Introduction
Increasing brand awareness is one of the most common goals for social media marketers in 2024. This is hardly surprising. According to Sprout Social, 77% of customers are more likely to buy a product or service if they follow that brand on social media.
That’s a significant impact.
Demand generation starts with building brand awareness. It’s the first step in the customer journey and is the gatekeeper to brand success. Without knowing about the brand, considering a purchase is not just unlikely, but impossible.
You can read more about why branding is so important in our previous article.
In this article, we’ll cover:
1. What is brand awareness
2. How to improve brand awareness
3. How to optimize branded content with AI
What is Brand Awareness?
If you already know what brand awareness is and why it matters for your brand, feel free to skip this section. Although the information here might seem basic, it’s worth repeating:
Brand awareness is a customer’s ability to recognize and recall a brand.
There are two main types of brand awareness:
- Brand Recognition
- Brand Recall
Although similar, these categories are not the same. Many studies have shown that they operate in fundamentally different ways.
What is Brand Recognition
Understanding the types of brand awareness helps in crafting effective strategies. Let's start with brand recognition.
Brand recognition involves recognizing a brand when you see it. To build recognition, your brand identity should be distinct and consistent to create lasting connections in your customers' minds. This includes colors, fonts, logos, brand names, and product features such as taste and smell.
The more sensory information you can attach to your brand, the easier customers can recognize it. Think of McDonald’s golden arches or Netflix’s intro sound—unmistakable, easily recognizable, and consistent over time.
What is Brand Recall
Now that we've covered brand recognition, let's move on to brand recall and its significance.
Brand recall, also known as unaided brand awareness, is connected to people’s memory of a brand and their ability to remember its features. It relies on memory retrieval rather than object recognition.
Brand recall is strongly correlated with top-of-mind awareness. When you try to recall a shoe brand and your favorite brand pops into your mind, that brand has done an excellent job building brand awareness—at least for you.
Why is Brand Awareness Important?
Advertising new products and services often starts with brand awareness campaigns.
While there are many models to describe consumer behavior, they all begin with the introduction of the product to the customer, also known as the awareness phase.
We will use the AIDA model in this article to illustrate the importance of brand awareness.
The AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) model is a frequently used example. Although it has its limitations, the AIDA model is widely regarded as a comprehensive framework for building an effective advertising funnel. As shown in the illustration above, the bottom of the funnel is always narrower than the top (hence the funnel shape).
This means brand awareness is responsible for widening the funnel, ensuring that by the time conversions take place, more customers remain in the journey.
How to Improve Brand Awareness
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Brand awareness works on a spectrum, ranging from the first interaction to top-of-mind awareness. The goal of brand awareness campaigns is to move the brand along this continuum toward top-of-mind awareness.
To demonstrate how you can improve your brand awareness, we will use examples from Neurons AI analytics, including Attention Heatmaps, Cognitive Demand, and Focus Scores.
The First Brand Impressions
First impressions matter.
Introducing your brand to new customers can make or break your potential relationship with them. Therefore, making the most of your first interaction is essential for brand success.
The mere exposure effect shows that simply exposing customers to your product and brand increases their liking for the product during their customer experience because it becomes familiar. This works for both advertising and in-store brand exposure.
Both methods improve brand awareness by increasing brand recognition and recall.
The familiarity bias is a well-known phenomenon in behavioral sciences, where people tend to prefer familiar options over unfamiliar ones, even when the unfamiliar options may be better.
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Our research found that for up-and-coming brands, less can be more when building familiarity. Increasing the Focus Score in your ads can boost the audience’s associations of familiarity and trust. For emerging brands, this can help push your brand in the right direction on the spectrum of brand awareness.
Alternatively, we found that increasing the complexity of these ads can also have a similar effect. You can measure the complexity of your visuals by assessing the Cognitive Demand in Neurons AI.
Use appropriate complexity for the right platforms. Your ads don’t exist in isolation. They are surrounded by other content that can impact how much complexity is beneficial. For example, on a noisy social media feed, a simpler ad can stand out more. Balance context and platform with your goals to get the most out of your brand awareness campaigns.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have top-of-mind awareness. The closer you are to this stage, the more you need to shift your approach to brand awareness.
