brand awareness is brilliant at Sharp Innovations

Rethink Brand Awareness and Its Value6 min read

Let’s face it, we all want to equate marketing dollars directly to growth.

When planning any marketing campaign, it’s best to have your goals, strategies, and metrics tracking in place to indicate the success or failure of your marketing campaigns.

Data-driven marketing is a fantastic way to grow your business and protect your marketing budget from efforts that don’t equate to returns.

Easily Measured Efforts, the Darlings of Data

Business owners love data-driving marketing because it puts them in control of the flow of new leads, existing customers, and sales. Marketers love this data as well because it shows what value they are bringing to their clients.

User tracking gives us the ability to quantify marketing activities in real-time, providing everyone’s favorite: instant gratification.

Yet there is more to a comprehensive marketing plan.

So, let’s collectively pull our hair out and discuss brand awareness campaigns. It can be frustrating because it’s not measured as easily as user tracking.

Brand Awareness & Brand Recall

Brand awareness consists of two components: brand recall and brand familiarity.

colors and font can cause instant brand identification when done correctly
Thinking about a specific doughnut and coffee chain?

For example, there’s a billboard on the side of a highway for a personal injury attorney. If you are an attorney, why would you put a billboard up on the highway? Do you hope it is seen by someone who just got hit? Likely not the case. The point of the billboard isn’t for the reader to take immediate action. The real value is in familiarizing the passers-by with the attorney.

When done thoughtfully, a brand familiarity campaign will enhance the perceptual identification of a brand, business, or product. It will build subconscious trust that motivates a purchasing behavior, or potentially generates a positive reaction toward the overall brand or business.

Brand recall is similar but is based on the as-needed moment. Your brand, services, or product is remembered when the need arises. For example, you run out of toothpaste and different toothpaste brands pop into your head. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways but none of them will be successful without establishing brand recognition prior to brand recall.

Jingles, slogans, logos, etc., are all tried-and-true methods to trigger brand recall.

While you might not be able to recall the phone numbers of each family member in this age of smartphones, most of the people reading this could call Empire Carpets or tell me what brand “Just Do it” is associated with, without any hesitation. That’s brand recall at work.

What Business Owners Miss About Brand Awareness Marketing

Many studies show that the more someone sees a brand, hears it, and experiences its services, the more likely they are to select that brand when making a purchase. If you stop thinking about brand awareness campaigns as outside of your existing campaigns and see it as an enhancement to them, you’re in the right space.

Granted, it can be difficult to track the ROI for brand awareness. The good news is our brains are wired for recall and it can pay off.

Out of the many marketing presentations I’ve witnessed, I recall one marketer who stood out. She presented an integrated, comprehensive strategy that included content development, email, social media, and a small targeted paid ad campaign. She laid out the how and why of what she would track to study and grow the campaigns and even gave estimates for impressions and reach, as well as measurable and potential drop-off points. The last thing she touched on was the value of brand awareness.

Just after she finished presenting, she asked if there were any questions. One executive bluntly asked, “How does any of this make us money? None of this is making sales. I’m sorry, but I’m not paying for interests; I’m paying for results.”

quote that reads "even in small campaigns, brand awareness plays a critical role in revenue models and ultimate return rates"

She looked pretty defeated by the response.  She impassionedly attempted to explain that no one could buy from the business if they didn’t even know the business existed. She explained that these campaigns and strategic pieces were designed to increase their brand awareness so audiences would become interested and potentially become customers.

Ultimately, the executive team decided that there was no way to guarantee that these things would translate to sales. It’s an unfortunate scenario but not uncommon.

Budget-givers and decision-makers are used to the ways of the past and aren’t convinced that marketing can drive results. This mindset is wrong. 

Even in small campaigns, brand awareness plays a critical role in revenue models and ultimate return rates. Once someone is aware of your brand, it kickstarts the buyer’s journey.

Brand Awareness and the Bottom Line

sharper edge logo
Sharp Innovations Newest Outbound Marketing Platform

To demonstrate brand awareness value with a bit more specificity, consider our email marketing outreach platform, Sharper Edge ™.

From our own ROI studies, we know the open/reply rate for email outreach goes up significantly (11%-24%) when the person receiving our emails has our logo, name, or product name in the prior 10 days.

Let’s say you email 2,500 contacts. You can expect an average open/reply rate of about 5%. That’s 125 replies. Let’s assume of that 125 only 5% turn into a sale. In the end, you’re left with 6 people.

Based on our testing, had you started your engagement with a brand awareness campaign via social media or a targeted display ad, you would be in that 11%-24% instead of the 5% open/reply rate.

So, you start with 2,500 contacts and get an 11% open/reply rate. You can estimate that you’ll hear back from 275 of your prospects. Of that 275, assume only 5% will ultimately convert. You are looking at 13 potential leads.

You doubled the number of leads through complementary brand awareness.

Ready to Boost Your Brand Awareness?

Sharp Innovations can develop a comprehensive digital advertising and marketing strategy to boost your business’s digital campaigns and bolster your brand awareness. We can help consumers interact with your brand seamlessly and get it in front of a larger audience.

Our Internet marketing services are all-encompassing, and we invite you to learn more about our marketing services.  We’re ready to help more people recall your brand, fully aware of what your business has to offer them…and nudge them into leads.