You double down on SEO, ride the wave of social media trends, and find creative ways to refine your referral programs—all to ensure that your target consumer recognizes your brand and understands what you do.
But have you ever wondered how many of them may buy your product?
💡 Read Creating a Marketing Strategy that Works: Benefits, Steps, Tools
Often used synonymously, brand awareness and brand consideration are two different marketing concepts. While the former reflects the consumer’s knowledge about your brand, the latter describes the extent to which your target audience will consider buying your product.
Brand consideration affects customers’ decision-making, which ultimately affects your bottom line.
Have you been working on a strategy to improve it? If not, here is our guide to improve brand consideration in your target audience.
8 Strategies for Boosting Brand Consideration in Your Target Audience
In 2022 the average brand consideration rate plummeted to -1.37 percent points from .44 in 2021 and .32 in 2020. That’s why having a dedicated purchasing consideration strategy is more critical now than ever.
Here are the steps to build one for your business:
Develop compelling brand storytelling
No matter which industry you are in, the markets are crowded. There can be hundreds of products similar to your offerings.
So, what creates enough differentiation that nudges the customer to consider shopping from you? A unique brand story.
While they get bombarded with marketing from competitors, storytelling gives them something more than overdone product features. It humanizes your business and builds positive customer relationships, boosting brand consideration.
For example, Nike stood out with stories of regular people overcoming adversities, pursuing their fitness goals, and unapologetically being their authentic selves.
From its website to social media, the brand has built a presence that makes fitness look accessible to the general population.
For example, Nike shared how Mari, a sports psychologist and athlete, overcame judgment and found her passion in running with the right coach. These stories are relatable and strike a chord with the target audience.
Nike shoes are marketed not just for athletes and fitness enthusiasts but for anybody who wants to lead a fitter and better life. That’s what prompts customers to buy the brand’s product.
Create customer archetypes that define the primary traits of your audience segments. That will give your storytelling a definite direction. Clarify your foundational beliefs that make you more than a business. It can be a commitment to sustainability, diversity, equal pay, or other social causes.
Don’t try to oversell the narrative. Instead, be authentic. Heartfelt, character-driven stories will make the audience empathize with your cause and prompt them to give your products a chance. You can market the founders’ journey, your contribution to the community, or even customer stories and testimonials.
Enhance visual identity and branding
To improve brand consideration, your brand’s personality must complement your mission and values. For that, you need a distinctive visual identity.
Customers should look at your branding and believe you can solve their problems. So, conduct thorough market research to identify their specific needs, preferences, and challenges to align your visual identity with target demographics.
Determine your brand voice. Are you playful, humorous, sleek, luxurious, or serious and professional? Once you find it, integrate that style across your website, social media branding, and other marketing materials.
Create a style guide that outlines your logo, color palette, typography, and other unique visual brand elements. Ensure the colors and fonts reflect your personality. Such guidelines will lead your marketing teams to develop consistently on-brand campaigns that boost brand recognition and consideration.
For example, Starbucks has a style guide detailing every aspect of its branding and visual identity, from the Siren logo to photography.
Offer exceptional customer experience
Do you know what people remember the most about their interactions? How they were treated. This extends to brand interactions, too.
Indeed, prioritizing customer experience isn’t just a theory; it’s a practice that pays off. For instance, businesses prioritizing CX have seen a 30% increase in revenue and a 90% customer satisfaction rate. This underscores the direct link between thoughtful service and financial success.
No matter how stellar your branding or relatable your stories are, poor customer experience will prevent your audience from completing their purchase. That’s why you must optimize your customer experience to make it feel effortless.
Most people shop from their phones now. So, ensure your website and other digital marketing materials have a responsive design. Run user tests to identify bumps in the journey and improve or eliminate them promptly. Enhancing these areas will better your brand consideration.
Offer prompt resolutions to customer complaints through AI chatbots and 24/7 customer support teams. Use social media listening to engage with unsatisfied customers and resolve their issues. Such proactive efforts show you care about your customers and want to go the extra mile to improve their experience.
Host webinars and join industry events
Webinars are excellent event marketing tools for hooking your audience’s attention, establishing your expertise in the industry, and spreading brand awareness. They prove you know what you are talking about, educate attendees about your services, and significantly improve brand consideration.
Host webinars on training and upcoming industry topics. However, it should be relevant to the target audience’s pain points and your offerings.
