Tag: brand

Leveraging Content Marketing for Brand Success

In today’s world, setting up a company is not as easy as putting some money into an idea. It involves a ton of processes and back-breaking work. It is also no longer a matter of … The post Leveraging Content marketing for Brand Success appeared first on Paper.li blog. The post Leveraging Content marketing for … Continue reading Leveraging Content Marketing for Brand Success

8 Tips for a Brand Awareness Campaign

Brand awareness refers to how memorable your brand or company is to your target consumers. It’s how easily people recognize your brand when, for example, they hear your company name or see your logo. 

How do you build brand awareness, especially if you’re a new company? Through a carefully crafted brand awareness campaign, that’s how. 

Below, I’ll show you what brand awareness campaigns are and why they matter, and walk you through the steps to building your own successful branding campaign. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign aims to improve your brand’s “recognizability” to your target audience. What does this mean? 

You’re trying to ensure your ideal customers have the right impression of your brand. You want them to associate your company with a particular product or type of service. You’re trying to promote your unique selling point (USP) and what makes your business stand out from the competition.  

Who actually uses campaigns for brand awareness? Honestly, every business can use them. Whether you’re a startup just trying to build a name for yourself in a crowded marketplace, or you’re trying to rebrand an old company, you can benefit from a brand awareness campaign.     

Why Should You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign? 

Brand awareness campaigns are worth it for three major reasons.

First, a campaign gives you some control over how people ultimately perceive your brand. Sure, you can’t tell people what to think, but you can certainly promote your brand in a way that nurtures positive associations.   

Secondly, brand awareness helps to build trust between you and your target audience. Why does this matter? According to 53 percent of people in a recent study, trust is the second-most important factor in deciding whether to shop with a new brand (price comes first.) 

The takeaway? Brand awareness campaigns help you build successful relationships with customers based on trust. 

Finally, trust builds customer loyalty. On the one hand, loyal, happy customers will promote you to their friends and family, which brings you more customers in the long run. On the other hand, over time, your customer acquisition costs will decrease. 

8 Tips for Building an Effective Brand Awareness Campaign

Daunted by the prospect of building a whole campaign from scratch? It’s actually surprisingly simple once you understand the eight key steps involved.  

1. Understand Your Target Audience

First, you need to know who you’re actually targeting. 

To start, look at your existing customer base. Who buys your products or follows you on social media? These are the people who already identify with your brand, so look at what they have in common. Think about what matters to them, what problems they have, and how your products help them. 

Then, do some market research. Where else do your customers shop? Who are your biggest competitors? Chances are that your target audience also shops with your competitors, so spend time doing your research here.  

Finally, analyze your results and build a profile for your ideal customer. What do you want them to associate your brand with? Your answer will inform your campaign.    

2. Focus on the Platforms Your Audience Uses Most

A great brand awareness campaign isn’t just about who you target. It’s about where you target them, too. Where does your ideal buyer hang out? Are they watching videos on YouTube, or posting pics on Instagram? Again, this all comes down to researching your target audience and identifying where your campaign will make the most impact. 

I suggest choosing one or two platforms and designing your campaign to suit those modalities. For example, if you opt for a Twitter campaign, choose a memorable hashtag and get tweeting. if you choose Instagram, create visually appealing posts and short, catchy Instagram Stories.    

Rather than spreading your energy across multiple social media platforms, focus on the ones your target customers use most often.  

3. Set Achievable Goals for Your Campaign

Next, set some concrete short-term and long-term goals. Decide:

  • what you want to achieve from your campaign
  • how the campaign fits into your wider, long-term plans for your brand
  • which strategies you will use to achieve your goal e.g., PPC ads, social media posts, influencer marketing, and so on
  • how you’ll track your progress

Without concrete goals, you risk running a campaign without direction or a clear purpose. Every successful marketing strategy begins with a set goal or outcome in mind, so spend time reflecting on what you hope to achieve. 

