How well do your audience know/recognize/recall your brand? The answer to this question in most instances helps brand to gauge and measure brand awareness. In a nutshell, brand awareness basically is the measure of how familiar and/or recognizable a brand, and its products/services, is to their target audience.
In a world where there are so many brands offering pretty much the same products and services; consumers tend to go for options that are familiar and recognizable to them. The quote below perfectly summarizes this thought.
“People prefer a brand they know over one they don’t — even when the familiar one is dangerous,”
-Daniel G. Goldstein, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research.
One might wonder, what is the fuss around creating brand awareness? What is the impact of positive brand awareness? Well for starters, a positive brand awareness helps to increase top of mind awareness and association in consumers’ minds. This is a huge step towards increasing sales because it drives consideration and ultimately conversion (sales). Over time, this builds brand loyalty meaning that your brand is the only option consumers will go for whenever shopping for a specific product or service. A perfect example of this would be how whenever you need information from the internet, your first stop more often than not will be Google. Or how a few years back Colgate was basically a general term for toothpaste, Omo meant washing powder, Blue Band generally referred to margarine. These brands worked so hard on their brand awareness to the extent that they seemed to monopolize their specific market segments.
Positive brand awareness helps brands to diversify their products and service offerings and scale new markets by helping build Brand Equity. Brand equity basically refers to a brand’s value within the market place. As a result of a high brand equity, brands can have a higher social impact driving change and implementation of policies simply from how much weight/value the brand name carries. High brand equity also allows for brands to sell at higher prices compared to their competition hence achieving huge profit margins and increased revenue. Brand equity also enhances the performance of brands within the stock market leading to highly competitive, high value stocks and selling of stocks at premium prices.
Increased brand awareness can also help change/shape perception and foster trust. Through brand awareness campaigns, a brand can share information with the aim of changing how and what consumers think about your brand. Through this campaign and by sharing relevant information, trust is also fostered between the brand and its target audience leading to brand loyalty, increased consideration and conversion.
Shared above are just a few pointers to why brand awareness is key for brands. There is no brand whatsoever that is above needing a brand awareness campaign.