What is brand awareness?
If I mention a brand name (product or company), you should immediately conjure up images of who they are, what they sell and an image about the company. A well-defined brand like Disney or Starbucks is easy to understand because of how deep awareness is for those entities.
A handy way to think of brand awareness is the metaphor of a swimming pool with a shallow, middle and deep end. Brand awareness is like the water in the pool and can exist at different depths.
Walmart, McDonalds, Apple, Fed-Ex, Amazon, and Netflix all live in the deep end of the pool. We usually think about these brands every day, not from their ads but our real-world experiences interacting with them. Each brand is distinct, different and we have emotional connections as we experience each of these deep brands.
The Shallow End of the Pool
But most brands live in the shallow end of the pool. Only occasionally being top of mind to a target audience. Often our connection is transactional, not emotional. It is fleeting and episodic.
When Terminix comes to my house to spray, I think about them for about 11 minutes as I observed their technician spraying and cleaning out cobwebs along windows and door jams. When their bill arrives, I’m engaged for another 32 seconds. And then I don’t think about them at all unless a little critter shows up in my house.
If I see a truck on the highways with a Cheerwine logo on the side, it reminds me of my days in Salisbury working for the oldest, continuously owned soft drink company in the U.S. and the brief period in my life when I drank high-sugary drinks. I’m aware of the brand, but no longer in their category. My knowledge of the brand is deep, but my awareness is very shallow since I’m not involved with that brand of the soft-drink category.
As I sort through my mail and see a catalog for Nieman Marcus, I have about a 30-second engagement with a brand that I’m aware of but isn’t something on my mind. (I’m not much of a shopper, and my wife likes to look through their catalog although I’m not sure she ever buys anything from them).
Building Awareness
A new client needed to inform thousands of people in an industry about the services he offers. He wanted to raise awareness of his company, his product offering, and his capabilities. We discussed the idea of the shallow, middle and deep end of the pool for awareness.
We had to start somewhere, so we created a communications campaign consisting of 5-touches to deliver our key message to the target audience. We carefully selected who we wanted to speak to (industry, title, company size, geography, etc.) and then developed an engaging message that focused not on features but the benefit of the service. Our marketing answered the question, what would it feel like if you worked with us and, we shared what job our service would do for them.
Over three weeks we sent out three emails to 2,500 people who didn’t know our brand. We started with virtually zero awareness, just stepping into the shallow part of the pool.
The emails opened more than 1,500 times and helped us achieve our initial goals for gaining some awareness. We had several hundred people click links to learn more. A great practice is to have a pre and post awareness survey to show that we have moved the needle.
But this was just a first step in an ongoing marketing effort to stay in front of our target audience and to stay top of mind.
This email campaign was our first attempt to wander into the shallow end of the pool. With a little awareness, we sent several physical mailers to the target audience and did follow up phone calls.
Slowly, we will move toward the middle section of the pool to find multiple other ways to engage in person, on the phone, and through other digital communications methods.
Brand awareness takes time. You can learn about through marketing efforts like emails and advertising or through experiences.
To go from the shallow to the deep end takes time, differentiation and persistence. No one gets into the deep end quickly even if you spend $5,000,000 to buy a Superbowl ad. Awareness is enduring and is built on the foundation of experiences and knowledge over a long time frame.
If you want instant brand awareness, you are setting yourself up for failure. Brand awareness isn’t like chlorine that you drop in your pool once to shock out the algae.
One of my favorite awareness tactics is what Bed, Bath & Beyond has done for years. They send a postcard every month to every person living within a 5-mile radius of their store with a 20% discount off of one item or their total purchases.
Drip, drip, drip.
What part of the swimming pool is your brand awareness wading?
Need a lifesaver (or a pool noodle)? Let’s wade into the water together and develop a plan to raise your brand’s awareness and grow your business. Call me at 919 720 0995 or email me at jeffslater@themarketingsage.com If you’d like to schedule a free conversation, here is my calendar so you can book a timeslot for us to chat and get acquainted. I’ll bring the suntan lotion.
Photo by Chris Kristiansen on Unsplash
