Here we are going to discuss what can be considered a brand, and the problems faced while creating brand awareness strategies for small businesses, at last, we will keenly discuss the method that we can use to generate a brand.
What Is Brand Awareness?
The brand is a marketing term used to count the dependability of a product, as the quality of the product is determined by the brand name. Whenever we are talking about a brand, it is accountable for any new product being launched in the market.
A brand name is something that makes people believe that the product is authentic and that whatever promises it is making are genuine. For example, none of the shops needs to explain to their customers the quality of a newly launched Apple mobile, and even before the product is launched, people are eager to buy the product.
How does Brand Awareness Work?
Normally products with better brand value can generate better sales and it’s always easy for the company to promote the product. Whenever there are two similar products available in the market, people tend to go with the product which has better brand value.
For instance, if you go and check the jewellery market, people are ready to pay more for a hallmark certificated product because it ensures trust among them.
Another example is just checking the cold drinks like Thums Up, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola, they all look alike if the label is removed but people have their liking depending on the brand.
But as we are discussing how to create brand awareness for small businesses, we need to get aware of the problem which can be encountered during the process of brand creation.
Problems faced while creating a Brand
1. Consider the Brand as an Asset
Creating a brand incurs a lot of expenditure and dedicated effort for a long time, which can be considered nothing less than an asset. I looked deeper into this; one can say that it’s easy to acquire an asset but multiple times difficult to create a brand.
When talking about acquiring an asset, it is just an investment of money but when we talk about a brand it takes continuous investment, planning, and religiously following all the processes throughout an uncertain number of years before a company can be considered as a brand.
Every day new companies are getting launched and old companies are getting bankrupt but everyone remembers them, and the impression of a brand remains life in the mind of the people for a long time.
I am very sure, none of you has forgotten the name of Nokia, a brand in mobiles, and though it’s long lost its grip on the market, few still believe in its quality.
So, if you want to create a brand of your own, you have to consider the investment factor, and make sure, that whatever comes in the way, the investment should never get any hindrance.
2. Handling Negativity
It doesn’t matter how much value you have given to your customers as a brand, no matter how old the company is, all it takes is one wrong step taken and all our past deeds are ruined like a pile of sand.
As a brand, satisfying the customers is a continuous process that has no end to it, and as a brand, all the grievances of the customers must be solved. In the world of social media where power is in the hand of the public, even the slightest bit of rumor can spread like a forest fire.
3. Thinking you don’t invest in your brand
This is a common trap in which most small business holders fell easily as they think that owing to the lower investment in their product, spending on creating a brand is of no use.
As a business holder, whether big or small, you never know how and when your business will start to grow, and for that, you have to unturn all the milestones needed, and expenditure on branding is one of the most important parts of it.
4. Seeking Short-Term Gain
Small businesses in most cases set short-term goals on their to-do list and are unable to target the bigger picture. It is a true case that may occur because of a lack of funds or lack of proper manpower, but in most cases, the small business loses the opportunity to plan big.
When it comes to branding, it is not a short-term process and it takes months or sometimes years to convert a product into a brand, for which the company has to make continuous strategies.
All the big brands which we know today have not come up in one day and many started as very small companies but due to consistent efforts, they grew into a brand.
For instance, let us take the example of the worlds leading e-commerce company Amazon, which all know, started as a small company selling eBooks, but today it has climbed every step of success. If Amazon as a company would have limited its dreams by being a small company and don’t set its goals high, how can it achieve this success?
5. Staying Relevant
As a brand it’s easy to get carried away, trying too many varieties of sectors of production and losing the actual goal of the company. As a brand, it’s not at all wrong to invest in varieties of brands and increase the process of production, but in the process of doing so, it should not lose the soul of the brand.
As a brand people have some expectations with the product, and whenever a new product is launched, people relate it to the older products if the new product is launched in a hurry, and fails to fulfill people’s expectations, the efforts made by all older products go in vain.