4. Partner With Complementary Brands

A brand partnership means working with a complementary brand to create value, increase your exposure, and expand your audience reach. 

You shouldn’t choose a direct competitor, but rather a company with a broadly similar target audience. 

Take the IKEA and LEGO partnership, for example. On the surface, their target audiences look different. When you look a little closer, both companies are all about building cool things. You can imagine yourself building LEGO at an IKEA table, or placing a LEGO toy on IKEA furniture. 

In other words, both brands conjure similar impressions, which is exactly what we’re looking for in a brand awareness campaign built between partner companies:

Brand awareness campaign LEGO and IKEA brand partnership

Choose a brand you can partner with to best show off your USP.  

5. Be Active and Engaging Online 

In a highly competitive marketplace, consumer engagement really counts. Whether you’re replying to tweets, answering customer support messages, or simply liking user-generated content on Instagram, every communication adds up over time. 

Remember, while you’re trying to build your brand’s presence online, you’re also trying to set the right impression. Do you want to be known as a responsive and engaging company that cares about its target audience? Then, start communicating!

Also, make sure you’re creating regular content. If you can’t post daily, then at least get online four or five times per week to build some traction behind your social media accounts.  

6. Highlight Your Brand Personality 

The whole point of a brand awareness campaign is to influence how people perceive your brand, so highlight your company’s personality each time you post something new. Keep your brand messaging consistent, and you’ll bring your target audience one step closer to making the right associations with your business.   

Warby Parker, for example, is a quirky eyewear company. To position their brand as fun, fresh, and engaging, they post content like cute animals wearing their glasses:

Brand Awareness Campaign - Warby Parker Brand Personality

They also engage with customers by sharing user-generated content that most aligns with their brand:

Brand Awareness Campaign - Twitter UGC Warby Parker Marketing

In short, they see every post as an opportunity to promote their personality and build brand awareness. This is what you’re aiming for. 

Remember, your business is unique, so use your campaign to highlight what makes it so special.     

7. Improve the Customer Experience

For 80 percent of customers, the experience matters just as much as whatever products companies sell. Meaning, if you want to leave a positive, lasting impression on your customers, you should work on improving the customer experience.

Finally, on average, UX-focused companies are up to 60 percent more profitable than others. 

In other words, your brand awareness campaign shouldn’t just be about talking up your company. It should be about showing customers how you can help them and why their needs matter to you. 

Not sure how your current user experience stacks up? Encourage customers to leave reviews or send feedback so you can see how to improve your service offerings. 

While it’s impossible to act on all feedback, take note of common themes and identify where there’s room for improvement. Although no one likes negative reviews, they’re actually a key tool for leveling up your business in the long run. After all, you can’t fix problems no one tells you about, right? 

In short, you can quickly boost your brand awareness by prioritizing the customer experience and showing people how much you value their feedback.      

8. Track Your Results

How do you know if your campaign is working? Well, you probably won’t unless you set some criteria for measuring your success. 

The metrics you measure vary depending on the marketing strategy used. For example, if you run a campaign on Twitter, you might track things like the number of impressions, shared tweets, and hashtag mentions. If you decide to run paid ads, you could use Google Analytics to track your click-through rate (CTR) and conversions. 

What’s important is that you measure your results and implement strategy changes if necessary.  

2 Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples

OK, so that’s how you can create a campaign, but what does it take to make your campaign truly great? To find out, let’s check out two companies that nailed their campaigns.     

1. Corona: Pay With Plastic

Corona is a hugely popular brand of beer, and it’s often associated with summer, drinking on the beach, and good times. 

Back in 2019, to celebrate World Oceans Day, Corona launched a campaign, “Protect Paradise,” to help protect the environment. They encouraged customers to clean up their local beaches and hand over the plastic in exchange for free beer:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - Corona Pay With Plastic

The results are positive brand associations based on social responsibility and protecting our environment. The Twitter campaign alone generated 14.1 million impressions and a 1 percent engagement rate, which is pretty impressive.    

