If building a brand is difficult, making your presence felt is even more so. Building brand awareness is like creating an identity for it. You are basically looking for ways to tell people to know what your brand is all about and increase awareness about it in the process.
In the past, the way to build a brand was through advertising via print, radio, or television. But in this increasingly digitized world, the effectiveness of these mediums has decreased. Everything is on the internet. When people want to buy something, they refer to online reviews or social media.
There are numerous channels through which a brand’s presence can be maximized. And here are six of the most effective ways to maximize your brand’s presence in 2018.
Find an influencer who aligns with your brand and whose social media presence you can leverage to promote your brand.
1. Influencer marketing
When it comes to increasing brand awareness, influencer marketing has become one of the most trusted methods. Influencers already have significant reach and a loyal audience on social media. All that you need is to do is to find an influencer who aligns with your brand and whose social media presence you can leverage to promote your brand.
RELATED: Native Advertising, AI, Blockchain and Influencers - A Match Made in Heaven?
The success of influencer marketing lies in that fact that it involves recommendations from someone consumers trust and look up to. In fact, 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds are likely to make a purchase based on a non-celebrity or peer recommendation, and only 3% buy celebrity-endorsed products. It is the trust and authenticity factor that makes it such a marketing phenomenon.
If you use social media platforms effectively, you’ll be able to garner a significant reach.
2. Social media marketing
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn have become the new marketing hotspots for brands. This isn’t a surprise since there are now more than 2.5 billion people using social media around the world. So if you use social media platforms effectively, you’ll be able to garner a significant reach.
RELATED: How Brands Can Succeed With Content on Social Media
When it comes to customer purchase decisions, Facebook accounts for 19% of them. Twitter also influences purchase decisions. Tweets from influencers combined with those from brands increase purchase intent 5.2 times. Facebook and Twitter have also ventured into paid marketing through their ads feature, which is quite cost-effective.
3. PPC
One of the fastest ways to boost brand awareness is through PPC or pay-per-click advertising. PPC ads show at the top of relevant search engine results. Here, the advertiser pays a certain fee every time someone clicks on their ad.
When people want to buy something, they first turn to search engines to conduct their research. Wordstream reported that if a consumer wants to buy something, 64.5% of them click on a paid ad.
Google, being the market leader in search engines, has an Adwords tool through which you advertise. Their pricing model allows businesses of any size to use it, regardless of their budget.
74% of respondents in their study have also been convinced by a brand’s video to purchase a product or service.
4. Video marketing
If anyone still has any doubt about the power of video marketing, consider this - a Wyzowl study found that 83% of marketers are experiencing good ROI from video. And 74% of respondents in their study have also been convinced by a brand’s video to purchase a product or service.
RELATED: As the Shift to Mobile Continues, Look to Video to Drive Growth
A well-tagged video can boost your search engine rankings, which means better click-throughs and conversion rates. YouTube has now become a search engine in its own right, the second largest in the world after its parent company, Google. On YouTube, almost 5 billion videos are watched daily. In fact, YouTube comes a close second after Facebook in affecting people’s purchasing decisions.
Remarketing is basically just a visual reminder to the consumers about the product or services that they had intended to buy.
5. Remarketing
More often than not, a customer who visits a website to buy a product abandons the cart at the last minute. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate among ecommerce retailers is 68.8%. Remarketing targets those who fail to convert. Through remarketing, you place your ads before the potential customer who has visited your website earlier.
Remarketing is basically just a visual reminder to the consumers about the product or services that they had intended to buy. It uses the principles of persistence and repetition to drive sales. One of the most widely used ways to retarget is display advertising. But it has lost its impact on consumers. The main reason is display ads are a disturbance in the user experience, even if targeted to the correct audience.
RELATED: Best Practices for Programmatic Native Advertising
The best and alternative to display ads are native ads. Businesses can use native ads to retarget potential customers. For this, the business develops relevant content to attract their targeted customers. Native advertising is a regular experience of their target audiences on any social platforms.
So you can execute your remarketing campaign on social media by developing relevant content to what the customer has shown interest in before.
The right messengers will also spread the word about your event on social media, thus reaching a far greater audience.
6. Events
Hosting an event is a great way to capture the attention of experts, industry professionals, and clients. In one place, you can gather everyone together to tell them what your brand is all about. The event could be anything - a discussion, a launch party, an exhibition, a seminar, or even a barbeque.
RELATED: How a Sponsored Women's Run and Native Ads Raised Awareness for Sports Bra
The right messengers will also spread the word about your event on social media, thus reaching a far greater audience. You can also sponsor a local community or charity event for a non-profit organization. This will get you in touch with some big names in your industry.
Plan an effective remarketing campaign to re-engage shoppers who visited your site.
Conclusion
We all want our businesses to succeed and to do that, increasing brand awareness is important. Make sure you reach your target audience through the right influencers and use social media platforms effectively. Plan an effective remarketing campaign to re-engage shoppers who visited your site. Use videos to engage, and host events that will boost your brand’s image.
These were just six of the most effective ways through which you can maximize your brand’s presence in 2018. If you invest in them, it will go a long way in establishing your brand as a market leader and a competent authority in your niche.
If you know of any other ways to maximize your brand presence, let us know in the comments below.