The Complete Guide to Building Brand Awareness: 21 Effective Strategies and Tactics

Brand awareness is critical for any business looking to grow. It establishes your brand in the minds of consumers and boosts visibility of your products or services. This complete guide covers everything you need to know about building strong brand awareness.

Building awareness is one of the best ways to increase brand equity. It helps more people recognize your brand and remember your products or services. With solid brand awareness, you make it easier for customers to choose you over competitors when making a purchase decision. 

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn 21 highly effective tactics and strategies for building awareness of your brand and boosting brand recognition. From leveraging social media to mastering word-of-mouth marketing, you’ll find proven methods to get your brand seen and remembered.

Why is Brand Awareness Important?

Before diving into specific tactics, it’s crucial to understand why brand awareness matters in the first place.

Awareness establishes familiarity with your brand. The more awareness you build, the more likely target customers will be to think of your brand first when they need your products or services.

High brand awareness also gives your marketing efforts and campaigns something to build upon. When people are already familiar with your brand, they’ll be more receptive to branded messaging and campaigns.

Additionally, brand awareness can allow you to charge premium pricing in some cases. When customers view your brand as superior in quality, performance, or status, you have more pricing flexibility.

Measuring brand awareness shows you how effective your marketing is. If awareness is low, it signals your messaging isn't resonating. Tracking metrics also gives you goals to optimize around.

In short, brand awareness powers all other aspects of branding and marketing. It precedes consideration, intent, and customer acquisition. The higher the awareness, the better positioned a brand is to succeed.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

As the saying goes, “what gets measured gets managed.” Before executing strategies to increase awareness, you need to measure current levels.

Brand Recall

Brand recall represents how easily consumers can name your brand when prompted about a product category. Test recall by asking a sample group to list brands selling your products. Higher recall correlates to higher awareness. Repeat this periodically to measure growth.

Brand Recognition

Even if people can’t recall your brand name outright, they may still recognize it. Recognition metrics reveal how familiar people are with your brand when they encounter it.

Test this by showing your brand logo and name alongside others and asking people which ones they know. The % who recognize your brand indicates your recognition level.

Social Listening

Monitoring social and web mentions of your brand name tells you how frequently it enters consumer conversations. More brand name drops signal higher awareness. Leverage listening tools to analyze volume and reach of mentions over time.

Brand Associations

What images, qualities, emotions, and values do people link back to your brand? The associations audience members make reveal how aware they are of what you represent.

Survey consumers to map brand associations. The more consistent and aligned associations are across respondents, the stronger your brand awareness.

12 Strategies to Increase Brand Awareness

Now that you know why brand awareness matters and how to track it, let’s explore highly effective strategies to actively build awareness.

1. Identify and Establish Your Brand Identity

Brand identity encompasses your logo, color scheme, tone of voice, messaging, personality and more. It's the unique look, feel, and sound of your brand. 

The more cohesive and consistent your identity is, the easier it becomes for people to connect repeated touchpoints back to your brand. Leverage brand identity guidelines and asset libraries to maintain consistency across markets.

2. Create Distinct and Recognizable Brand Assets

Memorable visual assets like your logo increase brand recognition and recall. Invest in a logo and supporting brand imagery that quickly capture attention while feeling intrinsically tied to your brand identity.

Make sure branded assets are conspicuous across touchpoints like your website, product packaging, promotions, brick-and-mortar locations, and staff uniforms. Brand elements that consumers see repeatedly have the highest chance of sticking in memory.

3. Prioritize Brand Building Content

Content marketing educates consumers while subtly promoting your brand and offerings. Infographics, blogs, videos, and other formats subtly advertise while appearing educational and engaging.

For example, a home improvement brand could publish YouTube tutorials people find helpful when completing DIY projects. This builds awareness and affinity over time.

4. Spotlight Your Brand Purpose and Values

Showcasing what your brand believes in and stands for builds authenticity and affinity. Consumers increasingly support companies aligned with their own ethics and values. Clearly communicating yours helps emotionally connect target audiences to your brand.

