How to Boost your Brand Awareness with Content Marketing

Is your company making a digital impact in the online world? If not, you may need to up your brand awareness. A strong digital presence is a key factor of your marketing strategy regardless of your business industry or size.

Establishing your brand within a sea of competitors may seem like an overwhelming task. But, that day when you realize your brand is a recognizable authority online, you’ll be glad you spent the time to boost your brand awareness through content marketing.

What is Brand Awareness and Why it Matters

Brand awareness is the extent to which your audience recognizes your brand and is familiar with what it represents.

With all the competition in today’s world of crowded newsfeeds and vying for that first page position on Google, brand awareness is one of your most important assets.

There are many ways to create brand awareness. Apple is one of the most recognizable brands in the world which they created by thinking differently and staying consistent with their products. You see their logo and instantly know who they and what they stand for.

Nike is another of the world’s most recognizable brands, setting themselves apart through superior performance of their athletic products.

Investing in your company’s brand awareness is one that can bring you success for years to come.

When Apple releases a new version of their iPhone, people line up, waiting in awe to buy it, no matter the cost. When I pass by the Apple store, it’s always crowded regardless of the day of the week.

Why is that?

It’s a brand that consumers know and trust.

Your company may not be like exactly like Apple or Nike but you can still secure your place within your industry by creating a winning content marketing strategy.

How to Increase Brand Awareness With Content Marketing

Content marketing is a way to show your target audience what your company is about.

Many people think that content is limited to blogging. That is not true.

Content is any form of information that can be consumed by your audience in a number of ways, including:

Video
Written word
Imagery
Audio
Social posts

With so many social networks available, your content marketing can take many forms.

Through content creation, your audience can gain an understanding of the qualities of your brand and how your products or services are unique.

Competition is fierce in the digital world. What will make your brand stand out from the rest? That’s what people will notice.

Why should someone buy from your company as opposed to similar companies out there?

By setting yourself apart through the content you create you can show your audience why your brand is unique.

It’s no longer enough to just use advertising to gain customers.

70-80 percent of consumers ignore ads on the sides of websites or search results. The reasoning? Consumers find those ads to be less trustworthy – Gfk Insights Blog

Through quality content you can educate and inform potential customers, while addressing their pain points and solving their problems at the same time.

Content marketing gets three times more leads than paid search advertising. (Content Marketing Institute, 2017)

Helping your Audience Get to Know you Through Content

Content helps your audience get to know, like and trust your brand. While there are many facets to content marketing, let’s focus on the top two strategies you need to build a solid foundation of content.

Research and Understand Your Target Audience

Once you understand your audience, the easier it is to plan content that will attract them.

Too often, I talk to companies who skip this step but complain that no one is interested in their content.

As I always said, If you want people to be interested in your content, then create content that interests them.

The only way to do that is to find out their problems, pain points, and interests.

Once you do that, your content has a chance to be flooded with traffic from eager, engaging prospects.

Researching every aspect of your ideal customer is at the heart of content marketing. Don’t skimp on this step.

Who are these people and why do they need your products and services?

Where are they hanging out online? This will help you understand what type of content to create.

If your ideal buyer is predominantly on Pinterest, then spending all your time on Twitter won’t provide you with the brand awareness and ROI you desire.

Take note of analytics in whatever social platforms you use to determine what engages your audience the best and make adjustments from there.

Create a Blog for Increased Brand Awareness

Blogging is one of the most important content strategies you can incorporate into your plan. People are looking for information all day, every day.

When you create quality content that addresses the needs of your target audience, you help to facilitate brand awareness.

Don’t post the same mediocre content as your competitors. Take it up a notch. Create your own unique spin on a topic or provide detailed information to help you audience understand something better.

Be sure to create content with search engine optimization in mind so Google notices too! Showing up in search results will get more searchers landing on your blog content.

The great thing about blog content is that you can repurpose it to other social platforms. Take a blog article and create a video.

Make a Pinterest post with a unique image or pose an interesting question to your audience on Facebook with a link back to your blog.

You can take snippets and other pieces of content and reuse in many ways. Read my article on Repurposing Content to get more great ideas!

And now, here’s the biggest reason that a blog is a must. It’s an asset that your company (or you) actually owns in the digital space.

We all love social media to build our brands but the truth is that you don’t own those networks.

Social Media is NOT your Asset!

Recently, Instagram cracked down on “inappropriate content.” There are many ways to define that but the point is, many influencers have build a brand on Instagram using inappropriate content. Now that Instagram won’t show that content to a broader audience in a news feed, their business can easily go from booming to nothing.

When people depend solely on social media for their content marketing, it can get shut down, posts removed or any number of things that will kill your business.

Why? Because you don’t own it, the social media network does and they can do whatever they want without your permission.

Conclusion

You can build your brand through high-value content in a variety of forms. As your audience gets to know, like and trust you, your brand awareness will continue to increase.

There is much research and strategy that goes into content marketing. It’s well worth the investment for your brand to succeed as you move forward with your plan.