Expanding your brand’s recognition can be challenging, especially in a market with strong competition. However, there are key elements to consider to bring your brand to the forefront of your audience’s minds.
1. Know your targeted audience
Start broadly, get an understanding of who it is in general your customer base should be, and then drill down further on key characteristics or segments of the industry that are most aligned to your brand values.
For example, let’s say your brand offers courses to help legal practitioners acquire their necessary CPD points per year. Targeting those who work in the legal profession is a good start, but does your brand relate more to barristers or corporate lawyers? Are your courses mostly aligned to those working in big corporations or smaller boutique firms? Based on your answers, you may wish to target a more specific audience, or perhaps adjust your budget and align it more heavily to the segment that is more valuable to your brand.
2. Set up trust markers for your new audience
Building trust online has proven quite important, especially when trying to acquire new audiences that may be completely unfamiliar with your brand. New audiences will take some time to get to know your brand; typically, they won’t convert after seeing one advertisement. So, what can you do to help build trust?
- Optimise your site for search results (SEO)
After exposure to advertising, a significant portion of the exposed audience will “Google” your brand to get a better understanding of who you are and what your brand stands for. This is your opportunity to build trust and get the best articles and landing pages to the top of the search pages.
- Sponsored/partner content
This is content that you have written or co-written with a partner, typically an independent site that reports on your industry. This form of advertising is an opportunity to reach your audience with a more relaxed and informative voice. Since these articles are live on the partner site, it uses the partner site’s reputation to rank higher in search results.
- Sponsoring podcasts/webcasts
Podcasts and webcasts (live online video events) have been gaining in popularity over a number of years now. However, sponsorship has remained comparatively cheap for the size of the audience you can reach. It’s also a great way to literally put a face and a voice to your brand.
It’s best to start with regular guest appearances on podcasts, where you can stand out as a thought leader and industry ambassador. Once you’ve got the knack for it, you can look to establish a partnership with a series of podcasts or webcasts for a more consistent message.
- Event sponsorship
This type of sponsorship is typically a little harder to measure via traditional methods; however, when executed with a well-established event, sponsorship can help you become synonymous with the event’s name and industry awards programs.
One consumer brand that executes this brilliantly is Red Bull. It’s not just an energy drink anymore because it’s so tightly associated with air races, rallys, Formula 1 and extreme sports.
From a B2B perspective, sponsorship of conferences can help you get your brand in front of thousands of people on the day, and even after with branded take-home items. Sponsoring awards programs is a great way to associate your brand with industry advocacy and to build great connections with the best of the best.
3. Highlight what sets you apart
If your brand is in a competitive market, you will want to highlight what sets you apart from the rest, and ideally this key part of your business is also part of your brand’s core values. Or perhaps the competition isn’t as strong but you still want to grow your presence, so your objective then becomes to touch on your audience’s pain points and how your products can alleviate them. Again, these would ideally be part of your brand’s core values.
4. Take advantage of current events
Whether this is a major event that affects the industry or a competitor’s failings, your campaign should be agile enough to pounce on any opportunity. While it’s best not to call out a competitor directly, adjusting your campaign message with subtle references to how you operate more effectively can lead to your brand acquiring the disgruntled customers from your competitors.
5. Set clear definitions of success and methods to measure
This may sound like it goes without saying, but it is crucial that you are specific with your goals. Clear and specific goals will assist with your analysis throughout the campaign and help identify early on when the campaign is not hitting the mark so that you can adjust quickly.
In terms of measuring your success, we have written about this before in our campaign tracking article, but you should also be monitoring “search” and “direct” traffic to monitor any changes in these sources. Be sure to compare your results to a similar period of time to see the real impacts of your campaign.
6. Plan the immediate next steps for your newly acquired audience
Once you have piqued the interest of this new audience, you’ll want to ensure you keep contact to keep engagement high and push them through your customer funnels. You also want to maintain the edge on your competition and keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds.
