Last updated on October 26th, 2022
Content marketing has grown by leaps and bounds over the years, changing the way users are acquired on the internet. It is quite different from the pushy, revenue-driven advertising methods that have the sole intent of driving sales.
Yes, content marketing is about building your brand and nurturing your prospective customers the right way to set your brand apart in today’s crowded market space. Its aim is to provide valuable content to the reader and establish your brand’s authority in its industry domain.
But how can you increase brand awareness?
Here’s the thing, be innovative and serve your content fresh if you want to outdo the competition. Your audience will not like to read stale write-ups with ideas they’d have already read like a thousand times before.
So, how exactly do you create content that garners attention and cements your brand as an expert in the field?
But, first things first.
Importance of Brand Awareness
When people increasingly become aware of your brand, it only fosters a healthy image of your company. If you want to improve your company’s reputation, you must work on increasing its brand awareness.
Brand awareness directly indicates how aligned your content is to your brand.
If people are well aware of your brand, it also means that they love and follow the content that has been putting your company under the spotlight.
The Verdict Is Loud and Clear
Your content is the backbone of online marketing success and is a great way to boost brand awareness. Also. your content marketing strategy should be created with the goal of improving brand awareness which will also help you analyze the right metrics to calculate your ROI.
However, there are some prerequisites to make your content marketing efforts successful.
If you are just in early days of promoting your brand is crucial to define your brand in clear terms. Have a clear vision and mission statement in place which should lay out your company values and goals.
Determine your company’s voice and ensure that it is in tune with its mission.
Know what do you want to be recognized as – friendly, authoritative, pushy, funny, customer-oriented, or an industry expert? Use a voice that suits your choice.
So, How Does Content Marketing Increase Brand Awareness?
Gone are the days of the revenue-focused brick and mortar establishments that managed to make enough money by selling their product or service using cut and thrust advertising methods.
Today, the online world offers fierce competition with tons of companies having similar operations vying for your customer’s attention.
Here’s the deal, creating fresh content is critical to any business’ brand presence. Bear the following pointers in mind.
- Your audience must find your brand interesting
- Your content must be relevant to your customer’s needs
- Your content must be fresh, original and add value
Use content as an asset to express what your company and brand stands for. Bring out the personality of your brand and let it shine through the words you sprinkle in it.
Content marketing should establish a fit between the content created by a business/brand and customer needs. If you have the art of creating a narrative and telling people how your business relates to them, they will love to read whatever you say.
Sound content marketing efforts also indicates to search engines that your business is an industry leader and deserves an organic search engine rank. Write blog posts and think up creative ways to increase brand awareness to show your presence on different online platforms by publishing intelligent and relatable content for your audience. There are many more ways which will help you ace the game, let’s have a look at them!
22 Tips to Increase Brand Awareness Through Content Marketing
Continuous exposure of your brand is important on social media and other online channels where your target audience frequently hangs out. Content marketing is among the best inbound marketing strategies for increasing brand awareness without interrupting your target audience.
Here are some strategies that can help you increase brand awareness.
1. Press Release
Don’t let any healthy development in your business go unnoticed. Sharing news through official press releases is an effective way of building brand awareness. If it is your own voice, it is most likely to be held credible and read by the stakeholders, your current customers as well as prospective ones.
2. Regular Content Posts
A Survey by Hubspot said that businesses who posted 16+ blogs a month, received 3.5 times higher traffic!
Create valuable content periodically to get noticed by both the search engine and your target audience.
Blogs are extremely effective in drawing attention to you, and your products and services. Ensuring that they are unique and well-optimised will give you an SEO leverage and boosts your chances of being found online.
3. Multimedia
“Your organic traffic can increase up to 157% if you include a video in your blog post.”
Often, plain content may not have the desired effect the way multimedia content like infographics, videos, presentations, and webinars will have. Be active on YouTube and social media and create regular posts to stay visible to visitors.
4. Demos, Trials
Interestingly, the word ‘free’ has a magnetic effect in the world of e-commerce. It immediately catches attention and keeps your potential and current customers hooked. Free samples, trials and demos are totally effective in building a brand and bolstering the trust of people towards your offerings.
5. Downloadables
The key to becoming an industry leader is by producing informative content. If your content has downloadables like whitepapers and eBooks which hold tremendous value, they are great tools for conveying your authority on your domain.
Download your free content marketing editorial calendar template
6. Engaging and Interactive Content
Talk to your audience. Seek responses from them. Get them hooked by creating shareable content aimed at amplifying the conversion rates. Ask questions, create polls or quizzes, checklists and calculators that add value to your visitors, prospects and customers alike.
