How the lack of brand awareness affects your company (2024)

As soon as people think of buying sneakers or a sports hoodie, what brand comes to mind? I’m guessing most people would pick one of these, Nike, Adidas, Puma or Under Armour.

When students from the school district of Earth, TX were asked what would improve their community. Some students said that a Dollar General store would make their life better, because their parents had to drive long distances very often to buy goods.

A lot of people in Mexico prefer to go to an Oxxo store, because they are usually very close to them and have a wide variety of products. This is a very popular general store with a presence in Mexico and South America. 8 out of 10 Mexicans prefer to go to an Oxxo store. Two of its major differentiators are distance and that they integrated different electronic services in markets that were being ignored by big brands. They have had continuous growth since they opened in 1978, and they currently have more than 17, 000 stores just in Mexico.

So, why did the students think of Dollar General and not another store? Why do people in Mexico prefer to go to an Oxxo store?

I strongly believe that is due to the brand awareness built around these companies, which in return affects the decision of their desired customer.

Brand awareness red flags

Is there anything that can tell you if your brand awareness needs to be updated?

Companies should be able to recognize red flags as soon as they come up, in order to take proper action and prevent them from becoming a problem. Here are five flags that indicate your organization may need to make improvements in this area.

• Not coming up in the search results. If you go online and search for your brand and you don’t come up in the first results, you have a brand awareness problem. While this is likely to take some time, if this is a recurring issue, it’ll mean that your SEO and digital marketing efforts are not working or not enough for your website to rank higher.
• No acknowledgement from experts. A brand that is not recognized by industry experts as worthy of mention in their assessments suggests a lack of brand awareness. If thought leaders don’t consider it relevant talking about your brand or they don’t recognize it as important in your industry, this tells you that your brand doesn’t have enough exposure or isn’t position correctly.
• Internal disconnection. When your own marketing or creative team has problems articulating your brand’s message, this is a good indicator that there is a lack of brand identity and personality inside your company. Since you don't have a plan on how to position your brand, it will be hard for your team to make decisions. Small and large companies alike face the same problem. It is possible for a brand to sell itself if you have a clearly defined set of values about your company that your audience connects with.
• When you don’t have detractors. In today's world, brands need to stand for something, have a point of view. As a result, there might be customers who won't agree with your point of view.It is a great opportunity for you to prove that your brand is true, refute negative criticism, and ultimately turn that into a positive opinion if you handle it properly.
• Careless exposure. When trying to gain brand exposure if you are not careful enough to place your brand where it makes sense, it can cause you to lose the attention of your customers. Make sure your exposure aligns with your brands message, that it stays true to your values and narrative. To ensure that your brand's long-term value is not diluted, don't overexpose your brand for short-term gains in awareness and volume.

Brand awareness

Brand awareness will help you to associate your products to your actions with your brand, and if it’s done well, subconsciously your customers will replace common words with branded terms.

Customer familiarity and brand recognition are both measures that demonstrate how well your brand is known by your customers.

If no one knows who you are or what you do, you will have a hard time getting people to come to you, and that will harm your business and have a direct impact on your company's growth.

If a company doesn’t build brand awareness, it will be harder to foster customers' trust in it. That trust starts with brand awareness.

Consumers can more easily trust brands when a face is associated with them. You can tell a story with a brand awareness campaign; it gives your brand a personality, and enables you to receive feedback. The ability to build trust amongst ourselves comes from all of these factors. This holds true for companies as well as individuals.

Consumers' experiences and perception of a brand determine a brand's value. Positive brand equity depends on positive experiences and perceptions, and the same holds true for the opposite. Companies with higher brand equity are more likely to thrive.

These are the four things that can come with positive brand equity:

• Higher stock price
• The ability to expand the business
• Strong social impact due to perceived brand name value
• Higher prices due to higher perceived value

Brand awareness and positive experiences should be consistently promoted. Your brand's awareness is the cornerstone of brand equity.

Brand Personality

Brand personality comes from company culture. It helps to evoke that emotional response in the customer and this makes it easier to remember.

Your brand will become recognizable and loved by people, which will lead to long-term customer retention.

On the other hand, if there’s no personality, you will most likely lose or have to make tremendous efforts to keep your customers, which you could also lose to similar companies with a more attractive personality.

Brand awareness strategy

If a company doesn’t have a clear path to follow, it will be difficult to have clarity as to who to communicate the brand message to, how to build brand awareness and therefor brand equity.

