Why is brand awareness important in business?

From well-known brands like McDonalds, Starbucks and Nike to smaller independent businesses, brand awareness is an essential part of creating a consumer base. There are marketing implications for brand awareness, such as visual triggers which can become an incentive to buy a certain product over a different – yet often incredibly similar – item.

Here are several questions and answers about brand awareness and its importance in business…

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how a certain brand can be recognised by its potential consumers. This does not necessarily mean these people recalling the specific name of the brand but instead them remembering specific fundamental details about that brand and so deciding to make a purchase.

These details can be as broad as the specific colour of a packaging, the shape of the logo or even perhaps the type of packaging in which the product is wrapped. This means that brand awareness can be a subtle and intricate way of promoting a product to sell. 

Why is brand awareness important in business?

Brand awareness can potentially sell more products as a result of people recognising the product more so than other competitive products. Brand awareness often predicts brand success, as certain types of brands are more well-known to their consumers. Hence, the more popular brands are likely to sell more products as a result of the recall and recognition of those brands.

Brand awareness is such an important aspect of various businesses that millions of pounds are spent every year in order to increase brand awareness. By setting brand awareness goals, companies can set themselves up to monitor their brand recognition through conducting consumer polls and using means of quantifying the collected data. 

What different types of brand awareness are there?

There are approximately three different types of brand awareness:

• Brand recognition

Also known as aided recall, brand recognition hinges on the consumer recognising the brand without needing to recall its name. Many consumers can do this, as it is almost always prompted by some specific detail of the brand.

• Brand recall

Also known as unaided recall, brand recall requires the consumer to correctly say the specific brand’s name when prompted by the category with which the product is associated. Hence, consumers associate a certain brand with a certain category and, therefore, are more likely to purchase the brand due to this brand recall.

• Top-of-mind awareness

As a result of top-of-mind awareness, consumers are most likely to buy a product from the first three brands which they can label.

How can I grow the brand awareness of my product?

There are many different ways in which you can increase the brand awareness of your product.

Collaborating with other – perhaps even more recognisable – brands can help increase your brand awareness, while you can also use social media advertising and other forms of advertising like advertisements, both offline and online.

Sponsoring large-scale events and other popular events – again, both offline as well as online – can also help, as can dipping into digital marketing services from another company.