DESIGNING BRAND AWARENESS

The awareness of a brand is one of the most important factors for a company, because in many situations it can decide about a purchase.

Especially in so-called "low-involvement" situations, where the buyer is critical of a product or pays little attention to it, brand awareness is a decisive criterion. In such cases, most consumers turn to the "well-tried", i.e. well-known names and brands. In marketing, brand awareness is therefore a value that expresses the degree of brand awareness in percent. In concrete terms, this value indicates how many people can remember a particular brand. Large companies regularly conduct surveys to determine brand awareness.

In the ideal case of brand awareness, the brand name of a product becomes the generic name itself - i.e. when the brand replaces the actual term of the product in linguistic usage. Well-known examples are "Tempo", "Selters" or "Sellotape". In areas with firmly established products, however, it is hardly possible to achieve such high brand awareness. For new developments, however, this goal is quite realistic.

SURVEY OF BRAND AWARENESS

The brand awareness is determined by means of surveys. Participants are asked to remember a specific brand or company logo. Of particular interest here is whether the respondents can assign the brand to the correct product categories. Measuring brand awareness is a relevant factor for companies to be able to react to a possible decline in brand awareness. If brand awareness drops, this can lead to a loss of sales for companies, since for many consumers the awareness of a brand and the trust placed in it are elementary components of their purchase decision.

3 TYPES OF BRAND AWARENESS

Brand awareness can be divided into three types:

Top of Mind

unaided recall

Aided Recall/Recognition

In surveys, participants are asked which brands come to their mind spontaneously when they think of a particular product group. The brand that survey participants recognize first is called the "Top of Mind". Brands that are mentioned beyond that and can be assigned to the correct product category without any assistance being given are called "unaided recall". An "Aided Recall" occurs when a respondent can only remember a brand if it is shown directly to him. For companies, the highest possible brand awareness is desirable, so that the brand recall is set "Top of Mind" as a goal - because the faster and better a consumer remembers a brand, the more likely he is to fall back on the brand products and/or services in his everyday life.

ONLINE BRAND AWARENESS

More and more consumers do their shopping on the Internet. The focus is thus shifting from the personal shopping experience to the virtual world. However, when a consumer buys on the Internet, he or she cannot personally convince himself or herself of the quality of a product by touching it or testing it. The awareness of a brand is therefore even more important than in a local store. This is because consumers associate certain characteristics with well-known brands and have an explicit attitude towards a product. The trust that consumers then place in a brand is positively reflected in their willingness to buy online. In the B2C sector, brand awareness helps above all to bind customers to products and services in the long term. High brand awareness enables the customer to assign a certain image to the brand - so the customer usually associates certain, preferably positive, characteristics and emotions with the brand. This in turn creates brand trust and leads to customers repeatedly reaching for brand products.

Measures to increase brand awareness advertisements such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads are a very simple way to increase brand awareness on the Internet. Unfortunately, this option turns out to be cost-intensive if advertisements are to be placed on highly competitive search terms. A comprehensive optimization of your own website according to current SEO standards is usually cheaper and can also contribute to brand awareness.