Brand recognition is essential for business success. It’s what makes customers look to your brand first when they have a problem or pain point that needs solving. In this article, we’ll share how to grow your brand recognition by changing these five simple things.
When a brand is well-known enough, its branding can even replace common words. Like Kleenex for tissues, Fiberglass and Styrofoam for certain kinds of insulation. So, even Coke when someone wants a soda.
Even small gains in brand recognition can have a significant impact on business performance. Including sales growth, credibility and customer retention.
These are four of the most important factors when it comes to brand recognition. Optimizing these will be one of the fastest ways to grow brand recognition. Putting your business on the path to being instantly recognizable.
1. Value Proposition
What do customers get out of shopping with your brand? Every successful business has a good answer (or answers) for this question. They have a value proposition — a statement or assertion about what value customers will get from a purchase or subscription.
The best value propositions are accurate, relevant, and unique. They don’t oversell what a business can offer. But they do specify benefits that are relevant to problems the company’s target audience may have. So, all while being different enough to stand out from the competition.
Good value propositions are also usually short and to the point. If you can explain why customers should patronize your business in a sentence. They’ll be much more likely to receive the message.
As your brand grows and changes, you may need to update or revise your value proposition. Regularly reviewing your value proposition. How it fits into your branding can help you keep your business’s messaging on target.
2. Color, Shape and Story to Grow Your Brand Recognition
Every element of your brand — including colors, shapes, fonts, and even the words you use. Will affect how customers perceive your brand. How you decide on a brand will have a big impact on how effective your branding is. Moreover, how recognizable it becomes over time.
Effective design that marries message and substance will help you to communicate your business values. Demonstrate why customers should shop with your company.
Consistency in branding can also have a major impact on how recognizable your brand is. We know from consumer research, for example, that color can increase brand recognition by up to 80% — but only if you can keep your color consistent. Even small variations in color can immediately make a brand less recognizable.
Creating brand materials and standards will help you to streamline your branding efforts. While reducing the risk of inconsistent marketing materials. Developing a strong voice for business content will help you ensure that infographics. Guest blogs are also reinforcing your brand as much as possible.
3. Brand Reach to Grow Your Brand Recognition
You can only build brand recognition with your current audience. If you want to create a widely recognizable brand, you’ll have to expand your business’s reach.
Marketing strategies like content marketing and social media marketing are a great way to capture new audiences using the internet.
Using relevant content — like blog posts and infographics. Along with engaging social media posts. You can drive serious amounts of traffic to your business site, helping to grow your audience significantly.
Developing content is also a great opportunity to fine-tune your brand’s voice. Either writing the content yourself or working with content creators will mean making hundreds of decisions about the topics you want to cover and how you’ll communicate with your audience.
4. Social Trust and Influence
Brand recognition often relies on a foundation of trust or influence. People remember brands that stick out as credible or brands that they associate with other credible people and organizations.
Most companies build social trust with one or two different strategies to grow your brand recognition.
The first is to partner with credible businesses. Companies in your niche or your area that have some level of credibility can lend that trust to your business with a partnership. These relationships often take the form of new products, services, events or conferences that your companies will collaborate on.
These partnerships can yield other business benefits, as well. So, can often extend well beyond marketing or individual events into years-long relationships where both businesses will profit.
Many businesses are also using influencer marketing. They team up with influencers who are plugged into a community they want to reach, typically via social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The business then works with that influencer to craft advertising campaigns that signal credibility and value to the influencer’s following.
The influencer’s platform and the relationships they have with their audience help to spread the message and make it seem more trustworthy. Over time, these campaigns can help businesses to significantly build social influence — especially if customers who convert as a result of these campaigns have a great initial experience with the brand.
A combination of these two strategies can help a business reach a massive audience.
Long-Term Planning to Build Brand Recognition
Simple changes to these four areas can make a major difference when it comes to brand recognition. Knowing your value proposition, having strong brand standards, expanding your reach and building credibility will all help you grow a brand that is recognizable to a wide audience.
Knowing what strategies to employ will also help. Moreover, Content marketing, audience research, influencer marketing, and business partnerships will all help you to grow your reach and build a more effective, easily recognizable brand.
Eleanor is the editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. She’s also a freelance web designer with a focus on user experience. Eleanor lives in Philly with her husband and dog, Bear.
