Brand awareness is notoriously difficult to nail, both in terms of definition and execution. When does a business become a brand? What’s the meaning of the word ‘awareness’ in this context? And what are the best ways to build awareness amongst an audience?
When do you become a brand?
At Hotcow, we think your business has always been a brand. Your business is constantly communicating to customers whether you’re aware of it or not – it’s just that to deliver proper brand messaging, you need to pin down your strategy.
What exactly is brand awareness?
The word ‘awareness’ doesn’t always seem appropriate with PR and marketing. When Hotcow delivers a product sampling campaign, a brand experience or some sort of promotion, our aim isn’t just to make people ‘aware’ of a brand.
PR should be far more energetic and powerful that that. We try to deliver creative, memorable experiences that engage with an audience and make them feel positive things about a product or service. We want them to love the brand behind the product or service so much that they stop caring about being sold to.
What are the best ways to build brand awareness?
1. Publish content. Not only is content marketing an extremely cost-effective way of advertising what you do, but it’s also a great provider of long-term SEO benefits. More than that, it allows you to solve problems for your customers and enhance your brand’s reputation.
2. Work on your tone of voice. A consistent tone to your messages is important, but use words, images and even audio to resonate with your audience, exploit their emotions and conjure up brand loyalty. Be real. Be likeable. People buy the person first and the product second.
3. Be unique. When you’re being truly creative, mistakes will happen. But it’s better to try different things than to copy someone else. And sometimes you’ll absolutely nail a PR stunt or marketing campaign and you’ll be astonished at the results.
Nothing is necessarily too silly or too far-fetched. Look at this helicopter:
Luxury department store Harrods once used over 600metres of wrapping paper to giftwrap a helicopter. The helicopter was sent to a Harrods customer as a gift to take his partner on a trip of a lifetime. It was all caught on camera to help promote the Harrods ethos of ‘anything is possible’.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