2. MoonPie: Super Bowl Commercial

If there’s one thing I love about MoonPie, it’s their distinctive, instantly recognizable voice. Back in 2020, MoonPie ran a commercial for the Super Bowl, and they released the news to Twitter followers in a typically fun way:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - MoonPie Super Bowl Commercial

You’ll note there’s an emphasis on purchasing the product, too, which is a great example of blending voice with persuasive marketing. In the end, the commercial only ran at gas stations, but as expected, MoonPie turned the news into a funny tweet:

Successful Brand Awareness Campaign Examples - MoonPie

The upshot? You can use these types of campaigns to let your distinctive brand personality shine. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Brand Awareness Campaigns

Now we’ve covered all the key points, let me leave you with some takeaway tips. 

What Are Brand Awareness Campaigns?

A brand awareness campaign is designed to improve consumers’ awareness of your brand and what it stands for. It should boost your overall recognizability.   

Why Should I Create Brand Awareness Campaigns?

Brand awareness campaigns can help you stand out from competitors, improve customer loyalty, and even reduce your customer acquisition costs over time. If you’re looking to grow your business and build customer relationships organically, building a campaign for brand awareness may help.  

How Do You Create a Brand Awareness Campaign?

First, set a clear goal and identify your target audience. Then, focus on the platforms where your target audience hangs out the most and work on a few strategies at a time. Engage with followers and make them feel like valuable members of your community.   

How Do You Track Your Brand Awareness Campaigns?

You can track your campaign’s performance using analytics tools like Google Analytics. You can also use the metrics tools offered by social media platforms. However you do it, just make sure you’re tracking your campaigns!

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Brand Awareness Campaign Conclusion

A brand awareness campaign allows you to shape how potential customers perceive your company. With the right campaign, you can directly influence what people think when they hear your brand’s name, and you can ensure that customers remember your name for the right reasons! 

In other words, it is the backbone of a successful marketing strategy, and it’s surprisingly easy to implement. However, if you’re still a little stuck on how to get started, check out my consulting services.  

Have you created a brand awareness campaign yet? Which strategies did you try?

How to Build an E-commerce Brand Using Instagram When You Have No Followers

There’s a ton of advice about using Instagram as an effective online marketing tool, but it can be challenging to scale your e-commerce brand on Instagram if you are a new brand without many followers yet.

New accounts often have low engagement rates, which can be disheartening, but there are ways to navigate this period strategically. 

Let’s talk about why Instagram as a marketing tool matters, how it can help you grow your business, and look at effective strategies to grow your e-commerce brand—even when you have no followers. 

Why Is Instagram a Powerful E-Commerce Tool?

Today, 81 percent of people use Instagram to research products and services to buy. Therefore, using strategies to stand out from the competition and attract potential customers to your Instagram e-commerce page can reach a wider audience. 

To do this, you have to understand what makes Instagram a powerful e-commerce tool. 

Research shows we remember more of what we see through photos and videos than what we read through plain text. This makes visually-oriented platforms like Instagram a prime tool for marketing.

Instagram lets you upload product photos, share demo videos, launch partnerships with influencers, connect with engaged followers, and boost your ROI. 

This can help you grow your e-commerce business faster than marketing only through Facebook and Twitter (which have less than half of Instagram’s brand engagement rate). 

Instagram has more than double brand engagement rate compared to Facebook and Twitter.

10 Ways to Grow an E-Commerce Brand on Instagram

We now know Instagram has a lot to offer marketers at all levels, but how do you capitalize on these benefits when you have no followers? 

Don’t worry. Here are actionable strategies you can use today to start growing your Instagram following. 

Engage With Comments and Review Feedback 

Having a ton of followers is useless if you are not engaging with them. The best way to gain and maintain a large number of followers is to engage with potential customers. 

Engaging with users takes mere minutes but has the potential to boost your revenue significantly. 

