Spend Smart: Building Brand Awareness for Startups

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how familiar the general public, and most importantly your target audience, is with your brand. When you think of sneakers, the first brands that come to mind are likely Nike or Adidas. For mobile phones, you might think of Apple or Samsung. These are examples of brands with extremely high brand awareness in their industries and among their target audiences. Brand awareness is therefore a measure of how well consumers recognize your brand among a sea of other offerings.?

Why is it important (especially for startups)?

Building brand awareness is essential for any business to market its products and/or services to consumers. To begin with, people can’t buy your product or service if they’ve never heard of it. This is specifically a challenge for startups as you’re entering the market for the first time and therefore, have to build this awareness from scratch to be even part of a customer’s consideration set.?

Brand awareness campaigns also help to differentiate your product from the competition by highlighting the qualities that make it unique, better, more affordable, etc. When consumers are more familiar with your brand, they are more likely to make a purchase (and become loyal customers going forward).?

Our ProshPective:?

Building awareness and creating a positive first impression are key for new businesses. However, awareness campaigns often do not get assigned significant budgets at startups because they are usually difficult to track and take longer to convert - but there are affordable and effective strategies out there:

Community Building?

Bring potential and existing customers together to support a cause aligned with your startup’s mission and values. This can create positive buzz around your brand and foster loyalty among customers. Social media is a great place to activate a community, as well as inviting customers to in-person events.?

Educational Content

Help your target audience learn about potential solutions to their problems by providing educational content and resources. This positions your brand as a helping hand that they can rely on. Articles, tips, e-books, and webinars are examples of content that can attract new customers who share a common pain point and whom you can begin to help.?

Media Relations

There are two main factors in getting a journalist’s attention: relevance and timeliness. It is important to find a journalist whose work is aligned with the interests of your target audience so that when you inform them about your brand it fits in with their reporting. You can then craft a compelling pitch to get your brand included in some media outlets and stories that your audience regularly engages with.

It is helpful to stay on top of trends related to your customers to spark ideas of where to insert yourself into the news cycle. Online media coverage also links back to your brand’s website which improves your SEO efforts as media sites tend to be well-indexed by most search engines.?

Communication Channels?

Establish a powerful communication channel that connects you directly to your target audience by creating valuable and engaging content. Podcasts are great for establishing your brand as a thought leader as you can discuss relevant topics for potential customers to listen to on the go. Social media channels are also effective for growing a follower base when posting about topics your audience is interested in.

Stunt/Guerilla Marketing

Be unexpected. Gain attention by doing something outside of the box, like having an artist paint a unique campaign image in a public place. Create a hashtag to go along with it to leverage social engagement. Consider inviting journalists to check it out to increase the chance of media exposure. However, remember to follow the laws wherever you plan to do this and obtain any necessary permits.??

Building brand awareness is the backbone of any marketing plan and, once established, it continues to pay off throughout the customer journey. Having a tight budget doesn’t mean gaining brand awareness is impossible. Finding strategic, creative and authentic ways to reach your target audience and gain mass recognition while building long-term connections doesn’t always require expensive investments.?

To learn more about building brand awareness on a budget, read our Prosh Marketing CEO Roshni Wijayasinha’s Forbes Communication Council article here.?

A Brand Awareness Startup Case Study: Rare Beauty’s Mental Health 101 Campaign

Rare Beauty, founded by Selena Gomez, is a feel-good cosmetics company that launched in September 2020. In two short years, it has become one of the world’s largest beauty companies, raising over half a million dollars for charity, generating $60 million in revenue in 2021, and achieving a very positive brand sentiment. So, how did they do it??

Rare Beauty has become so successful because of awareness strategies like its Mental Health 101 campaign, launched in 2021. It used community building, educational content, media relations, and strategic communication channels to build awareness about its brand and a social cause it values.

Community Building?

Rare Beauty rallied its customers around an important social and health issue - mental health. Knowing that much of its customer base is young people, and many young people struggle with mental health, Rare Beauty created a petition for increased availability of mental health resources and provided an opportunity to donate.

Educational Content

Rare Beauty shared mental health statistics from the CDC, published several educational articles on anxiety and the types of resources available, and shared a social media kit including “5 Facts that’ll shock you” about mental health for its customers to share online.?

Media Relations

The Mental Health 101 campaign was picked up by countless news sources, blogs, and magazines including Forbes, Vogue, People, and Billboard. Rare Beauty’s commitment to raising awareness about mental health was applauded, thus raising awareness and generating positive sentiment for the brand itself in the process.?

Communicational Channels

Rare Beauty leveraged social media, knowing its customer base of Gen Z-ers are avid social users. Free (Rare Branded) Mental Health 101 campaign toolkits were provided on the Rare Beauty website for people to share on their social accounts to raise awareness for mental health.?

Result

The Rare Beauty petition to provide mental health services in schools has received almost 70,000 signatures, the Rare Impact Fund has received $528,559 in donations, and Rare Beauty is an extremely popular beauty brand with a very positive brand sentiment among its target segment.

If you’re a startup looking to build more brand awareness, affordably, get in touch with us. We’ve helped many budding businesses gain a foothold in their markets through cost-effective brand building techniques.?

Learn more at www.Proshmarketing.com or book a chat to discuss your brand awareness strategy here: [email protected].?