There is a huge variety of approaches for improving your brand awareness through digital marketing. As a result, it is important to focus your efforts on the right strategy for your business. This means you need to understand the benefits of each approach, and how to succeed with each strategy.
These are six effective digital marketing strategies for increasing brand awareness and recognition.
DIGITAL MARKETING PROVIDES SOCIAL PROOF
Social proof is a highly effective digital marketing strategy to increase awareness of your brand online. Potential buyers or clients want to hear about the pros and cons of your business from real customers. Online reviews are a major factor in how many online shoppers trust a brand.
Engagement with your business on popular review sites has a big impact on your search page ranking. Your average score can appear on the results page, and a lot of reviews help get your business into the local group.
The average shopper reads 10 online reviews before buying. Buyers need to see at least 40 reviews before they trust your score. Keeping an active profile on review sites is vital to gaining the trust of online shoppers. A wealth of positive online reviews speaks for itself. But even a few negative reviews can be good for business. Proof you don’t remove bad reviews shows that your overall score is accurate. But don’t just let bad reviews sit there, respond, and attempt to rectify the problem.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media platforms give you access to huge online audiences and enable you to increase brand recognition by building a positive online community around your products and services. A social media marketing plan lets you share your latest products, sales, and updates. It also enables you to engage with customers outside of business transactions.
Talking to users on social media helps build your brand identity. They also highlight your great customer service. This is a major factor for online shoppers. Many businesses underestimate the amount of work that goes into building a successful social media profile, so do your research and focus on the most popular platforms for your target demographics.
Each platform has a different audience and expectations from brand pages. Tailor your content to each platform to make use of their strengths. Avoid repeating the same message across multiple platforms. This will discourage users from following you on multiple platforms. It could even make them bloc you to avoid seeing the same posts everywhere.
CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing is a great way to attract the attention of fresh leads with an interest in your industry or a need for your products. Create videos, blogs, and other content that offers insights into your industry. Your content should always offer value to users. This gives them a reason to engage with and share your content. Besides raising brand awareness, helpful videos and articles build trust in your brand.
Putting out consistently insightful content also develops trust in your brand, as your honest advice and explanations position your business as a credible, thought-leading source of information. This digital marketing strategy is also very useful for SEO purposes and might be the most important factor to rank on Google.
Research keywords and search terms for your industry niche. With these, you can understand the concerns of people learning about your industry. Addressing those topics helps increase brand awareness in groups that need your business. Targeting the right keywords also helps to educate your potential customers about your business.
OPT-IN DIGITAL MARKETING
Opt-in marketing is a great way to build the interest of new leads and customers. One benefit of this strategy is that you are only contacting qualified leads. You already know they have an interest in your business. This means your audience likely already has some knowledge of your industry and wants to learn more about the specific advantages of your products or service.
Contact methods with fast response times such as text messaging are ideal for opt-in marketing.
They allow you to send limited-time discounts, flash sales, and other offers and be confident they will get your message in time. This method is also popular with online shoppers. 77% of consumers say they have opted in to an SMS marketing scheme in the past.
DIGITAL MARKETING REFERRALS
Referral programs give you a way to encourage customers to introduce your business to their friends by offering rewards. Besides attracting new customers with discounts and sign-up rewards, this method also rewards the loyalty of your long-term customers. As well as raising awareness of your brand, referral schemes also give social proof. 92% of consumers will trust a recommendation from someone they know directly.
Offering referral rewards that scale with the number of new customers a user brings you is a great way to encourage your audience to share referral links and codes with their friends, instead of just claiming a one-time reward.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing can give you access to huge audiences. 40% of people have bought a product online after seeing it in an influencer’s content. Choosing who to work with takes a lot of research, however. Identify the core audiences each influencer attracts. It is also important to find influencers who match your brand image. Make sure you view as much of their previous sponsored content as possible to understand the brands they usually work with, and the way they represent the businesses they promote. The best sponsored content usually gives influencers a lot of freedom.
Influencers know how to entertain their audience better than you do. Besides, audiences can tell when creators are just reading your script. Giving a content creator the freedom to create content for you can be scary. That’s why it’s vital to find an influencer you can trust to represent you professionally. Always require creators to send you their content for approval before it goes public.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
It is vital to find the right digital marketing strategies to connect with your audience. Know where they spend their time online, and create content tailored to their interests. An approach focused on tailoring your marketing content to individual users has the best chance of attracting potential customers.
By rewarding leads for taking an interest in your business through valuable content and deals, and rewarding existing customers with referral deals and online support, you can develop a reputation for a great customer experience.