Converting new leads and customers is practically impossible without widening your brand's reach. And while paid advertising works great for building brand and product awareness, it's not always the most effective method of engaging new prospects.
If you look at some of the latest consumer behaviour research, you'll find that most people are fed up with ads and commercial content.
Picnic discovered that 70% of people find digital ads annoying and unpleasant. 72% of consumers consider poor advertising to harm their perception of a brand. Moreover, approximately one-third of internet users use ad blockers to avoid intrusive or repetitive content.
That's why it's essential that you invest in marketing strategies your target audience will want to interact with. It's also crucial that you utilize distribution channels where your content will have a natural way of engaging your prospects. This helps ensure the highest possible chance of nurturing them into customers.
People spend a lot of time browsing social media — 2+ hours per day. As a result, using social networks to build awareness can be a highly effective, budget-friendly marketing tactic.
So, without further ado, here's our take on social media marketing basics, along with eight key principles for developing brand and product awareness.
Meaningful Brand Mentions Elevates Your Products
When done right, influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways of getting the word out about your brand and solutions.
But, in 2024 and beyond, generic brand mentions won't cut it anymore.
Consumers aren't just tired of sponsored content. They're becoming increasingly distrustful of influencer posts as well.
According to a recent survey, 81% of people think that a brand's use of influencers has either no or a negative impact on their perception of the organization. And 51% will scroll right past influencer posts on social media.
So, if you want to use well-established industry voices to position your brand and products in a positive light, you must choose the right collaborators.
In other words, one of the best tactics for building brand or product awareness on social media is to seek meaningful mentions that align with your target audience's pain points, expectations, and belief systems.
Check out how Somewhere does it on Instagram and Facebook. It highlights social proof from trustworthy industry voices and ensures that all brand mentions address specific pain points experienced by its target audience. This is how Somewhere guarantees that its social content will be effective at grabbing and retaining follower attention. It also shows potential customers that they, too, can put their trust in the brand and expect to see positive results if they convert.
So, if you're looking for tips on how to build brand and product awareness on social media, invest in content that shows your dedication to helping your audience.
Ultimately, demonstrating benevolence makes for one of the best ways to earn consumer trust. It can help set you apart from your competitors. And it's a great way to establish your brand as a credible industry voice. However, it can also be a great method of attracting potential prospects — especially if you cover topics you know your target audience is researching.
For instance, check out Bay Alarm Medical, which bases its social media presence on helping followers solve unique pain points. On Instagram, this business regularly promotes blog posts that contain meaningful content. By targeting topics that are interesting to the elderly and those caring for them, Bay Alarm manages to attract follower attention. And with a simple Linktree link in its bio, it's also effectively using social media to funnel high-quality organic traffic to its website, where it can nurture visitors into leads and loyal customers.
Does your business sell solutions whose primary appeal is visual? In that case, you must use social media to share visual content that will grab your audience's attention, create aspirational value, and convince followers to convert.
After all, people are visual beings. We are most efficient at processing visual information. And we make most of our online buying decisions based on product photography.
So, if you're trying to attract attention to your business and solutions on social networks (which are inherently visually oriented platforms), you must invest in high-quality, compelling visuals that will position your offer in an irresistible light.
Check out how Soprano Villas does it on Instagram. Knowing that photography hugely influences reservation decisions in the travel industry, this brand is super careful with how it chooses images to present its accommodation options. You'll notice that each Instagram post has a heavy aspirational appeal — representing a luxurious and carefree jet-set lifestyle. Furthermore, you'll see that all of the brand's visuals and copy communicate a certain dose of exclusivity, creating additional FOMO among travellers looking for their next dream vacation.
You can see similar examples of this social media strategy from luxury brands like Loro Piana, which use every available opportunity to present their visually stunning products in a positive light, generating both awareness and aspirational value.
88% of consumers think it's important to buy from trustworthy brands. And;
84% of people want convenience.
So, if you want your social media presence to stand out and generate product awareness in a way that will also boost conversions, consider using content to give free product samples to your potential customers.
Naturally, this strategy isn't the best option for ecommerce brands (although you could organize giveaways and similar promotions to get people to try out your solutions). However, if you sell digital products, social platforms are the ideal distribution point for free samples.
For example, check out what Classical Guitar Shed does on its socials. Knowing that people need proof of quality before spending their hard-earned money on an educational resource, this business uses social media to distribute valuable content. As they're free for anyone interested, these resources are a great way to attract potential customers and build brand awareness. They're also a testament to the immense educational value Classical Guitar Shed offers, acting as the perfect sample for what people can expect when they purchase a course.
