7 Creative Tips & Ideas to Increase Brand Awareness

When we wrote “The Beginner’s Guide to Lifecycle Marketing”, we knew we had so much more to say on the topic. And so, with this blog post, we’re delving deeper into the subject of brand awareness — stage 1 of Lifecycle Marketing.

According to Pam Moore, people need to see your brand at least 5–7 times before they remember it. That means you need to put your brand out there in front of your audience, often enough for them to come across it a few times. That is, essentially, what sums up the strategy of brand awareness campaigns.

What exactly is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is a measure of how aware, cognizant, familiar your audience is with your brand. Have they seen it around? Do they know it exists? They may not have interacted with you yet, but will they remember your logo when they see it? Essentially, brand awareness is the result of successful branding activities that build brand recall.

Why is brand awareness so important?

Think of some of the most successful brands in different verticals — Colgate in toothpaste, Apple in electronics, Amazon in everyday commerce, DHL in shipping, GAP in apparel…you’ll be able to place the colors, fonts, and logos of these brands in just a couple of seconds. And when it comes to choosing between these brands and unknown competing brands, chances are you’ll go for these?just because they are familiar and feel safer.

That’s the power of brand awareness and brand recall.

The great news is that with a little creativity and some brainstorming, you can use creative content and approaches to build awareness & recall what your brand needs.

Need some ideas? That’s what we’re here for!

Here are 7 Creative Tips & Ideas to Increase Brand Awareness

1. Create in-depth, optimized infographics

Infographics are a type of content you create to provide in-depth information to your potential customers, at a glance. You’ll have seen infographics all over the internet, explaining the ‘best ways to do XYZ, ‘how to achieve xyz’, or ‘why ABC is better than XYZ's.

These graphics stand out, impart information and add value to your audience — which makes them all the more memorable when it comes to your brand.

Before you get started,?keep these tips in mind for creating an infographic that works:

1. Stick to your?brand colors?and palettes
2. Create a template?— or series of templates — for your infographics, to establish consistency
3. Establish a family of font sizes?to use across infographics: one for the header, another for sub-headings, and a third for body copy. These can be the same as your brand fonts, but you can also swap out a couple for some added flair.
4. Leave?plenty of whitespace?between different elements so it doesn’t look too crowded
5. Optimize it with?keywords,?and then HTMLize it
6. Check for?readability?on both desktop and mobile

When working on?Mason, all you have to do is upload your brand and creative guidelines once, then sit back and allow the platform to help you create beautifully branded content. Complete with layout inspiration. Ready to give it a try?

Once you have an infographic you’re ready to publish, don’t just add it into your blog — promote it on social media, in your emails, etc. Remember, your content is only as good as your distribution strategy!

2. Create easily-shareable content

There’s a reason why image and video-led platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are doing so well today. People are usually more attracted towards visual content — it’s usually entertaining, easy to understand (a picture is worth 1000 words!), and massively addictive.

Just think of the millions of people who scroll through the black hole that is their Instagram feed, for hours a day. Or the millions who follow TikTok trends, make their dance videos, and practice steps in front of the mirror.

Visual imagery is?powerful stuff?and, what’s more, important for brands, is that part of its power lies in its high shareability.

People love to share things that make them feel warm, entertained, informed, or empowered — they want to pass that feeling onto friends and family. But, because very few people will take the time out to read, the best bet is for you to package this content in visual, shareable formats.

Highly shareable types of content include:

1. How-to videos
2. Interviews
3. Showcase videos (where you create a setting for your product)
4. Compilation videos
5. Trend-based images & videos
6. Behind the scenes images
7. Inspirational quotes
8. Photographically appealing images

Remember to publish these on social media, YouTube, etc. — anywhere and everywhere your audience frequents!

Tips for creating highly shareable content that increases brand recall:

1. Include elements in your brand colors & fonts
2. Make sure your logo is always a part of it — at the end of a video, for example
3. Keep the tonality conversational, personalized, and as informal as suits your brand
4. Create the content in all sizes, optimized for all platforms
5. Go mobile-first: Remember that people will be viewing this on their mobile phones

3. Work on pulling in User-Generated Content

Most people discover brands today through content that others are sharing. Think about the last time you came across a new brand on social media — it was either via a promoted ad or because someone you know/follow/came across, posted about it.

Think about how all the celebrities on Instagram today constantly tag the brands they are using, not necessarily because they are being paid to do so but because they want to share the products they find helpful.

All of this helps create brand awareness to the max!

