The success of a business closely relates to how highly the public is aware of its products or services. As such, building brand awareness is crucial.
Brand awareness is a marketing term that describes the degree of public recognition of a product by its name. To put it simply, brand awareness can be seen as the level of understanding that potential customers have of a certain brand. For a company’s marketing team, brand awareness is vital. This metric can be a valid measurement of a brand’s familiarity and recognition among its target market.
Strong brand awareness will prompt customers to associate a brand with a certain product. They will always recall this spontaneously upon thinking of a particular product category. However, when brand awareness is weak, customers will not recognize it. This will of course impact negatively on business performance. How can a business offer products or services, then expect customers to purchase, if the brand is not recognized?
Brand Awareness: Scope and Type
Brand awareness is commonly used as a marketing measurement ratio in a market that has some level of knowledge or familiarity of a certain product. Its scope covers two metrics, namely brand recognition and brand recall. Both of these measurements make up brand awareness.
1. Brand Recognition
A metric that indicates consumers’ ability to recognize a brand when questioned about the brand. In other words, consumers can differentiate the brand relative to its competitors; by its strengths, uniqueness, and other factors.
2. Brand Recall
A measure of consumers’ ability to recall a brand when questioned about a particular product or service category. Ideally, respondents will have the brand easily come to mind and recall it upon being asked for opinions of the category.
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Both brand recognition and brand awareness are necessary to build. However, it is important to note that consumers will more easily recognize a brand rather than recall it. As such, brand recall is the more challenging task for a company’s marketing team to build.
Furthermore, brand awareness can be differentiated into two types. Both will indicate the degree of consumer awareness towards a brand.
1. Aided AwarenessÂ
A type of brand awareness that arises after consumers are shown a list of brands in a particular category. They can only recall the brand after already being prompted by the list.
2. Top of Mind Awareness
A metric of the highest level of brand awareness. This is the first brand that comes to consumers’ minds when questioned on a particular category. Top of Mind Awareness should be aimed at as a goal by all brands.
Great Impact on a Business
Brand awareness must be built as optimally as possible, as it relates highly with both sales level and market share that can be achieved by a brand.
Simply put, consumers are more likely to choose products or services from brands they are more familiar with in comparison to brands they do not recognize. If brand awareness is successfully improved, consumers will immediately associate a particular product or service category with a certain brand.
Take an example of the cola-based carbonated beverage category. The general public will instantly recall and refer to the brand Coca Cola, even when there are other popular carbonated drinks brands in the market such as Pepsi. This will certainly be reflected in higher sales level and market share from Coca Cola.
As such, it is crucial for a brand to build brand awareness. The method of achieving it varies. Brands can do different forms of promotions in the effort of growing brand awareness. Social media presence and activity, ad placement, sponsorships, and throwing certain events can be effective ways to improve it.
An important note in increasing effectiveness is that brand owners must also design a strong brand image, slogan, and tagline. All of these have to be communicated to potential customers consistently and continuously. In undertaking all the measures, strong brand awareness will be built.