6. Make it a Brand for yourself
The most challenging part in the process of brand creation is making everyone connected to the company feel the value of the brand, and whenever they are in the public, they should value their brand.
Every employee connected to the company is important for the brand image and all the employees must be trained related to the same, which incurs a bit of investment, which is a concern for small businesses to build a brand.
7. Maintaining Consistency
As a brand there should be consistent effort without any lag to promote it on all the platforms available, whatever post is released from the brand, it should contain the legitimacy of the brand.
Each post from the brand, whether it is an image or a video should contain the brand colors followed by the brand and the logo should be designed after a lot of thought every place where the brand is represented the brand logo should be presented.
These are a few handfuls of problems we face when as small businesses, we try to create our brand image, and now as promised before, we are going to discuss how to create brand awareness for small businesses.
Also read: Cool Successful Guerrilla Marketing Examples from Top Brands
How to Create Brand Awareness for Small Business
1. Use every aspect of social media
The most important part of creating a brand, especially if it’s a small business is to look after all the aspects of social media. Today’s generation like to hang around social media and they give a lot of value to whatever is posted on these platforms.
Regarding how to create brand awareness for small businesses, social media is a must and there is no looking back to this. As big businesses there are a lot of options available due to the vast capital, they possess but small businesses, have limited funds which they have to utilize in an optimized manner.
Most of these platforms are free to use, and it cost very less to promote the products on these platforms when compared to the traditional methods of promotion.
The question is how are you going to achieve growth through social media, which we are explaining below:
- Try to get engaged with all of your followers, and must check all their comments and messages and always try to reply to them, to make them feel considered.
- Get into partnership with other brands as both can be mutually benefited, and use the each-others platform to promote the products.
- Go for paid ads on different social media platforms to increase the visibility of your brand.
- Regularly organize a contest, quizzes, or giveaways to keep all the followers connected with the brand.
- You can also get into partnership with some social media influencers, who have millions of followers and they can readily promote your product with very little charge.
2. Advertise on the right platform
We must understand that all social media platforms are not meant for the same task, and all of them has their identity. Though we have to focus on all major platforms, depending on our brand we can divide the overall budget across all these platforms.
Like if we are targeting a B2-B business, compared to Instagram, LinkedIn can be more fruitful, and we must divert a greater portion of our budget towards LinkedIn.
Also, on platforms like Twitter, people like to talk about brands, as data says 77% of Twitter users appreciate a brand more when their tweet is responded to, and it shows how important is to answer back.
You have to make a thorough research on which all the platforms and judge their audience size and nature, and decided who suits your brand better, and also design of your ad creatives must be following the nature of the audience on the platform.
When we are talking about how to create brand awareness for small businesses, the power of advertisements can’t be ignored at any cost, as it is an important factor to increase our reach to customers.
3. Keep consistency of posts
Going through how to create brand awareness for small businesses, consistency is the key to success, and there should be discipline followed whenever there is a post concerning your brand. We have to take care that the post made by us are neither too frequent that the people feel annoyed, nor too less that the people forget about the brand.
We should never forget that people hang on to these social media platforms to enjoy their free time and if we pinch them too frequently with our posts, they will feel irritated and develop negative thoughts regarding the brand.
At the same time, if we don’t post for a very long time, our competitors will take advantage and the memories of our brand will vanish from the memories of the people.
So, there should always be some balance between how many posts we are throwing at our audience and every post should be valuable to them.
4. Enhance customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the only goal on which a business can survive for a longer period, and as a business house, you have to give it the topmost priority if you are concerned to know how to create brand awareness for small businesses.
It’s eerie what damage to your brand one SINGLE bad customer experience can do and you may be quite late before you realize it. Plenty of people vow to never have anything to do with a brand accountable for a depraved experience, which is true to some extent.
There was a famous story related to an eyeglasses company, Warby Parker which demonstrates how much value people give to their consumers. The story goes like this, the owner of the company was traveling on a train and a person sitting next to him forgot to take his glasses while deboarding the train. The owner took the pain to search for him and he delivered brand new pair of glasses right to his doorstep.
