How to think about brand awareness
I will never forget when my professor of Social Media Management, Ben Shields, Senior Lecturer in Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told the class about the Brand Personality Test:
If your brand would walk into the room: How would it look like? What personality would it have?
To me, it is a precise question to ask yourself before thinking about generating awareness. It would be hard to find out what do you want people to be aware of if you can’t explain easily what your brand is about. An excellent point to start thinking about how to increase your brand awareness is the exercise of describing how your brand would look, interact, and say if it would walk to you. After all, as Lyfe Marketing comments on the article Build Brand Awareness with These Clever Tips and Tricks:
If people don’t know who you are, they can’t purchase your product or service.
Sujan Patel, co-founder of Web Profits, a growth marketing agency, in his article How to Know If Your Content Impacts Brand Awareness, comments on some elements to measure awareness such as social media reach, brand mentions, media mentions, and brand searches. Read Sujan’s article to find out useful tools to measure each of these four dimensions.
So how do you increase your brand awareness?
There are many techniques you’ll find on the web, but in this article, I’ll stick to mindsets to think about your awareness strategy more than to implement it (if you want a post about techniques to increase brand awareness, comment below!). The following framework will help you think about awareness and figure out elements to create viral content for your campaigns. The framework’s name is Jonah Berger’s 6 “STEPPS” to Viral Success. You can find an excellent animated explanation on the Youtube video Contagious: Why Do Things Go Viral?.
Let’s go through Berger’s steps to success (sounds catchy, right?):
- Social Currency: Think about content that will make not only you but also your audience look good.
- Triggers: Use a stimulus related to concepts you want your target audience to think about.
- Emotions: Share content that your audience will care about. When we care, we share (I know, another memorable quote)!
- Public: Use people that are role models for your audience to validate and promote your content. Humans care about social proof: If others do it, especially the others I care about, it must be good.
- Practical Value: Another reason your audience might have to help you increase your brand awareness by sharing your content is if they think the content might be useful for others.
- Stories: People love stories, and will share your stories if they think they are attractive.
Berger’s 6 STEPPS is an example of the frameworks that I will keep sharing in future posts. In this one, if you can just hold one takeaway on your mind, remember to communicate your brand personality because if people don’t know who you are, they can’t purchase your product or service. Good luck with that!