Reaching Top-of-mind Brand Awareness
As an established brand, you might have reached top-of-mind awareness within your target audience.
This means that your customers not only recognize your brand but can actively recall its features. If this is the case, your approach to branding and awareness campaigns should differ from that of emerging brands.
Big brands should leverage their brand power. The value of your brand itself can drive further improvements in brand recall. Emphasizing taglines, logos, and color schemes can help reinforce brand recognition and lead to stronger brand recall.
During our research study on ad success, we noticed a 15% increase in brand memory for ads with a Cognitive Demand score of 55. There was also a smaller 5% increase at scores of 40 and 60. We saw a similar, though smaller, impact on brand memory for social media posts.
While a higher Cognitive Demand can improve brand recall, it’s crucial to avoid a Cognitive Demand score of 70 or higher to prevent cognitive overload. When ads are too complicated, they can harm your brand perception.
Aim for only a few ad elements to build trust in customers who are ready to buy, and focus attention on the core message and your brand visuals.
Why Brand Visibility Is Key
No matter where you are on the spectrum of brand awareness, ensuring your brand is seen is essential to driving brand awareness. Brand visibility is often overlooked. Even if your potential customers enjoy your content, without clearly showcasing your brand throughout the ad, your effort may be wasted.
Make the Most of Your Content's First Seconds
The average view time of video ads on social media is 3.4 seconds.
This means that if your brand is not seen within those crucial seconds, your audience won’t know whose ad they just watched. It's easy to see how this impacts brand awareness and ultimately the success of your campaign.
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Having a 1-second strategy can be an effective way to maximize your initial, and therefore one of the most important seconds of your customers' interaction with your brand.
Brand Colors Help with Brand Awareness
We talked about how important brand identity is.
Brand identity and brand story play a significant role in building brand recognition and recall.
Consistently reminding customers of your brand visuals can have a significant impact. Research shows that using brand colors can improve brand recognition by up to 80%. Colors are also more likely to lead to higher brand recall.
Optimize Your Content for Brand Awareness with AI
You've seen how more attention to branding can impact awareness and how visual complexity and focus can influence the success of your brand awareness campaigns. But how do you put all of this into practice?
This is where predictive AI tools like Neurons AI come in handy.
Tools like Neurons AI can help you visualize customer attention, understand your visual impact on a deeper level, and give you insights on maximizing your impact for your specific use cases.
It helps you apply this information by offering real-time insights on your visuals:
Want to try it for yourself?
You can book a free demo here.
How Co-Ro Achieved 20% Boost in Brand Awareness with Neurons
To see these strategies in action, let's explore how CO-RO successfully boosted their brand awareness using advanced insights.
CO-RO is a leading multinational corporation known for its entrepreneurial spirit.
Their success is based on understanding customers deeply and delivering solutions their audience wants. They have a strong presence in over 80 markets with a well-established brand identity, especially in Asia and the Middle East.
However, when entering new markets, CO-RO needed advanced insights about customer attention to gain a competitive advantage.
With Neurons, CO-RO applied insights about customer attention to its branding strategy, enabling it to enter new markets with momentum.
The results?
CO-RO’s brand awareness in those new markets increased by over 20%. Additionally, they improved efficiency within their internal processes with streamlined performance testing at scale.
You can learn more about how they did it here.
Summary & Key Takeaways
Improving brand awareness boosts customer recognition and recall, leading to increased sales. By understanding the types of brand awareness, focusing on brand visibility, and using AI tools for optimization, brands can create effective and memorable marketing campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Understand Your Brand Power: Differentiate between brand recognition and recall to tailor your marketing strategies effectively. Make sure your brand power matches your branding strategy.
Focus On Brand Visibility: Ensure your brand is prominently showcased in all ads, especially within the first few seconds, to capture attention quickly and effectively. Use your brand colors and other branded elements to maximize recognition and eventually recall.
Use AI Tools to Boost Brand Awareness: Use AI analytics like Neurons AI to gain insights on customer attention, optimize ad complexity, and branding awareness campaigns. Get inspiration from how other companies boosted brand awareness before.
Did you know?
Neurons can help you improve your brand awareness!
Currently, you can put your branded assets to the test—for free. You can book your session here!
Test your visuals in seconds, get attention predictions, and win through optimized creatives that deliver the results you want.
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