Brand awareness is more important than ever. Without it, customers can’t differentiate between your business and the competition. As a result, whether they shop in-store or online, they may not remember your company after a purchase, even if they like the products you sell.
Brand awareness is especially important for startups, which need to quickly grow their audience and build relationships with people who have never encountered them.
Technology can make building brand awareness much easier. The right tools and systems can help your business establish itself and secure more repeat customers.
1. Create knowledge bases for your customers
Customers will usually have questions about your company and its offerings, whether they know a lot about your brand or are encountering it for the first time. An effective website can help answer their queries without reaching out directly to your sales or customer service team. Blog content, FAQs and information pages are good starting points for businesses wanting to provide better information on their sites.
Knowledge bases can help businesses provide even more value for customers with questions. These online databases offer information about your company and its products, including guides, tutorials and blog posts with tips and tricks relevant to your offerings. They allow customers to learn a lot about your brand without reaching out directly.
Startups often offer novel or technically complex services, so a self-service knowledge base is often a great resource for customers.
2. Leverage social media
The right technology can make humanizing your brand much easier. Customers who relate to your brand on a personal level will be much more likely to remember your company and the services it offers.
Social media is often one of the best ways to make a brand seem more human or connect with customers personally.
For example, companies often create posts that are unrelated to their products or services. They also use social media to interact directly with their target audience by responding to comments, sharing content or asking questions.
Businesses sometimes use social media to interact with other brands, showing how their company and offerings fit into the larger market or ecosystem they’re in.
Research has found that, on average, 52% of a company’s brand reputation comes from online sociability. The same study predicts that this number will rise in the future. Using social media effectively can help you build your reputation and grow awareness among your target audience.
3. Make it easy to connect across platforms
Most businesses take advantage of various sales and marketing channels. For example, your business may sell goods in-store and online or advertise to customers using social media, PPC ads and email marketing. Unifying a customer’s experience across these different channels will help make them more aware of your brand and more likely to remember your company in the future.
QR codes on print advertisements and flyers can make it easy for customers to connect physical marketing with digital branding efforts. Almost every modern smartphone comes with QR code scanning features that customers can use to quickly navigate to your brand’s website or landing page after seeing a physical advertisement. They are especially useful because they are still legible even if 30% of the code is damaged.
You can use a QR code generator to create a QR code after deciding which page on your site your code will lead to. Popular options include QRTiger, ZebraQR and QR Code Generator.
These tools are very user-friendly, and you won’t need any special coding or web design experience to use them. Simply open the generator and then enter the text, link or file you want your QR code to lead to. It will automatically generate a code you can add to your site, print advertisements or elsewhere.
Organizing consistent campaigns across your company’s marketing channels will help you naturally build brand awareness over time. Customers will have an easier time remembering your brand if it’s consistent from channel to channel and your marketing makes it easy to move from one to another.
4. Let your customers share
Businesses that create content for their website, social media or storefront should make it as easy to share as possible. Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful tools brands can use to build trust and generate awareness. Startups can especially benefit by securing early sales and clients.
People generally trust content more if they see it being shared by friends, family and colleagues. However, most customers won’t go out of their way to share it if it’s not easy.
Use the right widgets and tools on your site to make sharing content on social media and other platforms as simple as possible.
Platforms like WordPress and HubSpot offer built-in sharing features. You could also look for popular social sharing widgets and plugins — like AddThis, Easy Social Share Buttons and Grow Social — that allow you to add buttons and other features to your site.
Leveraging social media will make your content shareable by default, allowing customers to spread your content if they find it interesting or valuable. This makes it easy to reach people you may never have thought would be interested in your brand, expanding your audience simply and effectively.
Consumer Behavior in the New Normal: How to Better Serve Your Customers
5. Support your customer service team
Good customer service is essential for creating positive experiences — which, in turn, helps people remember your brand.
The right technology can streamline customer support, allowing your team to help clients as quickly as possible. For example, customer relationship management (CRM) software stores all information related to each shopper and their relationship with your business in one place. That makes it easier for representatives to respond to their inquiries and complaints and reach positive resolutions.
If someone needs a return or wants to replace an item under warranty, the customer support team can use the CRM to quickly access data related to the shopper and the purchases they’ve made. They should be able to find the right information on the specific item they want to replace, when they purchased it, and what options they may have for repairs, replacements or returns.
Most modern businesses have access to huge amounts of information on their customers and sales, but leveraging this data can be challenging. Using technology like a CRM will help your company and its employees take full advantage and build brand awareness.
Technology can help boost brand awareness
Brand awareness is essential for startups. Building it can make it much easier to secure repeat customers and grow your customer base, leading to repeat sales.
Technology makes growing brand awareness much easier. Knowledge bases, social media, cross-channel marketing and tools like CRM systems can generate positive customer experiences. Experimenting with these tools will help you identify which technologies your startup can use to make customers more aware of your brand.