One thing some companies have problems with is connecting with the right audience. In most cases this is due to wrong targeting. If analytics are overlooked, a company cannot see who they are reaching to. When the correct audience is not being reached, then it is time to reconsider the branding and marketing strategy. Two things that are common causes for this are the wording of the brand message and how the service or product is being market.

Our attention can sometimes be caught but we have difficulty holding it. We may be seen, but our audience may not be interested. We can address issues like this with the use of interactive content.

Not having a brand awareness strategy undermines any additional actions you may have already taken, like co-Marketing, advertising or guest blogging. Having a strategy will help you keep your audience growing and move towards your goals.

Sharing something that requires the participation of your audience ensures that your audience stays engaged. By creating something of value for your customers you stay relevant and have a much greater chance of staying top of mind.

The best way to find out what is causing this is to do some research to confirm the audience psychographics, likes and wants to align your brand with your customers' pain points.

The problem is that you won't know what to say if you are not doing anything mentioned above, since you won't know whom you need to say it to.

Build brand awareness

Building brand awareness is no different from working on your own reputation as a person and that is because companies are managed by people and they sell to people. Customers will feel attracted to companies that share the same values they do, but also to companies that have a similar personality, whether that's serious, funny, silly or energetic.

Even though this may seem logical to some, it is still a common problem a lot of companies face especially when they are in their initial stage.

A lot of young companies struggle with defining their brand personality. This creates a problem if they want to build brand awareness, as brand awareness should feed on that personality.

Brand awareness isn't something that happens overnight. It is something that takes effort and is the sum of multiple efforts that go far beyond the sale.

Building awareness is more than running ads or product marketing campaigns.

In addition to the consumer only being interested in the product (not the brand), the advertisem*nt will have little impact beyond a simple sale.

There are ways to build brand awareness and help your company grow. These are 4 effective steps you can take when building your brand awareness.

1. Be Social - As humans we are made to be social and interact with one another. By socializing you connect with others and get your name out there. This is how you get known. More than 50% of brand reputation nowadays comes from social media interactions. Remember to socialize online with your audience, don’t try to sell only. Instead share interesting content for the sole purpose of sharing information. Comment on others' accounts, ask questions, create interactive content that’s not product/service related, create polls and retweet interesting posts.
2. Be more human - When you act and treat your customers as persons, they will notice and feel that. Being more human and less business will always win you more people's attention. What would you like people to know about you? Details, stories, likes, passions, and more. Some companies overlook listening to customers, what their favorite topics are, and what makes them happy.
3. Tell your story - When you share your story with people you give them the opportunity to see a real side of you, something to feel connected to. Think of this as something more than a marketing tactic, but instead as a way to humanize your brand and give it depth. Share your beginnings, your story, what you have been through. Tell them what got you started doing what you do, but make it a genuine story. Most people will identify with that, because most of all had a humble beginning. Talk about the values your company is based on and how you translate that to your services and products and above all be authentic about it.
4. Brand ambassadors - The best marketing you can have is from a satisfied customer talking to people and telling them that your product is great. Most of the time they will trust that opinion. If you see a friend, family member or coworker using a certain product or service and talking wonders about it, it’ll spark some curiosity in you to know more about it.The same goes for digital content. The higher the quality and the more relatable to your audience the better chances of having your content shared. Make it so that your content is accessible and easy to share for people. This way your existing and new customers will help to raise awareness about your brand.

Remember to be genuinely human and less business like with your audience to have a deeper connection.

Your marketing efforts, consumer perception of your brand, and revenue can be greatly impacted by brand awareness.

Work on nurturing your brand so that it can become a household name and a consumer staple by establishing trust with your customers, creating positive associations and building valuable brand equity. It is for this reason that brand awareness is so important.

In the end, you need to be extremely clear about what you're offering. Explain everything simply and directly so that there is no confusion. Recognize that even if all the information is clear to you, you already know it. Since it is new, you must market and brand it by telling the story of your product or service in detail with new and upcoming customers in mind. All of this while being human and genuine.

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Nurture your brand and keep customers satisfied

Make your brand a memorable experience

About the author: René Favela is a certified brand strategist and graphic designer, founder of Visual Vandal Design with more than 10 years of experience in the private sector. Over the years, he has helped a variety of companies in the medical, web, automobile insurance, private security, and manufacturing sectors. A specialist in brand strategy and design, he specializes in creative thinking to develop brand identities to help brands connect with their customers.