For example, HubSpot runs a “Grow Better” webinar series. It discusses the importance of customer feedback, how to get inbound leads, how fresh graduates can kick-start their careers with HubSpot, and more. The discussions are insightful and engaging and position HubSpot as the top player in its niche.
Besides the right panelists and impactful topics, a smooth, uninterrupted, engaging webinar also requires a reliable hosting platform. Try out a few options and analyze their suitability to identify the best webinar software for your brand.
You should also join relevant industry events to strengthen your network. It will help you get partnerships and collaborations, improve your positioning, and reach more people.
Leverage influencer partnerships
In a constantly online world, what influencers say goes. With just a few appreciative posts, these social media personalities can boost the audience’s perception and consideration of a brand.
However, not every digital creator fits your brand image or impacts your audience’s willingness to buy your product. You must ascertain they share your target demographics and your values.
For example, skincare and make-up influencer James Welsh mostly gets partnerships from cosmetic brands.
You can use social listening solutions to find the right influencers. These tools can identify the top creators in your industry and measure their engagement pattern, organic following, and other relevant metrics. You can also uncover their past collaborations and impact on those campaigns.
Damian Grabarczyk, a seasoned e-commerce entrepreneur and the co-founder of PetLab Co., shares — “At PetLab Co., we understood early on that influencer partnerships could dramatically increase our brand’s consideration among our target market. We carefully selected influencers who genuinely love their pets and align with our values. This strategic choice allowed us to present our products through stories where our audience could see themselves.”
“By showcasing real-life moments of pets thriving with our products, we didn’t just advertise; we connected. Each influencer partnership was a step toward weaving our brand into the fabric of pet lovers’ communities, significantly elevating PetLab Co. in the minds of potential customers. Our experience confirms the impact of authentic influencer collaborations in boosting brand consideration.”
Read 7 Steps to Conducting a Reputation Audit for Improving Your Brand’s Image
Implement content marketing campaigns
Well-crafted content creates intrigue, positions your brand as the authority, and markets your product without being too sales-y.
You solve customer challenges through actionable advice, which gives them the confidence to rely on you for future needs. Result? They keep returning for more content, leading to improved brand consideration over time.
Offer value through educational blogs, tutorials, and newsletters. Avoid jargon and maintain skimmability. To make your content more accessible, consider editing the video and adding audio transcriptions in your blogs and subtitles in your video content.
Use social media to educate the audience through entertaining and engaging content. Post reels and carousels to showcase product features and usage.
For example, Glossier runs a blog page called “Into the Gloss,” sharing content on skincare tips, makeup hacks, and beauty routines.
On Instagram, Glossier posts engaging product demonstrations featuring real people and micro and macro influencers to enhance relatability and gain the audience’s trust.
Offer limited-time promotions and discounts
You have let the customers know what you do and piqued their interest. Now, you can offer exclusive discounts and limited-time offers to incentivize their purchasing considerations.
The key here is personalization. So, use your buyer personas and tailor incentives according to different segments. Place pop-ups on your landing pages highlighting discounts for first-time buyers or vouchers for email sign-ups.
Cultivate brand advocacy and UGC
A Nielsen report showed that 88% of people trust brand recommendations from peers. Leverage this phenomenon to enhance brand reputation and foster brand advocacy.
You can start referral programs with cashback offers to encourage word-of-mouth. Even if you don’t have a rewards budget, stellar customer service and user experience can do wonders for brand advocacy and loyalty.
Share user-generated content to enhance your relatability further. Positive content posted by your users shows that they enjoyed your products enough to post about them.
Wondering how to generate and identify them in the sea of content? Run hashtag campaigns and giveaways and use media monitoring to locate UGC.
Maintain your brand image with Determ
All these strategies boil down to one thing: your brand’s reputation — and maintaining your public image is no easy feat. No matter how diligent you are, some risks are inevitable where manual processes are insufficient.
So, how do you stay on top of every granular detail of your media presence? With Determ’s real-time media monitoring tool.
This end-to-end AI-powered PR analytics solution offers access to 100+ million sources in any language or location worldwide. You get notifications whenever an online discussion about your brand shifts from positive to negative. The platform also offers data reports with actionable insights, giving you enough time to mitigate PR risks.
Don’t believe us? Book a demo and see for yourself!