For more detailed information read, “How to harness the power of interactive content?”
7. Daily Posts on Social Media
No, you don’t need pages and pages of content in your social media posts. Short and impactful content is a quick attention grabber! The idea is to stay active and post regularly to tell people you are in business. Keep in mind the angle of value addition so that your followers find your content useful and are prompted to share them, helping you expand your follower base.
8. Industry publications
Get in touch with magazines, news sources, industry blogs and other important publications, physical or online, to get your company’s news or content published. These offline and online platforms get a lot of eyeballs from industry leaders and prospects. Hence, there’s every possibility of your brand getting noticed.
9. Link to Email Signature
Mentioning your blog or website link in your email signature needs no investment yet is an effective way to increase your brand awareness. There is hardly any effort involved but the results can be quite commendable.
10. Guest Blogging
Be heard by a larger audience in your industry outside your usual domain by writing guest posts on portals that accept them. Guest blogging is a great way of establishing your authority in a domain and getting yourself known to a wider base of interested audience. In case people like your posts and share them on social media, you can enjoy a wider reach.
11. Referral Programs
Using incentives to reach your customers and prospects is an effective strategy for increasing brand awareness. Initiate a referral programme in which you directly credit a monetary incentive to the online account of the person whose referrals buy from you.
This serves two benefits. Besides expanding your customer base, you also get people to share their details with you by registering on your portal.
12. Offers Stating Limited Period and Quantity
Create a buzz around your business by coming up with limited time and quantity offers from time to time. Make the best of festive occasions to get the word out. When people see an urgent need for action, they are prompted to act whether it’s buying a product, availing a service or submitting a contest form. See the below ad which was a part of recent campaign for Fastrack
Example of Fastrack Ad
13. Contests and Freebies
Give away little joys to your target audience in the form of free gifts if that translates to improving your social reach. Contests are a great way of drawing visitor attention. You can give many little rewards to participants and one or two big prizes to the winners. Ask your users to like your page, your posts and share them in their network.
14. Polls/Surveys
People like responding to questions or giving their opinion on something that is in their domain of understanding. Ask questions through Facebook or Instagram posts and tweets or create a survey using this feature on Twitter.
15. Paid Social Ads
LinkedIn is a credible social platform that can lend wings to your business. Considering the professional following there and an immensely targeted advertising capability, posting ads on this platform can quickly create a buzz around your brand. You can also have casual social hangouts like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter throw up your ads to audience who could be looking for your products or services.
16. Social Blogging
LinkedIn has a social blogging platform that helps users write informative and relatable content and have it published there. It not just creates a buzz around your business but also helps you interact with professionals in your field who post their blogs just as regularly as you do.
17. Membership Rewards
Convey to people that they can apply for paid membership on your website to avail free access to certain services or enjoy the perks of being a member. If you are able to provide a value addition, this can draw more spotlight on your brand.
18. Loyalty Freebies
Some customers deserve special treatment for the amount of business they give to you. Come up with loyalty programs and reward them with freebies for their years of association with you or for meeting the monthly/quarterly/yearly targets of spend.
19. Closed Beta Launch
Offer first access to a privileged few and this you can decide by planning a social contest so that only the eligible ones are chosen for the beta launch.
20. Community Connection
Having a direct sales intent does not work if you wish to carve a niche in the market. Show your involvement in the community and get yourself noticed. It works to sponsor local events or conduct your own events in areas of high traffic like malls and exhibitions or at your workplace. Invite your prospects to attend them. Think up creative activities aimed at the target age group or customers to conduct at schools or residential societies to build your brand awareness.
21. Mutually Beneficial Partnerships
Maintain a good rapport with local businesses in the industry to benefit from referrals through them.
For instance, if a prospect approaches XYZ company for a service it does not provide but knows you can do justice to the requirement, he may refer the person to you. For building such enriching partnerships, you must harbour good relationships.
22. Hashtags
Hashtags have been a very popular way of reaching people on social media channels. Make sure you use relevant ones in your post to draw attention to them from people who search for those tags or click on them to see similar posts. Some hashtags you normally find trending on Twitter and Instagram are #ootd, #photooftheday, #instadaily, #cryptocurrency, #bitcoin, #tbt, #contest, and #giveaway.
The Right Time to Act is NOW!
Building a brand takes time and you cannot expect miracles to happen overnight. Spend time in chalking out a workable strategy and make sure you are consistent in your efforts.
Get creative and make the best use of social media and blogging platforms to get your word out. Hiring content writing services can go a long way in helping you achieve your goals. Results won’t be too far if you are doing the right things at the right time.
Good luck in your branding endeavour!
