How a startup can build brand awareness in their community
Brand awareness is key for any business, but especially for a startup. Being new to the market makes it difficult to compete with more established businesses. Yet, there is a way to increase your potential sales, and that’s by building brand awareness.
What is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is an indicator of how familiar a potential customer or visitor is with your brand. The higher your brand awareness, the more likely you are to attract new clients. It also helps differentiate you from your competitors.
Brand awareness is extremely important because it helps drive—or increase—sales. Customers who have heard of a particular company are more likely to search for it online and purchase a product or service from it.
So, taking the time to build your brand is important. You should also be consistent with your brand – not changing it too often and using it throughout your materials and marketing efforts.
It Builds Brand Equity
Brand awareness is also a good tool for building brand equity – or how valuable people think a particular company is. A positive brand perception increases the chances of creating brand equity. Negative perception can have the opposite effect. If a startup can consistently build brand equity, it can:
Keep Everything Consistent
So, it’s extremely important to continually build brand awareness in your target area and within your target market. Again, it’s worth reinforcing that all your advertising and marketing pieces should be consistent across the different channels.
For example, your logo should be easily recognizable no matter where it’s seen—on your building, in the community, or online. The colors should also be the same or complementary. Every time someone sees a sign or a flyer from your business, they should be able to quickly tell it’s your brand.
How to Build Brand Awareness
Your branding should be everywhere – especially if you’re a local business trying to increase your market concentration in your local area. Today, we provide you with three ways to improve your brand awareness in your local community.
Exterior signs and window graphics help reinforce your brand and let people know where you’re located. These signs could be your logo, weekly or monthly promotions, open/closed times, etc. The key is that all signs should have your company colors and any other identifying brand themes.
2. Promotional Products
If you’re going out into the community, you’ll want to give away schwag or similar promotional items like calendars, pens, bags, and more. All these should have your logos and brand colors. This is another way to consistently drive home your brand in the minds of the consumers. If you’re doing a direct mail piece to your target area, the same concept applies. Use your brand colors and logos throughout the direct mail design.
3. Printed Materials
When meeting potential clients, attending a trade show, or even doing some type of networking event, you need printed materials to hand out to the people you meet. These could be business cards, brochures, eBooks, etc. Again, keep your brand consistent on these and use your logo on everything you hand out. If you have a trade show booth, it should also have the logo and your brand colors throughout the setup.
Need help creating your marketing materials? Talk to the experts at Allegra. Contact us to learn more.