where your unique touch can set you apart in a crowded digital landscape.
How to build your success via social media
Building your brand and business success via social media is an absolute must. There’s so much value that social media offers and if you’ve utilized it in the right way, it can end up making you a lot of money. With that being said, here are some tips in helping you build your success.
Be consistent
Stay consistent when posting content. This helps keep your audience engaged and to be aware of when you’re going to share content online if it’s done regularly. Try to keep your quality of content the same every time and that way, your audience is less likely to be bored with any content marketing you’re sharing.
Create valuable and quality content
Value and quality are key when it comes to content. If it has no value to the reader then what is the point?
There has to be something that the reader gains from what you’re providing them. Whether it’s knowledge or entertainment, it’s good to always approach your content with this in mind.
Expand your presence across a variety of platforms
Finally, expand your presence across a variety of social media platforms. Don’t just stick to what you know because chances are, they’ll be some platform out there where there’s more audience to tap into and that ultimately you’re missing out on.
Utilize social media for your brand and business in 2022. Create content that provides value and understand what customers are looking for from brands in this modern day. It’ll help you keep ahead of the curve and your brand in the spotlight.
