How can we create awareness for our offer among potential customers? (Part I)
- duboislukas
- Jun 18, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 30, 2022
You might think: if nobody knows us, nobody will buy us. While this is not entirely true (and I will explain why), strong awareness about you and your offering among potential customers will definitely supercharge your future business. You clearly win much more new customers and much easier, if people already know about you, remember you and recognize you. If this is the case, you have a strong “brand”. Mind you, the term “brand” is not reserved for big global corporations. Whether you sell toys, run a coffee place or a dentist office, as soon as people know your name and what you do, you have a reputation, you have a brand.
In this article and the next, I help you to create such business driving awareness. How can you get your name and your offering into the heads of your potential customers? So in other words, how do you build a strong brand? Before you engage in all kinds of random communication activities though, there is some very important groundwork to be done. This article (Part I) helps you to get clarity on
why you should even bother with creating awareness,
who you would like to know about you, and
what you want them to associate with you.
My next article (Part II) will then build on this groundwork and guide you step by step to select the right communication activities and touchpoints for your business to build the awareness that will drive customers to you.
Awareness clearly drives customers to you.
Understanding the role of (brand) awareness
Why
First, I want to clarify the role awareness plays in the bigger picture of your Customers’ Journey and your business success. I think it is important to understand that high awareness is not a necessary pre-requisite, nor is it a guarantee for making sales. People do indeed buy things from businesses and brands they did not know before. And quite often people end up buying other products, services and brands than they originally had in mind. It happens all the time during the Search Phase of the Customer Journey.
They walk in a coffee place they did not know before, because they simply came by it and the lovely flower decoration and cosy chairs outside caught their attention. They pick a dentist they didn’t know before, because it was the first one to come up in their local Google search and it had great customer ratings. They buy a toy brand on Amazon they have never heard of before, because it appeared in the search results, had convincing product videos, many good user reviews and a very attractive price.
Good, easy and effective experiences like this win you customers, no matter if they were aware of you before or not. This stresses how much attention you need to pay to your customers’ Search and Purchase Phases.
That being said, of course high awareness helps tremendously. If people know you and think of you right away when in need of your product or service category, it gives you a great headstart and advantage in winning customers. All you then need to do is make sure they find you easily in their Search Phase and offer them something that fits their needs. What is more, people often even buy brands they know and trust despite opposing arguments like higher price or difficulty to obtain it. There is amazing power in the familiarity of brands. Buying something you know & trust provides reassurance for uncertainties about quality, service, durability, etc.. This is why you might also be willing to pay a bit more than for alternatives that you have not heard about before. Or you might be willing to pay considerably more, if the brand brings along some prestige, when we look to the premium segment. And lastly, you can simply save a lot of search time by taking the short-cut and buying what you already know & trust.
People are much more likely to visit a coffee place they already know and remember its great coffee and atmosphere. They typically go to the same dentist over and over again, as long as they get a satisfying treatment there. And they will often just buy the toys they have already seen and liked at their friend’s place or read about in their favorite mum’s magazine.
The groundwork for building awareness
So how do you do it? How do you build such business-driving awareness (a.k.a. a brand) for your local coffee place or the ecological toys you sell online?
Who
First, you need to be clear about who to build awareness with. Who are your potential customers? Who would you like to know about you?
Our fictive „Coffee & Things“ place for example would obviously want to be known by residents of the town and neighborhood it’s located in. Then it might target specifically young professionals or young families or any other social group with its offering & style. Our „Nature Toys“ company targets parents. But kids of what age exactly? Possibly parents with strong ecological attitudes? Depending on their prices, they would target a certain income range. Maybe they can only address certain regions or countries due to language or delivery limitations?
However you define your target customer segment(s), these are the people you want to build awareness among. It impacts greatly the touchpoints you should use to reach them and the communication messages you should send out.