Nothing Generates Credibility Like Customer Success Stories
Developing brand and product awareness is far easier if you've built up a credible reputation for your organization. And while there are many ways to earn your target audience's trust, the simplest way to do it is to incorporate social proof into your marketing strategy.
More precisely, by showcasing customer success stories, you can not only send a signal that your brand can be trusted. More than that, you can use real-life data to show how you've removed your clients' pain points and give potential buyers ideas on what they could gain by investing in your solutions.
Check out how Real Estate Skills does it on YouTube. By interviewing students who have taken the brand's course, the business doesn't just say "Look how happy our customers are." More importantly, these videos cover a lot of detail. For one, they describe the outcomes students have achieved thanks to the brand's course, effectively setting customer expectations. Moreover, the videos cover the tricks and strategies students employed to accomplish their results, giving potential customers a great preview of what tactics they'll learn and how they will be able to implement those in real life.
When exploring strategies for developing brand and product awareness, you have to understand that people see hundreds (if not more) ads every day. So, if you want them to remember your offer, you must find a way to stand out.
Now, one way to achieve this effect is to produce and distribute viral content. Receiving this type of intense exposure on social media can be a great way to draw attention to your business. And it can even generate hype, which is extremely helpful when launching new products.
But the thing is, the chances of any of your social media posts going viral are quite low — one in a million, according to science.
So, instead of setting unattainable branding goals you might never achieve, why not employ a tactic that has a much higher chance of working in your favour?
By doing something as elementary as practising consistency regarding your brand's social media presence, you can exponentially improve recognizability, recall, and trust.
One way to do this is, naturally, to follow your visual branding guidelines for every one of your social posts. If you look at Netskope, you'll find that it follows a very distinct aesthetic style with all of its Instagram posts.
Of course, consistency isn't just about visuals. You can achieve equally positive brand awareness results by ensuring that you build and use a recognizable voice, stick to a predictable posting schedule, and distribute the type of content your audience expects to see from your business.
Meaningful Follower Interactions Humanize Your Brand
Social media can be great for encouraging conversions. After all, social commerce has grown immensely in popularity over the past few years.
Nevertheless, the true potential of social networks, at least when developing brand and product awareness, is that they offer a space to humanize your brand and build relationships with future customers.
With this in mind, explore and capitalize on opportunities to humanize your brand.
Something as simple as engaging in meaningful follower interactions — as done by Lego on X — is an excellent way to show there are real humans behind your social profiles. Plus, it's a great method of showing you genuinely care about your followers' experience with your brand and products — a crucial brand attribute to demonstrate when investing in brand awareness.
Social Support Shows How Seriously You Take Customer Relationships
Finally, as you explore the key tactics for helping your brand stand out on social media, don't forget to put your money where your mouth is.
Want to paint a positive picture and position your business as an organization that cares about its customers? Then, you have to go above and beyond to prove this.
Unfortunately, making claims — like saying you're a customer-first company — won't cut it if you want to outperform your competitors. Instead, you'll have to go above and beyond to prove your dedication to building and maintaining customer relationships.
Fortunately, this doesn't have to be challenging (or resource-consuming). Something as simple as providing customer support through your social channels can be an easy way to nurture customer satisfaction and increase your client's chances of becoming brand champions.
For a great example of how to do it, check out Dr. Squatch. This brand replies to the majority of Instagram comments — and not just those that build relationships. Dr. Squatch also takes a proactive approach to help solve and prevent any customer experience mishaps, like when a package doesn't arrive or when customers have questions regarding their purchases.
Adhering to the basic rules of building a recognizable (and likable) social media presence isn't that complex. All you have to do is show you care about your customer base, prioritize content quality, and be true to your brand's identity.
By implementing the eight principles outlined in this guide, you're guaranteed to see improvements, and not just in terms of brand awareness but in customer engagement and conversion rates as well.
Nonetheless, as with any marketing strategy, the only way to get the biggest bang for your buck is to experiment with what works best for your business. So don't hesitate to take these tactics to the next level, make them your own, and always explore additional ways to meet and exceed your target audience's expectations.
Karl Kangur is a serial entrepreneur who founded his first online business as a teenager. He’s a digital marketing expert and loves talking about trends and best practice in this space. When he’s not doing any of these things, he’s probably at the gym preparing for his next competitive bodybuilding event.
