How to increase brand awareness on social media has become a critical topic for businesses looking to expand their customer base. Social media has revolutionized the world of online marketing, providing companies with unprecedented access to billions of users on social media platforms.
This has enabled businesses to reach and engage with their target audience more efficiently than ever before while also providing a more personalized and engaging experience that builds brand loyalty and enhances the customer experience.
Social media has become a crucial component of strategic brand awareness initiatives, making it essential for businesses to establish their own branded social media pages to stay ahead of their competitors in today’s digital age.
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is a simple concept but critical in successful marketing. It measures the extent to which consumers are familiar with and recognize your brand. A central tenet of brand awareness is creating a lasting impression in the minds of your customers so they correctly associate your product or service with something they need. Whether through savvy social media marketing, clever advertising, strategic public relations, or sponsorships, building brand awareness is critical in attracting and retaining customers.
Social media and brand awareness are consistently tied together in our digital age. Social platforms allow companies to connect with their target audience in a more personal and meaningful way. Companies often define their brand voice, identity, values, and unique selling proposition through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Why Is Brand Awareness On Social Media Important?
Each customer journey begins at the same starting point: awareness.
Since customers need to be aware of products and services before becoming interested, much less be ready to make a purchase, companies must distinguish themselves from the rest of their competitors. While this is an early step in the customer buying journey, it’s critical for future conversion rates.
Social media is essential in building brand awareness. On average, people spend 2 hours and 31 minutes on social media4. Companies that consistently post relevant and interesting content have an impressive audience who are ready to engage. Awareness campaigns on social media increase your business’s visibility, build trust with followers, and establish your company as an industry thought leader. While there are other ways to increase brand awareness through different outlets, such as sponsorships or alternative forms of advertising, social media is unique in its breadth and presence.
Several big companies have increased brand recognition and recall by utilizing social media. For instance, Pop-Tarts creates content that engages a younger demographic on Twitter. While Pop-Tarts are likely nostalgic for many individuals, teenagers are more likely to reach for a sugary breakfast snack. To build awareness in this demographic, Pop-tarts has a sarcastic and funny personality on Twitter that many young people respond to.
This form of advertisement is a great way for Pop-Tarts to distinguish itself from competitors trying to sell a similar product. Without a distinct brand, your business may struggle to stand out. Your brand is more than just a name or a logo; it represents your company’s values, mission, and personality.
How Do You Measure Brand Awareness?
Measuring consumers’ awareness of your brand is crucial to understanding how well your marketing efforts are working. It involves tracking and analyzing various metrics across multiple channels to determine the level of recognition and recall your brand has among your target audience. By measuring brand awareness, you can identify areas that need improvement, optimize your marketing strategies, and ultimately increase customer loyalty and sales. The following are a few great ways to measure brand awareness campaigns.
Website Traffic
An increase in website traffic can be a positive indication of an effective brand awareness strategy. This is because more people may search for your business and visit your site due to your various successful brand awareness tactics. Moreover, people tend to click on results from brands they’re familiar with, which can increase your website traffic compared to unfamiliar competitors.
To better understand where website traffic originates, monitoring different metrics is essential. Direct website traffic, which measures the number of visitors who type in your URL or have it auto-filled by their browser, is a crucial brand awareness metric to track. A high amount of direct traffic indicates that your brand is memorable and easy to find. If people remember your web address, you’re doing a fantastic job of promoting your brand.
Referral Traffic
Visitors who land on your website after clicking a link shared on social media are known as referral traffic. This includes links from all social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Referral traffic is vital to unlocking the success of your marketing efforts. It reveals how well your campaigns generate interest and attract visitors.
With powerful tools like Google Analytics, you can track which social media platform your website visitors are coming from and which campaigns drive the most traffic.
Analyzing referral traffic is critical to identifying the most engaging content you have created and allows you to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Website Conversions
Brand awareness is more than just driving traffic to your website. It’s about converting that traffic into leads and customers. To track your website’s conversion rate, you can divide the number of conversions by the number of website visitors.
If you’re getting many visitors but have few conversions, this may be a sign that you need to adjust the content on your website. In other words, you may have a great brand awareness strategy, but your website’s content and call-to-actions are not matching the prospects’ search intent. By analyzing this metric, you can identify areas for improvement and better align your marketing efforts with your brand.
Social Media Engagement And Mentions
Do you hear crickets when you post on social media? That could be a sign that your brand awareness needs a boost. Social media is a great way to reach potential customers, and measuring your engagement on those platforms can help you gauge the effectiveness of your brand awareness strategy. It could be a good sign that your efforts are paying off if you notice a growth in followers, likes, comments, or shares. Another way to measure your social media presence is by tracking your social mentions or when people tag or talk about your business. These conversations can indicate strong brand awareness but also contribute to more awareness in the future.
Benefits Of Using Social Media To Improve Brand Awareness
There are currently 4.76 billion people using social media sites from around the world4. Using social media to boost brand awareness has numerous benefits for businesses. First and foremost, it provides an opportunity to connect with a broader audience and build a community around your brand. Social media platforms allow you to share your brand message, values, and offerings with potential customers in an engaging and interactive way. This can help increase brand recognition and recall. Additionally, social media allows for targeted advertising, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of brand awareness campaigns.
Effective marketing in our digital age has changed how customers interact with companies. Social media platforms have allowed an intimacy between companies and their consumers that previously wasn’t possible. Customers now get to know your business through social posts.
10 Proven Strategies To Improve Brand Awareness With Social Media
Since social media has rapidly evolved over the past decade, transforming how businesses reach and engage with their target audience, understanding social media strategies has become necessary when constructing brand recognition campaigns. Social media provides a unique opportunity for companies to create a more personal and engaging experience for their customers, building brand loyalty and enhancing the overall customer experience.
