Business-to-business marketers agree: The top goal for their content marketing initiatives is to build their brand awareness.
According to recent research by the Content Marketing Institute, 82 percent of survey respondents indicated that they sought to develop strong and pervasive brand awareness from their content marketing initiatives. Brand awareness trumped lead generation (74 percent), customer acquisition (71 percent), thought leadership (68 percent), engagement (64 percent) and customer retention (57 percent).
Brand awareness can be defined by how well-known your company and its offerings are to consumers. The stronger your brand awareness, the stronger your company. With this in mind, let’s take a look at some easy steps shrewd marketers can take in order to increase their brand awareness and thus grow their companies.
1. Be exposed. The more your brand is out in the open and can be viewed by consumers, the more your brand awareness will grow. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to find your content. There’s no point in directing efforts at content production if you’re not going to use the material or make it readily accessible.
2. Offer best-in-class customer service. From time to time, all businesses will eventually let their customers down. Such is simply the nature of life. When your customers have questions, however, an opportunity to provide best-in-class service to address those concerns presents itself. Companies that have strong customer service generate a buzz for themselves through word of mouth. Knowing that your company offers great customer service is an easy way to help fortify your brand awareness.
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3. Have a creative and consistent logo. Be sure to create an appropriate logo for your company, branding all marketing materials in the same fashion. You need consistency in your advertisements so that customers will become increasingly familiar with your logo and associate it with your product offerings. You want to get to the point where customers will see your logo and the floodgates will open, bringing with them a deluge of positive information pertaining to your company.
4. Create and maintain a strong presence in the blogosphere. Your customers have a lot of questions, and they’re looking to you for answers. Educate your customers by telling stories and following the latest trends in the industry. By consistently updating your blog, you’ll curate a steady stream of devoted followers who will help evangelize on your brand’s behalf.
5. Attend trade shows. Trade shows provide companies with a fantastic avenue through which to get their name out. Make sure your company is attending as many trade shows as make sense depending on your unique situation. The more you get your name out there, the more your brand awareness will grow.
6. Build a social media empire. Social media is all the rage these days, and companies are increasingly establishing strong presences on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest, among other channels. If you’ve not yet begun building your social media empire, it’s not too late to begin. But you better get on it soon.
Looking for additional inspiration as to building your brand awareness? Click here to read more about brand awareness.