This story is a lesson to teach everyone about the importance of consumer satisfaction and no matter how small a business is, consumer satisfaction is a must.
5. Consider freebies as an investment
Many firms believe that giving freebies is a waste of money, but it’s the other way around when it comes to reality and when we are under the study of how to create brand awareness for small businesses, creating some great freebies for customers always helps.
Freebies play a tremendous role to build brand value for any business whether small or big, as it compels the audience to participate and generate leads for the business.
People love freebies and giveaways and whenever a company is conducting any kind of quiz or engagement program, they play a leading role to drive the crowd.
6. Create powerful referral programs and affiliate offers
Creating powerful referral programs and affiliate offers is an evergreen technique when we are studying how to create brand awareness for small businesses.
Though referrals and affiliates have a direct impact on the profit margin for a company, they still cost much lower than what we spend to promote the brand.
When it comes to brand promotion when our customers refer the product to others, it’s bound to be successful, and this is what a referral program or affiliate link can do.
7. Partner with other brands
As we say, sharing is caring, and when it comes to brand promotion, it is even more true. Whenever we want to develop our brand it’s suggestible to take the support of others who are in a similar hunt.
This way both the partners use the each-others audience to create their respective brands.
There are many live examples of such partnership which was done to benefit each other mutually, like GoPro & Red Bull tying for the Stratos project, or BMW & Louis Vuitton creating The Art of Travel campaign together.
When we are talking about how to create brand awareness for small businesses, the idea is simple, search for partners who cater to our needs and both can be benefited. The partnership can be to host any online campaign or host a local festival or organize a local sports event or anything else.
8. Give value to offline campaigns
Though an online campaign is important on the road map on how to create brand awareness for small businesses, an offline campaign is also highly productive if organized productively.
Offline campaigns are stored in the mind of the people for a long time and may be due to geographical constraints people from different corners fail to participate in them but it becomes a subject of talk among others and increases the brand popularity.
You might have heard of the brand, Red Bull which is known for its campaigns, and most of its ad budget is focused on organizing offline sports events, which has earned them so much popularity that they are regarded as the number one energy drink sold in the whole world.
9. Use Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel
Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels are great ways to keep records related to all the visitors to our website and landing pages and also help us to retarget them through direct messaging or e-mail.
Both the tools are available free of cost and we only need to integrate them into our website, and we are all set to check all analytics related to our website visitors.
At the same time, we must integrate our website with Google AdSense Auto Ads so that our ads can be placed in the most optimized way possible. When we activated the Google auto ads, the algorithms of Google check the possibilities and place our ads in the best places available in the digital media.
10. Consider starting a Podcast
In the recent past Podcasts have grown into popularity, as more and more people are showing interest in them, making them an amazing option when we want to learn, how to create brand awareness for small businesses.
Podcasts help a lot to increase brand awareness among the people as we can host various programs through our podcast and even invite some guest speakers to speak in favor of our brand or even, or we can collaborate with other famous Podcasts.
Conclusion
As a small business, we must focus on creating our brand image, mainly because there is always a scarcity of funds when we organize a small business.
But if you are keen on creating your brand and don’t know how to do it, and due to the constraints of limited capital you can’t even afford the high-costing agencies, it’s suggestible that you learn a bit of Digital Marketing on your own.
If you are serious to learn then it’s my suggestion that you can go for the 4-month advanced digital marketing course organized by the number one Digital Marketing training institute in India, Digital Scholar which is owned by the top-rated Digital Marketing Influencer in the world, Sorav Jain.
With Sorav Jain’s name involved you need not fear about the quality of the course, as it covers everything you will need to know about digital marketing, and also the fee structure is reasonable.
They also have a 100% placement assistance record, as they are very helpful and resourceful when it comes to placing their alumni across different companies related to digital marketing.
With the hope that this article related to how to create brand awareness for small businesses is helpful to what you are searching for, we have come to a closure of the discussion and at last, we want to tanks all the readers who have shown patience and stick with us till the very end.
