Many businesses that we speak to say that they want to grow their businesses online, which is a great idea in today’s climate where consumers are buying more products and services online than ever before. However, it can often feel like quite a vague starting point as growth means different things for different business. A great starting point for any business that wants to begin their journey advertising online is to focus on growing their brands awareness.
If your business is new to advertising online, maybe you started offline but you’re looking to move online, or you have a brand new business that currently has no customers, then prioritising awareness as a key marketing objective is often a great place to start your journey.
Awareness is the first step to success online and is fundamental to driving new customers to your website. Without awareness, potential customers will not have the opportunity to hear about you or learn more about what your business offers. Even well established online businesses continue to invest in awareness campaigns online to ensure that they have a steady supply of new visitors to their website as it is vital to continue to grow their online audience.
There are many ways that you can grow your brands awareness online, and many different strategies that can be implemented to achieve sustained new visitor growth. Are you looking to get people talking about your brand to generate discussion and promote word of mouth? Then implementing an awareness campaign across social media could be a great place to start. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more recently TikTok can all be fantastic channels to promote growth and start to spread the word and generate discussions around your brand. Once you have a rough idea of who your target market is, these platforms make it very easy to target people who are likely to have an affinity to what you offer. Advertising on social media also has the added benefit of allowing people to like, comment, share and tag people in your ads, which can be a fantastic tool for promoting word of mouth and expanding your reach further.
When considering how to approach gaining brand awareness through search engines, like Google and Bing, it’s important to think about exactly how a potential customer is likely to find a product or service that you offer, as it is very unlikely that they will search for your brand name directly if they haven’t heard of you before! In this instance, it’s important to think about what sort of searches your target market is likely to make and ensure that you have ads in place across these search terms. For example, if your business sells water bottles, then it would make sense to consider where potential customers are likely to use your water bottles, such as at work or in the gym, and try to place yourself in as many relevant searches as you can. In this example you could consider trying to appear on searches for things like ‘office accessories’ or ‘gym essentials’ to tap into some new users that aren’t necessarily looking for what you sell but may be interested in it based on what they’re searching for. Growing this list of potential searches is the best way to ensure that you’re constantly growing your brands awareness online and helps to ensure that as many new and relevant people as possible will spot your advertising efforts.
While focusing on awareness isn’t always the most cost effective way to drive revenue for your businesses, it is an essential part of online advertising and helps to fuel growth and create a constant funnel of new users to your website and will help to promote new sales and create returning loyal visitors in the long term.
