We don’t need to tell you that increasing brand awareness is a tough undertaking. After all, 89% of marketers claim brand awareness is their number one goal. But we can tell you something you might not know: there are some realistic strategies you can implement to build brand awareness.

These strategies have not only been tried and tested by companies worldwide, but they’re surprisingly easy to implement. Keep reading to learn our top six tips to help you reach your brand awareness goals.

6 Ways to Increase Brand Awareness in 2022

1. Partner With Companies That Emit Strong Trust Signals

Big-name brands have worked incredibly hard to have achieved the level of loyalty and trust that makes them successful. Think of brands like Toyota, Apple, or Nivea — most everyone knows these brands and finds them trustworthy. Why not partner up to leverage their strong trust signals for your own brand?

To demonstrate, let’s look at an example. Claudi & Fin is a food company that sells Greek-style frozen yogurt lollies. A small business on a budget, they decided to try out brand collaborations on various social media channels. One of their most successful means of collaboration has been Facebook competitions — as they find them “an inexpensive way to reach lots of people, build great relationships with other brands and they are also very targeted.”

2. Build Awareness With Influencer Marketing

Love it or hate it, influencer marketing is a necessity — especially if your brand is targeting younger consumers.

A 2020 study by Econsultancy on influencer marketing reported that “61% of consumers, aged 18 to 34, have at some point been swayed in their decision-making by digital influencers.” Now, influencer marketing does suffer from a bit of a catch-22. Naturally, if you want to increase brand awareness, you’ll try to partner with influencers who have very large followings.

However, that approach won’t necessarily bring you the most value. In an age where authenticity is valued most in retail, micro-influencers are the way to go. They may have a more limited reach but, according to that same Econsultancy post, “micro-influencers overtake top-tier talent, and 61% of consumers say they produce the most relatable content”.

Therefore, if you want to improve your brand awareness, focus on increasing positive brand awareness.

3. Harness the Power of Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just about keyword rankings and backlinks — it’s also an amazing way to tell a story. And if you can tell your story well, it will not only resonate with your target audience but will also result in increased brand awareness.

Joyce Ang of Instasize agrees with us, saying:

"People love to connect with brands on a more personal level so, by telling them your story, you have increased your chances of being remembered.

Another way of achieving recall with your audience is to release consistent campaign imagery. Whenever you post something on social media, you can repeatedly use visual elements like a certain color palette, a border style or pattern, or even a particular font to increase familiarization with potential customers. This is one way of strengthening brand awareness through content marketing."

While other marketing methods like paid ads can tell consumers who your brand is and what you’re selling, content marketing can showcase what your brand represents and the qualities that make it unique.

4. Utilize SEO for Brand Awareness

The inclusion of SEO in this article should come as no surprise, as there are many ways in which SEO can increase brand awareness. However, in this instance, we’ll focus specifically on targeting long-tail keywords.

It’s as simple as this: high search engine rankings will do wonders for your brand awareness. Not only will your brand be easier to find, but the higher you rank, the more credible your brand will be in the eyes of your audience.

Bear in mind, however, that this really is a long-term strategy — especially for those coveted first-page spots. Still, it’s worth it. And the key to success? Using the right keywords in your campaigns.

And if you really want to get the most out of search engines, choosing long-tail keywords that are relevant for your industry, are good for local search, and fit with your brand is vital. This is what will happen over time: your target audience will search for a product or service in your business category and will be exposed to your website and brand if they are well-positioned.

5. Be Aware of What is Going On Around You

All the tips we’ve provided up to this point need one additional ingredient to succeed: awareness.

Now, we don’t mean the brand awareness we’ve been discussing — we’re referring to your marketing team’s awareness of what’s happening in their industry. What does your target audience want? How can you help them?

Teodora Lozan, a SaaS Marketer at Socialinsider, did just that and earned great results.

“We saw a lot of people worrying about Instagram removing the ability to view posts' likes, which for social media managers makes it harder to understand the value of external experts or influencers they hired. So we created a free chrome extension that shows this information. We sent the news to a few key publications and the news was quickly picked up by big publications from around the world.

6. Go Offline

With so many brand marketing techniques revolving around the digital world these days, we often forget the value of going offline.

Vaishali Badgujar, a Content Marketing Specialist at Time Doctor, found conferences to be of great value when increasing brand awareness.

"We run a conference called Running Remote. It has become the world's largest-ever in-person conference focused on building and scaling remote teams. We started it in 2018 and it took place in Bali. It was the first year and we didn't have a big community or partnerships to promote our event.

Final Thoughts

Understandably, many brand marketers struggle to effectively and accurately measure their brand metrics. But you don’t have to be one of them!

Keep in mind, it’s crucial that you measure your brand awareness at all levels — not just at the general population level but also at your target audience level. And don’t forget to measure the brand awareness of your competitors!

Of course, just tracking your brand awareness won’t make it grow. However, it will help you figure out which direction to go. For example, if you see that your brand awareness is at 6%, but your main competitor stands at 12%, you have now a benchmark and a goal to strive for.

A quick tip: think wisely about the target audience you want to track and the competitors you want to keep an eye on. If you constantly change your setup for your brand monitoring, you’ll miss out on insightful data changes.