Building Brand Awareness in a New Market: 8 Advertising Tips

With competition fiercer than ever, there aren’t many things that businesses can do to stand out. One thing they can do that will still have an effect, though, is to establish and actively promote a brand. Your brand is what will differentiate your business from the plethora of competitors out there looking to steal your lunch. Nonetheless, building a brand and promoting it to the right people is a task often easier said than done. This article will cover eight tactics you should use to create a successful and long-lasting brand. While some of the tips might seem obvious, others will be less so, and the idea is to combine them in order to come to a cohesive whole, enabling you to get your message across to the right people and generate long-term, loyal customers. 

Identify Your Target Audience Clearly

For any brand looking to build awareness, identifying their target audience is paramount. A well-defined target is the crucial first step and will dictate the rest of your journey toward building a brand that resonates with the right people and ultimately leads to growth. In essence, if you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, how can you possibly reach them? Without understanding their ideal customer’s key demographics, behaviors, and preferences, brands risk crafting campaigns that fall flat or even mislead. Not only is this a waste of money, but it could result in potential issues further down the line (since you will have to completely realign your campaign and spend even more money when you could have done it right the first time around). For example, if you’re building a new campaign and need to hire the services of a voice over agency, without knowing who you are attempting to reach, you will have no idea of the language, gender, or overall style you might need to use. Selecting something incorrectly will cost money unnecessarily and may even put off those whom you intended to reach (if you used an overly corporate style when promoting a brand aimed at kids, for example).

Create A Unique Selling Proposition

Any new brands looking to break through the clutter should develop a unique selling proposition, which will be key to building awareness. You need to give potential customers a clear reason to choose your business over others. Without a USP, a brand risks getting lost in the noise and being unable to position its products correctly. Developing a genuine value proposition allows a company to communicate what makes it different in a memorable way. While you don’t have to necessarily build what Warren Buffet famously refers to as a moat, you do need to present your customers with real advantages for using you over other brands. Doing the work upfront to identify a company’s most compelling differentiator allows messaging to focus on uniquely solving a specific customer need. Those brands that take the time to craft a differentiated proposition see better chances of grabbing attention and standing out as they work to increase awareness.

Leverage Social Media Platforms That Match Your Business

Social media has become one of the most important ways to build brand awareness and reach a vast and varied market. Nevehtlss, where many brands fall flat, is taking a scattered approach and choosing to create a profile on every channel under the sun. This might initially seem a good idea, but it will lead to diluted messaging as your brand grows. Instead, use social media after you have finished the first task listed here: identifying your target market. Once you know who you want to target, you will have a better idea of where they hang out. For instance, not every business will need to leverage TikTok, while others might find the younger demographic vital to their strategy. Conversely, Instagram might work well for tourism-based brands but not so much for metal fabrication ones. By carefully considering which channels to pursue, you will cut down the amount of effort you need to put in and find that the ones you do choose yield better results.

Invest In Pay-Per-Click Advertising To Reach A Broader Audience

Slightly expanding on the previous point, you might find investing in PPC advertising to be hugely beneficial in your marketing efforts. PPC is a form of advertising where you can reach a very targeted audience and slowly build brand awareness. It follows from the previous point that by selecting a few channels to target, you can better put your money to work where it will actually see results. 

Utilize Influencer Marketing Tactics (They’re Still Applicable)

Although the influencer marketing craze has subsided somewhat from its 2010s heyday, it still has a place if it’s done correctly. These days, your best chance at success is finding relevant videos and websites in your niche and paying the owners to promote your brand via sponsored messages. If you execute this strategy well, you should see an increase in both repeat business and new customers.

Attend Trade Shows And Events If Conducive To Your Industry

Some industries lend themselves to in-person events better than others. However, if you happen to be in these sectors, you will find live trade shows to build tremendous brand recognition and enable you to network with the right people.

Build Marketing Channels That You Control

Reaching the number one spot in the Google search results and getting lots of social media interest is excellent, but you will forever be at the mercy of platforms you don’t control. While you should make efforts to boost your profile in those channels, you should also make hey while the sun is shining. The most effective technique is to build a highly targeted email list that you can segment and utilize whenever you need to promote a new product release, company updates, etc.

You Need Measurement And Analysis To Stay On Track

No brand or marketing campaign will ever succeed without fastidious attention to the numbers. By reading the data and understanding who your audience is, where they found you, and their response to specific campaigns, you can better tailor your attempts and eventually reach a point where you are reaching more people for less money.

Building brand awareness isn’t a particularly challenging task, but you need to know how to approach it. You can increase your return on investment by using a combination of the strategies discussed in this post to zero in on your ideal customers and craft messages that will resonate with them.