Here’s how to get started. 

Step to turn on Instagram e-commerce notifications
  1. Turn on notifications for all comments. 
  2. Respond to every comment you receive, be it positive or negative. This will help increase engagement on your posts. 
  3. Review feedback and see if there are areas you can improve in. 
  4. Thank users for taking the time to interact with your posts. 
  5. Avoid starting fights in your comment sections, even if you disagree with a user’s perspective. This will help you maintain a positive impression online. 

Research Competitors 

If you’re not sure about how to get started, look at what your competitors are doing. 

Your competitors have already done a ton of the heavy lifting and collected a huge base of engaged followers. You can use this to your advantage.

All you have to do to attract your own following is to head to the Instagram profiles of your competitors and steal their audience.

You should already have a pretty good idea of who your competitors are. If you don’t, try using Instagram’s discover tool to find popular accounts in your industry.

Instagram e-commerce discovery tool can be accessed via menu.

You can also search for keywords and hashtags that relate to your brand to get started. The top accounts relating to that keyword should appear.

#Fashion shows several hashtags related to fashion

Host Giveaways in Exchange for Engagement

Instagram giveaways can be an excellent way to generate user engagement. You may have seen some of these in your feed. 

They typically say, “like this post and tag a friend to win a free product, but that strategy might not be the most effective way to gain real followers. 

Giveaways often attract people who want free stuff and are willing to like your images to get it.

Instead, ask users to upload Instagram photos about your e-commerce brand or follow your page. If you ask users to post content, be sure to share a branded hashtag to get discovered by more users.

An Instagram e-commerce giveaway hosted to generate user engagement.

To start, announce your contest with an Instagram post. Include the rules in the description section so people will know how to enter. 

If you need help coming up with giveaway ideas, try out a tool like Woobox. The tool helps brands of all types and sizes create social media contests that drive sales, increase followers, and collect leads.

Consider offering your own products for free instead of prizes unrelated to your niche or brand, like a free iPad. Otherwise, people may only follow you for the prize rather than their interest in your brand.

Post User-Generated Content (UGC)

If you want to drive engagement, make a habit of posting user-generated content. This can be as simple as asking users to review your product in exchange for a free sample. 

User generated content can help increase engagement for your Instagram e-commerce brand

You can also choose to host bigger UGC contests where dozens (or hundreds) of users share their experiences related to your product and industry. This can help you reach new users you wouldn’t have found otherwise. 

Customize and Optimize Your Shop

Giveaways and hashtags might be easier than a customized, well-optimized shop, but they aren’t more important. 

In fact, having an easy-to-navigate and memorable storefront may increase your sales. 

Here are a few ways to customize and optimize your Instagram e-commerce store for maximum visibility. 

  1. Offer promotions right in the photo or the first line of the description, so users don’t scroll past it. 
Offer sales', giveaways' and prizes' description in the Instagram e-commerce photo.
  1. Add shoppable links to your photos so customers can buy your product directly. 
  2. Keep your descriptions simple, clean, and easy to understand so new users can quickly get an idea about what your Instagram e-commerce brand stands for. 
  3. Add links to your store on other channels, including your Instagram description (or bio), website, other social media pages, and email signature. 

Create a Branded Hashtag

A simple way to keep track of who is talking about your e-commerce store on Instagram is to create a branded hashtag. You can use your business name, an existing slogan, or another creative phrase.

Then, let your customers know what the tag is by adding it to your bio and encouraging followers to use it in their posts.

Later, you can search for your hashtag to find and quickly share user-generated content. You should also add these tags to your images to remind your followers about it.

For instance, when you search the tag “#topshop,” millions of photo results show popular UGC related to the brand. 

User-generated images don’t just give your brand more exposure; they also give other Instagram users exposure so they can gain more followers, too. It’s a win-win situation.

Prioritize Customer Experience

Sometimes you can do all the right things and still not get satisfactory results. You used all the right hashtags, engaged with your customers, and created tons of user-generated content, but you’re still not getting many sales.

