The essential guide to brand awareness for small businesses

Your business must grab attention and leave a lasting impression to get customers.

Brand awareness helps you stick in customers’ minds and become recognized as the best solution to their problems.

In this guide, you’ll learn what brand awareness is and the different stages of awareness businesses can achieve. You’ll also discover tips to help you implement a brand awareness strategy and the key metrics for tracking performance.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness is the level of recognition your brand has with your target audience. It refers to how familiar people are with your brand identity (e.g., brand colors, logo and messaging) and products or services.

Growing brand awareness is a crucial early step in the customer journey. Customers who are familiar with your brand are more likely to trust you and choose you over a competitor.

For example, say you want to search for something online. Your first thought is likely to “Google it”. Google has strategically built high brand awareness to become the product that comes to mind before competitors like Microsoft Bing or AOL search.

The same goes for Coca-Cola with soft drinks and Post-it for sticky notes – both good examples of companies with the best brand awareness.

Building brand awareness can influence customers’ decision-making process to generate leads, boost sales and grow market share.

Three stages of brand awareness

Brand awareness grows with consistent branding and effective marketing strategies, including content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), advertising, social media marketing and more.

Your efforts can result in one (or all) of three stages of brand awareness. Each stage signals how deeply your brand is ingrained in customers’ minds.

Brand awareness grows with time. However, you don’t have to reach the level of unaided or top-of-mind brand awareness to be successful.

As a small business, your primary goal should be differentiating yourself from competitors to create brand recognition within your key market or markets.

Take website-building platform Squarespace, for example. When Anthony Casalena launched the company, he entered a market dominated by established brands like WordPress and Drupal.

Rather than compete directly with those brands, Casadena built brand recognition by focusing on his audience’s values. Where other brands targeted small businesses and e-commerce brands, Squarespace spoke to creative professionals who want to build attractive websites without coding.

This approach has helped the brand double its unique subscriptions since 2018. Squarespace continues to stand out from the crowd with creative, influencer-led marketing campaigns. As the brand’s chief creative officer, David Lee, notes:

High brand recognition can increase your brand equity – the perceived value of your brand in a customer’s mind.

Businesses with strong brand equity have loyal customers willing to pay more for products or services and recommend them to others.

Over time, with continued brand awareness marketing and a loyal customer base, you can become a company your audience thinks of first.

6 tips for implementing a successful brand awareness strategy

A successful brand awareness strategy builds meaningful relationships with your audience by consistently engaging them across every touchpoint.

Here’s how to implement a brand awareness strategy to make your brand recognizable and become a go-to solution for your customers’ problems.

1. Focus on your unique selling proposition

Your unique selling proposition (USP) describes what sets you apart from the competition.

Leveraging your USP in marketing and sales campaigns tells customers exactly why they should choose you.

For example, Slack’s USP is that it is faster, better organized and more secure than email.

By focusing its messaging around how easy it is for teams to collaborate in real-time on a single platform, Slack positions itself as a superior choice to email.

To create a memorable USP, focus on the following characteristics:

• Customer values. Think about your customers’ goals and pain points and how your product or service helps overcome them.

• Uniqueness. Avoid benefits that are generic or easy to copy. For example, rather than describing itself as “a powerful video conferencing solution for teams”, Zoom says it’s “a video conferencing solution so simple that anyone can use it”.

• Assertiveness. Be bold. A confident statement makes it more likely to stick in the minds of employees and customers.

• Tangibility. Create a brand message you can back up with actions. Your USP should integrate into all parts of your business, from products or services to customer experience.

Condense your differentiators into a catchy sentence (or two) that’s easy to say and understand.

Once you’ve nailed your USP, integrate it into your marketing. Highlighting your USP everywhere ensures everyone who comes into contact with your brand recognizes and remembers what makes you different.

2. Establish and maintain brand consistency

A clear, consistent brand ensures you present your company in the same way across every marketing channel.

The marketing rule of 7 states that a customer takes an average of seven interactions to remember a brand.

Seeing a unifying message and image at each touchpoint creates a sense of familiarity and reliability among customers. Over time, this consistency builds trust, which leads to more sales and increases customer loyalty.

For example, healthcare marketplace app Zocdoc stands out from competitor services by using illustrations and a friendly, informal tone of voice.

Its branding makes the company recognizable. Carrying this across its marketing channels makes Zocdoc memorable.

Here’s how the brand maintains consistency on its Instagram account:

To deliver a consistent brand experience, develop a clear brand identity. You can get started by answering questions such as:

• What does your brand stand for?

• Why did you create your product or service?

• Who is your target audience, and what are their challenges?

• What value do you want to give your target audience?

Keeping your brand values and audience in mind during the design process will help you create assets that resonate.

Your key brand identity elements should include:

• Brand colors

• Fonts

• Logo

• Messaging, voice and tone

Maintain a consistent identity by establishing brand guidelines, such as logo and messaging instructions.

For example, here’s how Mozilla’s brand guidelines describe how to use its logo:

Sticking to these rules helps Mozilla produce reliable results, giving the company a solid foundation for brand awareness strategies.

3. Understand what your audience expects (and provide it)

If you know what your target audience expects from you, you can grow brand awareness by delivering what they want.

Research by Content Marketing Institute shows that understanding your audience is the biggest contributor to content marketing success.

Factors that B2B top performers say contribute to their content marketing success

The second biggest factor is producing high-quality content. You can’t have one with the other. Knowing your audience helps you meet their expectations.

