MATCHMAKER

×

Looking for a Public Relations Agency? Use our Free matching service to find the right agency for you.

User login

Brand awareness in a saturated market

Brand awareness is an essential marketing pursuit for any brand serious about a winning growth strategy. The achievement of increased brand awareness requires patience, tenacity and clarity of intent. In the coming year, we can all expect to be operating in a market saturated with multi-formatted marketing communications.  How then do you make your tech scale up stand out?

In this article, Lorraine Emmett, Managing Director of EC-PR, explores the critical what, why, where, when and how of brand awareness.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is familiarity with a company’s name - what it stands for and what it delivers.  This is often articulated as a benefit, feature, or value.  Brand awareness is different from, and is complemented by, brand reputation which is how a brand is perceived and spoken about by stakeholders.  The journey to mature brand awareness starts with having a narrative which commands attention and progresses towards being trusted, valued and understood amongst key stakeholders.

Ciara Barron, Head of Brand and Communications at Blu Wireless, the leader in mmWave technology, also highlights that: “a brand serves many important purposes, such as providing a relatable, recognisable and trustworthy identity for an organisation. The brand should take on a personality of its own, just like people do. The brand embodies the name, culture, vision, emotion and intelligence of an organisation and for me, brand awareness is having all these elements being recognised by that brand’s customers, stakeholders and employees.”

For businesses looking to evaluate their status, they need to reflect on three key questions: Are we clearly articulating our brand value proposition? Is the value proposition underpinned by strong authentic evidence? And is the presentation of our brand consistent, professional and distinctive?

Why is brand awareness important?

Trust is the single most important factor in any B2B purchase.  People will not buy what they don’t trust. Brand awareness drives customers’ decisions when differentiating between competing offerings.  If people haven’t heard of you, how can they possibly consider buying your product or service?  Tech scale ups must not just look the part to stand out amongst the online cacophony in 2021, they must stand out as safe harbours in which potential customers feel protected and nurtured.

Caroline Hurst, Marketing Director at leading insurtech, Concirrus believes there are five key benefits.  She explains: “Firstly, it helps to differentiate from the competition. It also improves credibility within the market which in turn, garners trust with prospects, clients and the wider community. 

Prospects may be dealing with a specific challenge and if they see content or product information that helps them to address that challenge, then your company will remain top of mind.  It can also motivate people to buy an organisation’s products and in some cases, they may be prepared to pay a more premium price.  And lastly, it improves customer loyalty.”

CMOs will need to guide leadership discussions which explore: Does our customer really sit at the heart of everything we say, do and develop? Do we regularly seek and embrace customer feedback with an open mind and a responsive attitude? Do we monitor where our customers seek out and exchange information about the goods and services we offer?

Where do we begin with a brand awareness initiative?

Start by benchmarking your brand awareness amongst your critical internal and external stakeholders and against your competition.  Establish a starting point and a clearly defined SMART goal.  You can do this in three steps:

1.       Identify how many decision makers in your top 100 target customers will be buying your kind of service in the next three/six/twelve months.

2.       Establish how many decision makers in these top 100 target customers a) recognise your brand name b) know what you do (vs other competitive options) and c) understand the value you can add. 

3.       Finally, in all your conversations, listen attentively to the language they use. Establish how your target audience describes the challenges and irritations surrounding the problem that your company can solve for them – remember to use their language and recognise their ambition, motivation and frustrations in any planned communication.

When should a business start work on brand awareness?

From the moment you start a business, your target audience is doing one of two things – they are either considering you, or not.  You need to decide which camp you want to be in and, if you want to be in the former you will need to work hard to secure consideration.

You can start this process by considering in which niche or specialty your company can be best in class and to which publicly available sources do your target audiences gravitate towards for advice and guidance.  With this information in hand, now think about which owned and earned media channels represent your greatest opportunity and require greatest focus.

How to secure brand awareness?

A methodical and sustained approach to building brand awareness is critical. Trust is born out of familiarity, credibility, and reliability. 

Always put the customer at the heart of everything you say, do and deliver – and they will reward you with their interest and engagement.  Execute the following five steps consistently and you will be well on your way:

  1. Start with defining your compelling narrative, your why, your value proposition. 
  2. Underpin #1 with strong evidence.
  3. Showcase how you have delivered on your promise.
  4. Define your visual presentation – your brand styling.
  5. Be present in the media most consumed and trusted by your target audience.

You need to constantly monitor and assess your progress:  Challenge your leadership team to seriously question whether your value proposition is compelling and if you prove the value of your point of difference.  Regularly review whether you are delivering value to customers and if the process can be improved upon.  Finally, ask yourself whether you are consistently serving up relevant and compelling knowledge and insight to your target audience in a format and media they consume.

Caroline notes: “After building our narrative, as well as developing our customer profiles and associated messaging, we wanted to ensure that our thinking was ‘on point’.  To this day, validating that thinking is the single most important thing we have done as a business and it has paid off in spades for us and our brand awareness.  It helped us to identify any gaps whilst providing absolute clarity on the type of content that drives value for our target customers and the channels they engage most with.”

Brand awareness is not about shouting as loud as you can, in ever more strangulated tones. It is a harmony of strategy, insight, tactics and behaviours underpinned by intelligent reflection and delivered with tenacity, consistency and hopefully, a little good humour. Brand awareness is the result of your brand resonating in the heart and mind of a very specific human being.

You can download EC-PR’s Ultimate Guide to brand Awareness here.