Brand awareness is the measure of how familiar someone is with you and your business. Developing brand awareness is the first step in building a relationship with a potential customer. No matter how great your brand is, it’s not going to help anyone if it’s never discovered.
Brand awareness is one of the pillars in building your brand community and is a huge part of building a brand in general. Getting people to find you and what you stand for will help them understand your products, services, and how you can benefit them.
So we’re taking a deep dive into how to get found, how to find your people, and how to bring them together to build an audience around your brand.
There are three key pieces to discovery:
- Introducing yourself.
- Networking.
- Promotion.
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Introducing Yourself – The First Step in Brand Awareness
This may sound pretty basic, but I don’t know how many people I’ve met who still couldn’t tell you what they stand for, what they do, and why it should be important to you. Figuring out how to say these things is huge.
People need to know your message right away. Most individuals will make a decision on whether they like you in the first few minutes of conversation.
You should be able to build a connection without seeming sleazy, without selling, and without pushing too hard. Be authentic.
For some of you, initial meetings will be in person. For some it will be online. As always, social media plays a big role. Facebook groups, direct messages and blogs are all modern ways of communicating, so knowing what to do in those situations is key.
With some people, it can be a quick introduction, no pressure. With others, you might need to have a more in depth conversation and know how to present the details. Some will have to be in writing, which can come across as cold. Some will be warm, in-person introductions.
Introductions build into trust, and trust can turn into networking.
Introductions are critical in presenting your image. You can go back to my conversation on positioning your brand in Episode 99 of my podcast. I talk about positioning: what you know, how to know what you’re about, who you serve, and how to be great.
Once you figure that out and you know your message, you still have to figure out how to take that message and use it to introduce yourself. The first time you meet someone is different than your marketing messaging. It’s different than the things you put on your website. You need to know what to say in different situations.
MAKE YOURSELF INTERESTING
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is to pique curiosity. Someone might ask, “What do you do?”
Instead of beginning with a pitch, or detail after detail, probe them to ask more questions. Make them need to know more. Obviously this doesn’t work in every situation, but it might work with a curious customer.
How you do this is the tricky part. Sometimes people will just say “Yeah, no, I get that, but really, just tell me what industry you’re in and what you do.” Figure out who you need to get to the point with versus who you need to tease a bit.
Read your situation. Is it crowded? Is it one-on-one? What are different situations where one tactic might do better than the other? Think of how to introduce yourself in these different scenarios, and make a plan ahead of time. Have some dialogue ready so you’re not just shooting from the hip.
Once you get past the introduction, you’ve won half the battle.
Networking + Networking + Networking = Brand Awareness
Networking is just building relationships, right? Introducing yourself is part of that. But what does networking mean?
Networking is finding the people that you want to be a part of your community and actively engaging them. Allow them to discover something new.
If you want to generate brand awareness for your community, you need to go to where your audience is. They’re not all going to find you just because you run an ad or two.
It might take multiple interactions for people to become curious about you and whether or not you have something they want.
For example, if you have a group of customers and you know they’re going to a certain event or they’re on a certain Facebook group, it’s your job to make a plan to go to that event or Facebook group, and put yourself out there.
Stay open to meeting everyone. You never know where the real connections might come from. It will feel more natural. Use the natural connection to segue into asking for contact information and staying in touch.
Check who will be at the event in advance. Use social media to your advantage. You can reach out to them via DM or go into the group and start a conversation. This helps build rapport and lets you become a friendly face prior to the event.
Another option is finding a wingman or two. If you can find the people you connect with, you can work together to meet even more people throughout the events and can continue to build more introductions. This can add confidence, as you can network together.
FOLLOW THROUGH
Once you meet people, be sure you follow up. Following up could lead to more networking opportunities, and so on. You might have something that could help them along the way.
I think this is where people struggle. You don’t necessarily have to know how to give value to someone when you first meet. It might mean just staying in contact and making more touches with them and getting to know them along the way so that later, you can bring them into the community.
For example, something more organically might pop, and you can simply find ways to be helpful to others without concrete gain. This will build trust. It’s amazing how exhilarating it is knowing you can get whatever you want in life by helping other people get what they want.
