Does it feel like everything is data-driven these days?

Measuring ROI of your campaigns.

Studying analytics on your website.

Click-through rates on ads. 

Open rates on emails.

Engagement rates on social media.

Don’t get me wrong. These metrics are very important. After all, they help you determine if your methods are effective, and see areas you’re improving (or need improvement).

But some things in marketing are important, but don’t have directly measurable results. One of these things is building brand awareness.

Of course, more engagement on social media, more clicks on your emails, and more leads from your website are all evidence of increased brand awareness. 

The first part of building brand awareness is creating a brand worth remembering. Carefully consider if your brand’s colors, font, and imagery all match the persona of your business.

An upscale spa’s branding is most likely to have a decorative or cursive font, feminine or white color scheme, and imagery related to nature, health, or fitness.

Now that you have a memorable brand, make sure your marketing materials matchacross all platforms. The same color schemes, imagery, and fonts should be used on your marketing to help consumers make an instant connection with your brand.

For example, you wouldn’t want different styles or logos on social sites to lead to confusion if a consumer connects with your on both YouTube and Instagram. Make sure they know exactly what business they are connecting with.

Encourage employees to use the same signature style in their work emails.

Your print materials should match your digital marketing materials.

Everything you do should stay true to your company persona, and match the look and feel of your brand.

For example, take the golden arch or McDonald’s. If they changed the color of the arch, would you still recognize it? Probably not as quickly. It is simple, memorable, and I don’t know about you, but always makes me want French fries when I see it. As you can see below, once they got that golden arch, they stuck with what worked.

Imagine you’re on social media and you see an ad for sandals that a few of your friends have liked on that social site. Later that day, you’re on Amazon and notice that same brand of shoes has a solid four star rating.

Then you go to the store and those same sandals are sitting on the shelf next to another brand of shoes you’ve never heard of.

Which shoes are you more likely to purchase?

Just because your social media posts or ads aren’t generating sales, it doesn’t mean they aren’t effective. 

Familiarity is what is so effective about remarketing. When a consumer sees the same brand multiple times as they’re surfing the web, they inherently build up trust in the brand because it is familiar.

Yes, remarketing ads are a little creepy and can get annoying, but they still work better than regular ads.

Why? Because familiarity leads to trust.

Even if you aren’t getting sales or have a measurable ROI from some of your digital marketing efforts, such as social media or blogging, that doesn’t mean your efforts are worthless. You might very well be courting a potential customers through a sales funnel and not even be aware of it, just like those fictional sandal ads helped the customer make a decision on which pair of shoes to buy at the store.

Not all efforts can be directly correlated to ROI. But they are still helping to build brand awareness.

For our social media posting, I try to ad our ApogeeINVENT logo at the bottom of quotes I create. That way, if they get shared or saved and shared, it is still helping to build brand awareness, which is what social media is really about  for many small businesses.

Take a look at this quote image I created. Not only do I include a little logo at the bottom, I also try to use our brand colors when relevant in the actual quote itself.

When I’m not working for Apogee, I write and have published a few fiction books. I will sometimes attend author events, and I’ve noticed something at these events. Many authors will give away little trinkets or candy. 

The candy I understand – you’re trying to attract people to come and stop by your table. But the trinkets, some of which look a bit costly, attract people. But what if they don’t buy? Many of those trinkets did not have the author’s name or logo anywhere on them. When I give away “swag” or free items, I make sure my logo or branding are on it. That way, when people use the bookmark, pen, bookbag, or other object, they are forced to think of my brand. Maybe next time they see an ad for my book on Amazon, they will be more likely to purchase it than if they’d forgotten all about me after the event.

Put your logo or your branding look and feel on everything you’re doing to increase brand awareness.

One way to do this is by connecting digital and physical brand efforts.

Brands do this all the time. You’ve probably seen a billboard with a website on it, or flyers with QR codes. Or how my kids always get a happy meal with a message to download the free app and play some game or see interactive content.

You might not be making a direct sale from this, or even know that people are making these connections. But it is keeping your brand at the front of the consumers’ mind longer. This will make fans out of your customers, which should be goal of every business. 

We’ve talked a little about what influencers are. Influencers are people who have a large following in your industry. They can influence the buying choices of your targeted audience.

How can you get influencers to talk about your brand? Try sending them free products. Some charge a fee to review your business or products. 

Another way to draw the attention of influencers is by building a relationship with them. Try tagging them on social media, or offering to guest post on their blog. Sometimes just a simple retweet can go a long way to spreading your brand’s message.

Just make sure your product or business is ready for honest reviews. Google handed their newest Galaxy Fold to some tech influencers and got a lot of negative feedback, leading them to push back their release date.

Don’t fall victim to the idea that only marketing with direct ROI is worth your time. Building a brand takes time, patience, and don’t always show results immediately. Follow these basic steps and you’re brand-building efforts WILL pay off.