So how do you get more people talking about you? Well, you start by asking them to. Ask your customers to upload a picture on social media and tag you, or ask them to reshare a photo you post of them using your product. Run a contest requiring all participants to post a picture with your product and use your hashtag so you can find them. And you can simply start creating conversations online, propagating your hashtag, and encouraging followers to tag you. User-generated content tends to have a snowball effect — it will take time to get rolling, but will gather momentum and grow.

Take Airbnb’s Instagram page, for example, where they only re-share user-generated images & videos

Things to keep in mind when re-sharing User-Generated Content:

1. Only re-share that content that contributes to your brand experience
2. Add some elements of your brand into the content, perhaps a small logo, or the hashtag.
3. Always provide attribution
4. Re-share it on all platforms with the right audience, not just one platform

4. Be consistent in branding & tonality

The average person comes across 6,000–10,000 ads?in a single day. That is content that’s being pushed in front of them, calling out for their attention. So, for your content to stand out (whether it’s being promoted or not), it doesn’t help to only be creating a lot of it. You need to be creating a lot of consistent-looking content, content that is true to your brand.

What do we mean by content that’s consistent? It includes:

1. Brand colors
2. Brand themes & layouts
3. Brand tonality and voice
4. Brand logo and other branding elements (such as a mascot, if you have one)

Sticking to your brand elements helps create a pattern, so as people come across your content, again and again, they’ll begin to associate it with your brand at just a glance. And there you have it! Brand awareness?and?recall, achieved.

5. Use visually-attractive imagery

Did you know there are certain kinds of images that work better in grabbing attention than others? There’s a whole art to choosing the right images for your marketing, and we’ve got all the tips for you:

1. Lifestyle images usually work best, because they help you communicate a feeling. For example, if you’re selling chocolate, you want to evoke feelings of joy — your images should not only focus on your delicious product but also happy people!
2. Alternatively, you can use a combination of people images and illustrations, or a product-highlighting flat lay layout for a unique spin on your visual language!
3. Stick to a single style of images. Are you a family-friendly beach equipment company? Keep your images in the space of sunny, beachy visuals with families having fun by the water. Don’t mix it up with a luxury, romantic beach getaway for two!
4. Make sure your visuals complement your content. Nothing is worse than when the image and copy just don’t communicate one message.
5. Use the right colors in your imagery. Green, for example, is an obvious choice for conscious brands; red makes for a great color for F&B.

Once you establish your visual language and use it consistently, your audience will start to relate it with your brand and it will increase your brand awareness as well as recall.

Need some inspiration? Go from inspiration to execution with Mason.

6. Create consistent brand experiences

In the previous point, we spoke about communicating a feeling with your visuals. Think of ‘experiences’ as the same thing — when you create a certain kind of content, you create a certain kind of experience for your audience. A Louis Vuitton aims to create an experience of aspiration, whereas a Uniqlo aims to create an experience of utility — the way they use their logos, copy, and visuals all changes accordingly.

To create a consistent brand experience, ask yourself:

1. What is the experience you want to create? Is it one of utility, inspiration, or aspiration?
2. Who is your audience? What helps create your chosen experience for them?
3. What are the brand elements you must have in every single visual (think logo, colors, typeface)?
4. What sort of visual imagery will create your chosen experience?
5. How will you use different platforms to create that experience? (Even among social media, the way you use Instagram will be different from the way you use Twitter.)

Once you know what kind of experience you want to create with your content, all you have to do is consistently create it over and over again! This will help fix your brand in your audience’s mind as the one to offer that particular experience (similar to how people associate H&M with fast clothing and McDonald’s with fast food), thus boosting your brand awareness.

7. Maximise the marketing formats & channels that you use

Everyone lives in a multi-experience world today. People discover products on social media, explore them on websites, look for reviews on aggregators and then think about it some more before finally buying the product on a platform that they trust (or even offline!).

To be able to truly create brand awareness and recall, you need to be present on every possible channel, in every possible format.

We’re talking:

1. Images and infographics
2. Videos
3. Live stories (FB & Insta)
4. Webinars
5. Podcasts
6. Testimonials
7. Polls and Q&As
8. Research papers (if relevant, like in the case of a SkinCeuticals brand) and more.

(Image cue: We can create a Spin-the-wheel kind of graphic, with the center saying “Content-type”, and each of the above formats around the wheel)

And similarly, you need to maximize the channels you need to publish and promote these! Not only your website and social media but 3rd party websites, forums, you name it.

The more (relevant) places you’re present with your brand content, the more you increase your chances of brand awareness and recall.

Ready to get going and build your brand awareness?