Weave purpose and values into branding, messaging, and campaigns. For example, an eco-friendly brand wanting to promote sustainability practices might partner with environmentalist influencers on social media.

5. Leverage Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

Influencers already have established audiences primed to take interest in brands they partner with or promote. A single post can put your brand in front of thousands to millions of new eyes.

Micro-influencers are affordable options perfect for building localized or niche-specific brand awareness. Larger personalities offer greater exposure opportunities at higher costs. Weigh options against marketing budgets and goals.

Company ambassadors from your own customer base can organically boost brand awareness too. Loyal customers who engage frequently often hold sway over their own audiences. Programs that empower advocates to easily share branded content can drive significant word-of-mouth visibility. 

6. Host Live or Virtual Events

Hosting branded events allows direct engagement with local audiences while creating shareable moments. Consumers posting about a fun experience or activation on social media spreads brand impressions virally.

Events also build awareness by sparking word-of-mouth referrals. Someone telling friends about the great time they had inherently mentions your brand. Look for event ideas aligned to brand identity that attract your target demographic.

7. Claim and Optimize Business Listings

Business listings on popular directory platforms serve as important local search visibility drivers. Optimized listings typically rank highly on SERPs and appear in knowledge panels shown to searchers.

Verifying and densifying listings with photos, hours, contact info and more signals legitimacy while giving you ownership of how your brand appears. This transforms listings into reliable awareness touchpoints.

8. Sponsor Relevant Organizations or Events

Sponsoring niche conferences, local venues/teams, or aligned causes puts your brand in front of specific consumer segments primed for conversion. It also builds goodwill by signaling community investment.

Choose sponsorships strategically aligned to your brand and audience identities. The awareness driving potential comes from getting your brand seen by and associated with relevant environments, events, or organizations.

9. Advertise on High-Traffic Platforms

Running ads on social networks, search engines, streaming audio platforms and popular websites directly puts your brand in front of massive built-in audiences. You control exactly who sees ads and how prominently.

The key is balancing visibility goals with realistic budgets. Geo-targeting and platform targeting controls reduce waste and overhead to make display and social advertising more affordable. Make sure to track conversions in addition to reach.

10. Grow Your Email List

Email marketing directly targets opted-in audiences with branded messaging. While open and click-through rates vary across industries, email consistently drives higher conversion rates than most other digital marketing channels.

Pop-ups, landing pages with lead magnets, and simple registration forms help continually grow your subscriber list over time. More subscribers means more potential eyeballs on branded content. Don’t forget to segment lists for tailored targeting.

11. Leverage Retargeting Pixels and Cookies

Retargeting technology tracks consumers who previously visited your website or interacted with branded touchpoints and continues displaying your ads to them off-site. Persistent brand visibility across their other browsing boosts familiarity.

The repetition also means abandoned visitors see your brand again, getting another chance to convert. Retargeting works hand-in-hand with broader awareness driving strategies.

12. Promote Consistently on Social Media

Posting branded content, special offers, advertising, and other messaging on social networks sustains awareness for minimal investment. The massive, hyper-targetable audiences active on platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer unparalleled visibility potential.

Promotions can incentivize sharing or recommendations to tap into downstream virality effects. Contests and user-generated campaigns further drive participatory engagement across owned, earned and paid channels.

9 Examples of Brand Awareness Campaigns Done Right

Now let’s look at real world examples of brands executing high-impact awareness campaigns centered around the strategic pillars outlined above.

1. Spotify: Branded Playlists

Spotify leveraged its own platform to promote artists and surface music aligned to listeners' interests. Curated branded playlists like Radar First Taste build strong associations between the streaming service, new music discovery, and specific artists.

Branded and artist playlists help Spotify embed its brand identity as a music authority beyond just being an app. Listening sessions turn into fluid, long-term awareness touchpoints.

