Building Brand Awareness
Once you have a powerful brand built naturally from your brand’s identity, your next challenge is to use it effectively and consistently through your marketing materials to build brand awareness.
Used correctly and consistently, your identity-led brand should stand out everywhere (think website, social media profiles, email signature, flyers, packaging, and more!), and begin to convert followers into paying clients. If your marketing is struggling, you might be using your brand ineffectively and it’s just not landing with your dream clients. Here’s what should happen...
When new potential dream clients discover your brand - maybe on social media or your website or FB ad - your content should be immediately recognizable as YOURS across all platforms, whether or not your logo is attached.
You want your brand to be known, felt, and experienced consistently, with all assets cohesively linking arms and working for you. If anything you put out there is inconsistent, it can confuse followers and weaken your brand awareness.
What is brand awareness, and why does it matter?
Brand awareness speaks to people’s ability to recognize and recall your brand in a sea of others doing work similar to you (i.e. that “know, like, and trust factor”). It’s all about how familiar they are with your brand, your message, your personality, and what you stand for or against.
In a nutshell, brand awareness measures how easily your brand is known and felt by your dream clients, even when you aren’t personally interacting with them.
Here’s an easy example: what do you think of when you think of a swoosh, an apple with a bite out of it, or those golden arches? You can easily recognize and recall the name of those brands. That’s the kind of power we’re talking about here!
Establishing strong brand awareness is a critical first step in sharing your magic with others, doing the work you love with the type of people you like serving best, and building out your marketing strategy. Establishing brand awareness should be your first and primary goal following the launch of your business or when revealing a rebrand to the world!
What does great brand awareness do for you?
Brands with strong brand awareness foster relationships and deep connection with their dream clients, building on the trust their brand has established. And with consistency, visual repetition (like using your same colors, fonts, and patterns over and over again), and some core content pillars, people will begin to know you, want to work with you, and share what you’re all about with others.
For example, here at Dawn & Delight, you’ll notice that the ampersand shows up again and again in many of the graphics I create and in the logo. Because it is used so consistently, it has become an icon that many associate with my brand. People tag me on Instagram on pictures of fun ampersands because it makes them think of me!
Now, because I’ve used my brand assets so effectively, my brand is working for me even when I’m not actively communicating with my audience. This means it’s now begun to live in the minds of my dream clients.
Bet you’ll never see an ampersand again without thinking of me. 😉
How do you begin to build brand awareness?
Now this is where the rubber meets the road!
Building brand awareness takes consistency and time as you weave the concepts, values, and visuals of your brand through your marketing strategy and assets.
Think of your entire marketing strategy as crafting a story, building a narrative with chapters that can be read on your Instagram posts, experienced in your Instagram stories, teased on your Twitter posts, and explored on your website. Everything works together to tell the story of you and your brand.
So, what is your story? What values do you stand for, and what do you stand against? What personality elements encompass your brand and what values define your community? How does all of this take shape in your content? Your answers to these questions begin to influence your copywriting, showcasing your brand’s voice through video and written content.
What about visuals? What colors epitomize your brand and create the feel of your brand’s personality? If you haven’t yet, go back and read this post on how to get started on this brand identity journey and peek inside my own branding process.
Shaina, what can I start working on today to build brand awareness?
So, what can you do from here? What brand and marketing assets can you work on today?
✨ Create a Brand Clarity Board
Your first step, if you haven’t already, is to create a brand clarity board (like the one pictured above) showcasing the visuals, colors, textures, patterns, fonts, and personality that come together to create your brand. It truly captures the essence of your brand. A brand clarity board acts as the guide for your brand and a benchmark for all the visual elements you create and share for your business.
✨ Audit Your Online Presence
Make sure your brand is being showcased consistently online. This includes all marketing channels and platforms like your website, your email newsletter and sign-up pages, your social media graphics, and all advertisements.
✨ Revamp Your Deliverables
Ensure all downloads - including paid and free opt-ins - are updated to consistently match your brand. Don’t forget to update all client deliverables as well - yes, these are marketing materials! - to make sure your client experience is consistent with your brand identity.
I just did this step for my brand too. Get my updated free guide “Homepage Without the Headache” with 4 steps to make your homepage more impactful by clicking here.
✨ Show Up As Your Brand
Don’t forget that YOU need to show up as your brand as well! While there’s much to be said about showing up authentically on social media, that doesn’t mean we forego our brand personality completely. When you are able, wear brand-appropriate clothing for photoshoots and livestreams - you are an extension of your brand online!
Need more help and support crafting your brand identity and building your brand? I help visionary female entrepreneurs (just like you!) make connections that matter, one visual at a time, with beautiful brands and Squarespace website design. If you’re ready to clarify your brand’s visual story and get your freedom back, I’d love to be your guide!