For example, file transfer service WeTransfer regularly publishes insights that align with trending topics in their industry. Keeping its finger on the pulse helps the company grab the attention of its target audience and grow brand awareness.

Use a social listening tool to track mentions of your brand, products or services, competitors and industry on social media platforms. Your insights can help you find relevant conversations to create content around.

Additionally, you should analyze customer interactions with your brand on other communication channels.

A customer relationship management system (CRM) like Pipedrive can collect data from touchpoints like email, web forms, live chat and phone calls to give you complete audience visibility.

Monitoring common talking points can shape your brand awareness strategy and help you develop marketing campaigns that resonate with potential customers.

You can also take this a step further by segmenting your audience based on criteria like customer demographics and behavior to personalize interactions to grow awareness with specific groups.

For example, if you identify a group of customers interested in a particular service, you can spend time calling these people to introduce your brand.

4. Create a marketing plan to structure your brand awareness efforts

A marketing plan outlines your goals and tactics for effectively growing brand awareness.

A clear roadmap ensures your marketing efforts are structured, measurable and aligned with your business objectives.

Your plan will be unique to your business, but it should include the following elements:

• Clear objectives. Goals should be clear and closely tied to your overall business ambitions. Use the SMART framework to ensure your goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based.

• Key performance indicators (KPIs). Your brand awareness KPIs are the metrics you’ll use to measure progress toward your goals. Metrics like website visits and social media engagement are valuable indicators of brand awareness (more on metrics soon).

• Target audience. List the distinct groups of people you want to target with your marketing. Include buyer personas with information on demographics, psychographics and behavioral characteristics to create content that engages the right people.

• Marketing channels and content. Reach your customers on their preferred channels with content that appeals to the audience. For example, you might post videos on Instagram and share industry insights on LinkedIn.

• Budget. Carefully allocate funds for each channel and tactic to avoid overspending. Ensure you include all associated costs, such as advertising spending, software subscriptions, research costs and outsourcing fees.

• Performance analysis. List the tools you’ll use to track your market efforts and measure brand awareness. Use your KPIs to guide you – for example, you might use Google Analytics for monitoring website traffic or email marketing software for assessing email campaigns.

Treat your marketing plan as a working document. Regularly evaluate the different elements and adjust campaigns based on performance.

If one channel performs considerably better than another, consider shifting resources to maximize results. If your budget is tight, don’t waste too much time on tactics that aren’t contributing to your goals.

5. Partner with established businesses in your industry

Forming relationships with complementary brands can introduce you to new audiences and grow your brand awareness.

Brand partnerships can take different forms:

Take accounting software Xero as a brand awareness campaign example. The brand knows that small business owners, its primary target audience, have their finances managed by accountants or bookkeepers – many of whom use Xero.

Rather than rely solely on marketing directly to its audience, Xero runs a partner program that rewards accountants and bookkeepers for using the app with their clients.

Actively encouraging recommendations helps Xero scale up brand awareness indirectly and keep its sales pipeline healthy.

Identify a non-competing brand that shares your target audience. Then, pitch a collaboration that provides value to both companies and your audience groups.

Here’s what to include in your pitch deck:

• An introduction to your company

• Complementary strengths

• Partnership benefits

• Market trends and opportunities

• Target audience details

• Campaign concepts

• Success metrics

• Estimated costs and revenue sharing

Cultivate different types of brand partnerships to spread the word about your company or product to various parts of your market.

Additionally, continually evaluate existing agreements. Partnerships only work if they’re mutually beneficial for both companies and your audiences.

6. Offer value beyond your products and services

Thinking beyond your core offer gives your target audience an insight into why you exist and what you stand for beyond making a profit.

Sprout Social research shows that consumers expect brands to positively contribute to society, build communities and use their power to help people.

High expectations: what today's consumers want from brands

Demonstrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) can help grow brand awareness with conscious consumers.

For example, creative agency Culture Brands develops media platforms that amplify Black excellence.

It’s Because of Them We Can website shares inspiring stories and celebrates Black culture.

Investing in its community helps Culture Brands grow awareness among customers with similar core values. The alignment can build an active community around the business, increasing brand loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.

How you demonstrate CSR depends on your company’s mission, values and resources.

A small business, for instance, might not be able to donate a percentage of revenue to charity. However, employees might be able to volunteer at a local organization and promote worthy causes in social media posts.

Remember that your public-facing activities should be an extension of what you do in-house.

For example, if you’re committed to ethical practices, ensure employees earn a living wage and have worthwhile benefits such as healthcare or wellness programs. What you do behind the scenes is as important to customers as it is to employees.

How to measure brand awareness

Measuring brand awareness is essential for assessing campaign effectiveness and gathering insights to improve future strategies.

Here are some important metrics to monitor and the tools you can use to track them:

Monitor your KPIs in real time to identify and address performance issues before it’s too late.

You can use Pipedrive’s integrations to sync data from Google Analytics, social media and surveys in one place. A clear view of key metrics enables you to act on insights faster to maintain progress toward your goals.

In addition to daily tracking, conduct in-depth reviews at regular intervals. For example, you might analyze results monthly, quarterly or at the end of a brand awareness campaign.

Compare results to previous campaigns to understand what works and what you can improve to keep building brand awareness.

Final thoughts

Strong brand awareness gives you a competitive advantage. With consistent marketing focused on your unique strengths and audience pain points, you’ll grow recognition, influence purchase decisions and create a loyal following.

Use Pipedrive to understand what matters to your audience and uncover valuable insights to inform your brand awareness marketing. Get started today with a free 14-day trial.