2. Red Bull: Experiential Events Marketing

Red Bull's sports sponsorships, extreme athlete content, and over-the-top branded events cement its identity as a high energy, adventurous brand. Events like Flugtag and the Red Bull Air Race captivate audiences in-person and generate massive visibility when attendees share across social media.

These stunt marketing events consistently produce engaging, sharable moments maximizing reach. Even consumers who don't attend recognize Red Bull's brand association with extreme sports and atmosphere.

3. Squarespace: Empowering Creators

Squarespace connects its brand to creative professionals by empowering visible creators, influencers and artists to succeed independently. Affordable, intuitive website builder tools help creators showcase work while optimized ecommerce functionality lets them sell work directly to followers.

This genuine commitment to enabling creatives structures win-win partnerships. Squarespace gains awareness from creators organically sharing about how the platform enables their livelihoods.

4. Headspace: Branded Content

Headspace grew exponential awareness by publishing accessible meditation and mindfulness content. Videos, animations, blogs and podcasts build affinity by providing genuine utility to stressed out, busy audiences. As users associate feelings of relaxation and rest with Headspace, organic brand sentiment and recall increase.

The content feels meant for learning rather than overt self-promotion. This trust and familiarity converted browsers into paid subscribers when the brand later launched its premium meditation app.

5. Whole Foods: Localized Marketing

Whole foods taps into localized event sponsorships, partnerships and community programming to embed itself as a supporter of regional causes. Alignment to values like sustainability and corporate responsibility shape positive brand perception.

Ongoing community engagement combined with in-store communications enables Whole Foods to increase brand awareness and recognition as a mission-driven grocer.

6. GoPro: User Generated Content

GoPro fosters brand engagement opportunities by making compact, mountable adventure cameras. The unique flexibility and durability empower extreme athletes and adventurers to easily capture engaging shareable footage anywhere they go.

Viral user generated video views numbering in the millions organically drive massive awareness for what the GoPro brand enables. The company further amplifies branded UGC by reposting footage to their own channels.

7. Facebook: Social Listening

Monitoring brand mentions and reacting with targeted responses shows social followers you listen and care. When people tweet at companies asking questions or sharing feedback, quick helpful replies signal approachability.

Facebook's social media team regularly engages commenters and respond to posts tagged on the company profile. Prompt reactions to volume feedback strengthens trust and affinity.

8. Coca-Cola: Global Consistency

Coca-Colabuilt possibly the most universally recognized brand icon in their famous script logo. Because the branding assets remain consistent everywhere across the world, global familiarity continues growing for generations. The iconic design transcended into pop culture visibility through commercials, merchandise, sponsorship placements and more.

No matter what country you visit, you instantly know a Coke thanks iconic branding distinction. This exemplifies brand consistency best practices.

9. Oreo: Niche Community Marketing

Oreo tapped into quirky intrigue around unique filling flavor pairings by catalyzing a viral debate asking social followers to vote between two options. This "Cookie vs Creme" debate encouraged participatory brand engagement across platforms.

The campaign effectively brought niche brand enthusiasts together while producing easily shareable discussions for even casual audiences. Novel flavors like Apple Cider Donut or Hot Chicken kept brand buzz swirling.

Key Takeaways and Next Steps

Building strong brand awareness is foundational for converting target audiences into loyal customers. It informs consideration, encourages adoption, maximizes campaign success and sustains growth.

Measuring current brand health baselines your progress before launching awareness initiatives. Always track quantifiable brand recall, recognition, associations, and mentions over time when running campaigns.

To actively increase visibility, stay consistent across interactive touchpoints. Build familiarity through repeated exposure aligned to a cohesive brand identity. Maintain optimized visibility on directories and review sites to drive local impressions.

Strategic sponsorships put your brand in key environments matching your target customer persona. Hashtag challenges, lead gen promotions and interactive content spark conversational and participatory engagement.

Keep cultivating awareness across both traditional and digital channels. Consistency is key—the more people see your brand show up positively, the more likely they'll be to remember it. Over time, stacking effective awareness strategies compounds into full-fledged brand visibility.