What
Messages bring me to the second task: you need clarity on what is great and special about your product or service. Please read my article on improving your offering to see how this can be achieved for products like toys, but also for services like a dentist‘s. Again, it also heavily depends on who you address as customers specifically. This clarity is the necessary foundation for building a strong brand. It defines what you tell people about you, what you want them to remember about you, what you want to stand for in their minds. To arrive at this clarity sounds easier than it is. You need to agree to this jointly as a team, need to formalize it somehow, so there is clear alignment and not many different perceptions flying around.
I offer this simple model for you to capture what your brand should be all about:
In the outer ring you place all the associations you want to plant in people‘s minds about you. These associations should be truly relevant to your business and to your target customers. Associations can be as simple as the products or services you offer, but also the specific benefits, qualities and attributes of your offer you want to point out. Associations can also be situations, places or times related to your offering and the corresponding needs and problems of your target customers. Above you also see some examples of what such associations could be for the example of our fictive “Nature Toys” brand.
In the inner ring you place distinct brand elements that make you recognizable. These are primarily your brand name and logo, along with adjoining, mostly visual elements like your color(s), your type font, a brand symbol/visual, or a slogan. Don’t underestimate the importance of these brand elements. Without them, people cannot connect the associations above to your brand. This is the whole point: you want to connect relevant associations to your brand in people’s minds. The stronger this connection is, the more likely are they to think of you or recognize you in relevant Search or Purchase situations. It is not necessarily about the best name or the prettiest design (which is quite subjective anyways). Most importantly, your brand elements should be as distinct as possible from your competitors and easy to recognize. You really want to avoid confusion. The worst case would be, if your efforts lead to strengthening your competitors’ brand awareness.
Now you have the basis you need for kicking off concrete communication activities. You know who you want to address, what you want to say and how people will recognize you. In my next article (Part II) I help you to decide which concrete communication activities now should work best for you.
Two more things on brand awareness
Building awareness and your brand is a marathon, not a sprint
But whatever you end up doing, please always consider this: building awareness and your brand is a marathon, not a sprint! It requires patience and consistency, consistency, consistency. To carve strong memories into peoples’ minds takes time and repetition. This only works, if the same messages and associations are repetitively registered and saved in the brain in connection with your brand name and visual elements. For you this can quickly feel repetitive and boring, but consistency is essential for this to work. You need to resist the urge (or some fancy agency’s recommendation) to regularly “change things up a bit” or “do something new”. Of course you can and should vary your communication forms: your creative content, your channels, formats or formulations. But at the core, your messages and also your distinctive brand elements need to stay the same, need to stay recognizable. Otherwise you are inconsistent and not recognizabel, you can erode brand equity that you have build before.
The only times more fundamental changes might be justified, are when you actually change your business fundamentally as well. When you drastically change your offering, define very different, new associations or address completely new customer groups. When you want to break with the past, erase pre-existing associations. But even then it is worth considering if you don’t want to maintain links with your existing brand identity and leverage existing awareness.
You also build your brand simply by doing your business
In closing, I want to share one more important insight. This speaks especially to those of you who now say: “Well, all good, but I am not going to do big communication campaigns. I just don’t have the time, people or money for it.” Even if you don’t engage in communication activities per se, you still build awareness and your brand over time – simply by conducting your business. Your customers naturally have experiences with you along their Journey, in their Search, Purchase and Usage Phases. All these experiences form a perception about you in their minds, awareness is created. What is more, if they were satisfied, your customers might talk about it to their friends, maybe even recommend you. This way others learn about you, you gain a reputation. Again awareness is created. You see, you build a brand, if you want it or not.
So pay attention to all these experiences customers have with you. Positive experiences, consistent with your brand associations and including your distinct brand elements will build awareness and a strong brand. Negative experiences will harm your brand over time. You can revisit my articles about how to come up with great, surprising and unique experiences both in the Usage of your products or services, as well as in the Search & Purchase Phases.
But do read Part II of this article on “How to create awareness for your offering” to find concrete ideas for communication that work for your business, your possibilities and your situation. Trust me, there is something for everyone, and not necessarily a big advertising campaign.
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