Why is that?

It could be because your customer experience is lacking. 

The easier you can make for users to find, browse, and buy from your shop, the more sales you can see. 

A simple way to try to catapult your sales numbers is to prioritize the customer experience. 

Are you making it easy for Instagram users to find your website or buy your products? Is your storefront easy to navigate? Do you have alt-text for your images? Do you offer a prompt response to questions? 

These may seem like trivial things, but a good customer experience can go a long way in helping you find lifelong customers. 

Partner With Influencers in Your Niche

Instagram influencers are users with a large number of followers and a great engagement rate. 

Why do they matter for your Instagram e-commerce business?

They can help you expand your brand’s reach. These individuals have hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of followers interested in hearing what these influencers have to say.

So if they recommend your product on their account, you are likely to see an uptick in sales. 

Influencers can help boost your Instagram e-commerce sales.

How can you partner with influencers to grow your Instagram e-commerce business?

Find influencers and large accounts in your niche. For example, if you’re a beauty company, reach out to beauty bloggers and ask them for a product post. 

If a user puts an email address on their profile or says something like “DM for business inquiries,” it typically means they’re interested in sharing sponsored posts.

Email or DM these accounts and ask what their standard pricing is for sponsored posts. Try and establish a relationship with these users.

If they’re willing to work with your competitor, they may be willing to work with you.

Then, make a spreadsheet comparing each account’s followers, cost per post, CPM, average likes per post, and followers divided by the average likes per post.

A simple spreadsheet comparing accounts for Instagram e-commerce partnerships.

Pick the account(s) with the biggest payoff and lowest price.

If you’re selling an original or unique product, it may be better to ask for a review instead of a product post.

Don’t think you have to go for the big names. Sometimes micro-influencers with just a few thousand followers have a better ROI because they have a more targeted audience. 

Use Product Tags

Another way to increase customer convenience is to use product tags to amplify your Instagram e-commerce sales. 

Product tags let users buy products directly from the app without having to jump through many hoops.

This makes it easier for them to purchase, especially if they are browsing on the go (like most of us.)  

Create Product Collections

Instagram has been working hard to create user-friendly shop interfaces to increase e-commerce activity. 

Along with handy features like product tags, Instagram launched product collections, where users can browse through products from a similar category. 

This image from the Instagram business blog shows that product collections make it straightforward to find what you want while scrolling through attractive pictures of the products. 

Instagram product collections example e-commerce for instagram

Instagram E-Commerce FAQs

Do I have to pay for an Instagram e-commerce shop?

Creating an Instagram account highlighting your products is free, but you may have to spend money on advertising, shipping, taxes, transaction fees, and other tools to make a sale. 

How to know if I’m eligible for an Instagram e-commerce shop?

Instagram has posted official eligibility guidelines on their help page. These include having a legal product, being located in a supporting market, and providing accurate information about your business, among other rules. 

How many followers do you need to get Instagram shopping?

Unlike the 10,000-follower rule for the swipe-up feature on Instagram Stories, anybody can access Instagram e-commerce features as long as they meet the eligibility criteria. 

Do you need a website to sell on Instagram?

Yes, Instagram’s e-commerce rules state that your business must own a website domain from which you intend to sell your products to qualify for an Instagram shop. 

Conclusion of Instagram E-Commerce Guide

Building a successful Instagram e-commerce business won’t happen overnight, but it can be done. 

Start with these strategies to get your business up and running, then look for tools, tips, and strategies to make your first sale. 

Which of these Instagram e-commerce tips will you try today? 

Grow Your Brand: Here’s How to Distribute and Share Your Content

At Paper.li, we highly value the power of content in all forms and the importance of building an outstanding personal brand. That’s why we launched The Personal Branding Playbook, where we share a proven method … The post Grow Your Brand: Here’s How to Distribute and Share Your Content appeared first on Paper.li blog.

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