Be opportunistic in finding where you can get more and more interactions with the people who will be right for your community.
Active Promotion Drives Brand Awareness
The third piece of the brand community puzzle is promotion. How do you actively tell people about what you’re doing and get attention? And how can you promote in a way that makes lasting, organic connections?
You already got out there, making sure to introduce yourself properly, and you networked like crazy. You have to do that to start building. But when you want to move to the next level, you’ll need promotion. After people find you, they need a place to look for more.
Organic Media
One of these places is your organic media, the things you’ve created for your platforms. Some platform examples are books, presentations, features, and posts on social media.
All of these tell a story of who you are. Organic content creation is one way to promote yourself because over time it slowly builds an audience. This organic reach is the first part of promotion.
Public Relations
The second portion of promotion is a tried and true method. It has been around forever. It’s PR.
Let’s talk about that in terms of generating discovery and free community. I’m not saying you get out there and you run ads for your community, or that you go on a press tour talking about your community.
That’s not what I’m talking about. You need to think very strategically about how to take an approach that brings people into your world.
PR is what you use once you know your message. You have something you want to share with people, and you need a way to get it out there.
You have to be physically present in as many possible platforms as possible for your target audience, wherever they may be. That could mean you are going to conferences and speaking, or just networking and telling people your story.
ONLINE PUBLIC RELATIONS
It could also mean you’re going into Facebook groups and giving advice there. Another great way is networking with influencers who can tell your story elsewhere.
That means you going on other people’s shows such as their Facebook live broadcasts, their podcasts or their YouTube shows. You’re doing collaborations with other creators. Anything you can do to create content and get your message out there by leveraging other people’s audiences.
That is PR in a nutshell: tapping into those industry-leading places where your people go for information.
Make a list of places where your people are finding their community. Ask yourself: Where are the places my people are gathering? What are they reading? Listening to? Watching? Where do they spend their time?
How do I become a voice in those places?
It might mean in some places, you just organically start finding people and working with them. But in a lot of cases, what it really means is you have to find out who the influencers are in your space and develop relationships with those people so you can get permission to then interact within their platforms.
Advertising for Brand Awareness
If you’re growing brand awareness to build your network, you can run ads. But I don’t mean running an ad that says “Join my community!” What I mean is, create an ad that introduces people to you via something that helps them. It should make sense for your industry or field.
What does your audience struggle with, and what could you provide as a valuable solution? You can create this in terms of lead magnets. A lead magnet is a valuable piece of digital information — a video, an email series, really anything you can offer as an incentive in exchange for people’s information. Create that information, and run ads promoting it.
You must be able to talk about what you’ve created in a way that engages your audience. The key is for them to want to give you their information in exchange for what you’re offering.
Create those lead magnets, create those offers, and if you’ve done the right targeting and you use the right copy in your ad, you should be able to find the right people. Those people will be giving you their email addresses and hopefully scheduling calls with you to get to know you better.
The process for advertising should look like this:
- Create lead magnets.
- Give your customer something of value, something that can help them solve a problem.
- Gather contact information.
- Continue communication.
STAY IN CONTACT
As customers find value in the things you create and you give them resources that help them, you can now start sending them more information. For example, an email series with updates can be helpful to your customer while also helping bring them into your world and nurturing the relationship. They might even be enticed to explore your community further.
Placing links to your community in these emails and communications can further bring them into your world. People are naturally curious. They want to know more, especially when it can help them solve a problem.
Another benefit to these contacts, and their organic ability to share on social media, is that your hundred dollars in ad budget could reach tens of thousands of people, rather than hundreds.
I think that it’s a resource that a lot of people do tap, but not as many as should. A lot of you, I think, are thinking of how to sell right away. It’s easy to get stuck on making the sale.
But offering these lead magnets and soft introductions builds your community in a sustainable way. You build a customer base that can be sold to when they’re ready. Granted, they’re not always ready, so don’t run ads directly for something you’re selling.
Always make it about communicating, helping, and building that relationship.
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like my full plan for how to build your content marketing strategy, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.
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