As a small business, it can be hard to find new leads, clients, and customers, especially in the early stages of your operations. This is because you need time to build trust with your target market and prove to them how you can improve their lives with your product or service. Having excellent branding including advertising, your logo, promotional material, and promotional message will seriously increase your brand awareness within your area of business. This blog looks at the key reasons why brand awareness is so vital for your small business and how it can bring plenty of positives to your businesses performance and ultimately increase the chances of your products/service succeeding for years to come.
Brand identity
To grow your brand’s recognition, it is essential that you have a strong brand identity. Having a distinguishable and cohesive brand identity means that your customers can automatically identify your brand at first glance. The visual representation of your brand (logo, tagline, etc) is extremely important as it’s an essential way to effectively cement consistent, recognisable brand awareness within your local area, think of it as a visual clue that will help customers to recall your product or service.
Implementing it consistently throughout your marketing materials will improve the likelihood that your brand will be remembered by your audience, but also that your marketing is consistent. Brand consistency benefits developing customer brand recognition. This is so important because you really don’t want your target market using your service once and then forgetting who you are/not having a reference point in their brain to go back to when they need to use a similar service or product again in the future.
So, it is of great importance that your business has a consistent brand identity as it resonates with your audience, guides your marketing, and enables your sales to consistently increase/maintain at a successful level.
Trust
it is important to note that a strong brand awareness also evokes a sense of trust within the marketplace as well as amongst your consumers. Building a strong brand awareness helps to determine how your customers perceive the quality of your products and services and the likelihood that they will purchase from you. By implementing your business’s brand strategy throughout your marketing activities, you enhance the level of credibility of your brand amongst your customers, along with your competitive edge, and recognition within the marketplace. The practices go hand in hand, and with this, as customers begin to trust your brand’s offerings the ease and return of purchase becomes increasingly more likely.
Having effective brand awareness, combined with excellent content marketing helps to establish your business as an expert in your industry. This is immensely beneficial as it instills confidence and trust in your business amongst the local public, subsequently meaning that they know your product offerings are recommended and of high quality. This leads perfectly to the next section of his blog.
Customer loyalty/retention
Once you’ve built considerable levels of trust through your brand awareness with your customers and the local public, you can really start to strengthen your relationship with them to a level that means you’re their absolute go-to within your market. When building strong brand awareness, you need to convey the shared values with your target market to evoke an emotional connection with your customers. Brand loyalty often lasts a lifetime and even transfers to future generations. This is exactly the kind of customer loyalty that every business wants their brand to instill as it creates a safety net of income for your business, which is absolutely worth its weight in gold.
It’s important to realise that brand awareness guides the retention of existing customers as it keeps customers engaged with your brand and marketing materials. The customer experience they receive from your brand awareness influences customer retention. Effectively implementing a brand strategy means that you can manage your customer’s experience and journey, keeping them intrigued and engaged, so that they repeatedly return to do business with your brand and therefore create ultimate brand loyalty with them.
Profitability
Once you’ve got to the stage where your brand awareness has created strong brand loyalty amongst a number of customers and within your local community, you’ll really start to notice the benefits in terms of your businesses performance and profitability. Consumers, in general, aren’t risk takers and they want a product/service where they know exactly what they’re getting and see your brand as a safe and reliable option. That’s where the implementation of your brand awareness combined with the high level of service to your customers really starts to positively impact your profitability.
By consistently delivering a quality message through your brand awareness, you are in constant communication with your target audience and customers, meaning that you aren’t ever lost in the back of their minds. Delivering this constant communication through your brand awareness increases the chances of attracting new customers, especially when word-of-mouth spreads from your brand-loyal consumers. Therefore, whilst you’ve been strengthening existing relationships, you’ve also been introducing yourself as a reliable option for new potential customers, as long as your product/service lives up to its perceived reputation, you’ll be sure to increase your profitability.
Overall, it’s clear to see just how important quality brand awareness is for a small business looking to strive and flourish within its market. You build a strong brand identity within your target area, and start to create a level of trust with your customers, which in turn develops brand loyalty to a strong level, developing a consistent amount of returning customers whilst attracting new consumers and ultimately increasing your businesses profitability. Remember, communication is key! If you would like to see your business appear in one of our directories (a great way of cementing brand awareness within Gloucestershire) then please get in touch today! If you’re at the really early stages of creating your business, then here at the Link Directories, we can help you with logo design and advert creation.
