Cultivating Brand Awareness For Your New Venture

Building brand awareness starts even before the launch of a product, with product value ultimately hinging on the clarity of your overall values and goals as a business as you set out to achieve them.

Even though not all business-types will rely on online platforms for promotion, the reality of today’s ‘plugged-in’ world means that the overall image of a business (i.e, what people are visually presented with when they search the business online) is slowly becoming more important (or equally so) than the quality of the services it actually provides.

This is why it’s vital to saturate any online content linked to your business with your unique brand awareness and voice. The company values and targets need to be evident from every corner of every perfectly-instagrammed picture and throughout every carefully planned and curated scroll of your website.

Who Are You?

Clarify Core Business Values and Principals

Before engaging with any promotional or marketing experts, make sure you clarify your values. Figure out who you are as a business - why you are doing what you’re doing, and who you want to benefit or appeal to. Especially when seeking to appeal to niche-markets, this is key to establishing and maintaining a sustainable image.

By clarifying your values and stating from the outset what your goals, mission and vision are in business, you are providing reassurance to your client-base that the product or service you are providing is not only of high-quality, but that it comes from a dedicated and dependable source.

If YOU’RE not sure about what your selling and why you’re selling it, then you can be sure your clients won’t be either.

If YOU’RE uncertain about the reasons your product could benefit a certain target group, then it stands to reason that your target group will be uncertain, too.

To find your business values, it can help to consider the personal values you hold in high regard. Then combine these with the goals and aims of the business, and write out what you find!

Personalising For Brand Success

Regardless of the product or service, personalizing a company is one of the first key steps towards generating a more authentic following and client-base. The depersonalization we are faced with daily due to technology is something which unconsciously creates an even more depersonalized client-base, so it makes sense that turning the tables on this trend attracts a little more attention and genuine interest from customers. As humans, our natural and habitual reaction is to follow trends - so disrupting this unconscious flow a little is a great way to start and stand out.

To really stand out as a new business, the personal message and aims of your product will be KEY to achieving a sense of trust and comfort with your client base. Not only this, but it will mean that those truly in alignment with your values and niche will be more likely to find you, instead of you having to go in search of them.

Because the fact is that people are more likely to invest interest in a relatable and realistic business if it addresses some specific needs, rather than general ones - think of someone they can look at an says ‘Yes, me too’.

In fact, the AMA (American Marketing Association) has even suggested that “as personalization increases, brands will find growth opportunities in niches rather than mass markets.”

What’s YOUR niche?

Re-Assess, and Simplify

Once you’ve clarified your core values and principals, the next step is to SIMPLIFY them.

This doesn’t mean reducing or changing the scope of the impact you hope to make - it simply means to rephrase and re-word any branding copy to more concisely describe what you want to share in as effective a way as possible.

Here’s a tip: The fewer words, the better.

Select Your Target Channels, and Persevere

The next step is to figure out which media channels will most appeal to your target audience. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a great tool for any business to excel in, but if the business is not dependent on ‘Google search’ results, then it can prove a little excessive (especially for startups or new businesses).

For example, if your target audience is teenagers and young people, then Instagram might be a good platform to prioritize. Similarly, if the target is more geared towards experienced professionals, you may be better off spending your time and money on targeting LinkedIn and other sites where this demographic is more likely to engage.

Once the channels and platforms have been clarified, it’s a good idea to personalize your promotional content to suit these platforms, too. This added effort and dedication shows that if you’re willing to put in the time dedicated to establishing your brand and delivering quality services or products, then chances are the services or products themselves will be of similar quality, too.

In Summary:

Establishing a clear, concise and realistic business values is the first step to establishing any kind of effective brand awareness.

For here, your target audience should become crystal clear.

The next step once you’ve done this is to narrow down platforms and channels to those which will most effectively reach this target audience.

After the initial campaign or content is shared or created, it’s important to also maintain and SUSTAIN the voice/personalization of this content, your image and your goals to align with this audience and your values all at once.

Overall, make it sure YOU meet THEM where they need you - not the other way around. The less work clients have to do to access your services and products, the better.