By utilizing various social media strategies, businesses can increase their brand awareness and establish themselves as industry leaders in today’s digital age. With social media’s continued growth, companies must adapt their brand awareness strategies to remain competitive in an ever-changing landscape.
Here are a few social media strategies businesses can use to increase brand awareness:
1. Define Your Brand Voice And Give It Personality
Defining your brand’s unique identity and target audience is essential to developing a successful social media strategy. Identify your brand’s values, voice, and aesthetic. Use these components to create content that resonates with your target audience.
For example, Wendy’s is known for its witty and sarcastic social media presence. The brand frequently interacts with its audience in a specific voice and is often present for trending conversations. This approach has helped Wendy’s gain a significant following on social media and increase brand awareness.
2. Develop A Content Calendar
Creating a content calendar is crucial to staying organized and consistent on social media.
By planning content, you can ensure that each post aligns with your brand’s identity and reinforces your overall message. This level of consistency helps build brand recognition and trust with your audience, increasing the chances that they will engage with your content and become loyal customers.
A content calendar lets you be more strategic with your content distribution. By planning out posts ahead of time, you can ensure that each message is distributed at the optimal time for maximum impact. This approach helps you to avoid oversaturating your audience with too many messages at once, which can cause them to tune out or even unfollow your accounts.
Content calendars also help you plan for special events or holidays relevant to your brand or industry. By preparing content in advance, you can ensure you are not caught off guard and take full advantage of these opportunities to engage with your audience.
3. Utilize Multiple Social Media Channels
Each social platform appeals to different audiences. Utilize various platforms to reach a broader audience and tailor your content to each forum. For instance, Instagram is known as a visual platform used for sharing photos and videos with high aesthetic appeal and influence culture, while LinkedIn is a professional networking platform used for job searches, networking, and sharing business-related content.
Staying up-to-date with the ever-evolving social media landscape can be daunting for brands. Social media marketing aims to connect you with your customers and target audience, so it’s crucial to concentrate on platforms where your target customers are most active. To avoid getting overwhelmed, limit your efforts to two or three social media platforms so that you can manage your social accounts effectively.
4. Create Engaging Content
Social media users are inundated with content, so it’s essential to create engaging content that makes an impact. Use a mix of visuals, videos, and text to keep your audience interested and interactive.
Visual content, such as images and infographics, can quickly grab your audience’s attention and convey complex information in a visually appealing way.
Video content, on the other hand, has become increasingly popular on social media, as it is an effective way to share stories, showcase products, and engage with your audience in a more personal and authentic way.
Text-based content, such as captions and blogs, is also critical to your social media strategy, as it allows you to communicate your brand’s voice, values, and story to your audience.
Incorporating a mix of visual, video, and text-based content into your social media strategy can help diversify your content and ensure your audience remains engaged and interested in your brand.
5. Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a powerful tool for increasing brand awareness on social media. Companies want to use relevant hashtags related to their brand, industry, or niche. This helps your content to appear in searches and feeds related to those tailored topics.
Nike’s “#Just Do It” campaign is an excellent example of leveraging social media to increase brand awareness. The campaign features inspiring stories of athletes and encourages users to share their own stories and experiences. This approach has helped Nike become one of the world’s most recognized and respected brands.
6. Leverage User-Generated Content
Engage your audience by encouraging them to create and share content related to your brand. This is an excellent way to increase brand awareness and build social proof.
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign is a great example. The campaign featured personalized Coke bottles with people’s names on them, encouraging users to share photos of their customized bottles on social media. This approach garnered significant user-generated content and helped Coca-Cola increase brand awareness and engagement.
7. Engage With Your Audience
Promptly responding to comments, messages, and mentions is an effective way to interact with your audience. This shows your audience that you value their input and are invested in their experience.
Glossier has a loyal following on social media, thanks in part to its focus on inclusivity and transparency. The brand frequently engages with its audience, building a strong sense of community. This approach has helped Glossier increase brand awareness and build a passionate fanbase.
8. Collaborate With Influencers
Businesses can promote their brand awareness by collaborating with influencers on social media. Look for influencers that align with your brand and have a significant following—partner with them to create content or promote your products or services.
9. Set Short And Long-Term Goals
Businesses need to set goals for their social media branding efforts. A great way to do this is by identifying KPIs for brand awareness. Some of these may include: increasing the number of followers by 10% in three months, increasing the number of likes on social posts by 20% in the next quarter, or increasing website traffic by 40% within the next year.
10. Measure Your Success
Every great digital marketing plan tracks all possible metrics associated with your brand awareness campaigns. Utilize your social media profiles to assess engagement statistics. Watch how much engagement your posts and ads are receiving. Be sure to assess your website analytics to see where your website traffic originates. Use this data to adjust your strategy as needed and continue to provide value to your audience. Building brand awareness is an ongoing process. Utilize all the data from these sources to help inform your content strategy and make adjustments along the way.
By implementing these social media strategies, businesses can formulate unique brand awareness strategies, reach new audiences, and build a robust online presence.
Concluding Thoughts
In today’s digital age, social media has become essential for businesses to improve brand awareness, engage with their audience, and achieve various business goals. By leveraging social media strategies and tactics, companies can create unique and compelling content, connect with their target audience, and ultimately grow their business.
As a digital marketing agency, Ad Science Lab is dedicated to helping businesses succeed in the constantly evolving social media marketing landscape. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you develop and execute effective social media strategies that drive results for your business. Let’s work together to harness the power of social media and take your brand to new heights!
