Tips to Increase Brand Recognition & Community Engagement
You’ve identified a consumer need, determined a way to meet that need, and have built a website. You’ve taken the first few steps toward building a successful company but for some reason, you can’t seem to get traction.
One of the first hurdles that you will have to jump is building your brand recognition and to create community engagement. Both of these aspects are important in forming a loyal customer base who not only will continue to purchase, but also refer friends to your business.
Unfortunately, this task isn’t as easy as asking your friends and family to like, share, and comment on your social media page (although that can help.) To build both brand recognition and community engagement, you need a solid plan of action.
Lucky for you, we have the tips you need to increase each of these aspects which will, in turn, increase your sales and brand loyalty. Keep reading to find out more!
Tip #1 – Segmented Email Marketing
Segmenting your email list allows you to target particular groups of customers. This allows you to offer certain products to one group of people while prompting another group to check out your sale items.
A segmented email list will help you target particular customers with items of interest without spamming other leads with emails that are of no use. Targeting specific customers with specific offerings helps them feel like you are tailoring your brand to them which in turn, creates a sense of loyalty – after all, your company knows what they want!
Dividing your entire subscriber list into subgroups can sound daunting. However, this task can easily be accomplished with a quick mail merge from Excel. You can choose to divide your email list however you’d like, but ideally, you will use data gathered from your website.
Aside from creating brand loyalty by presenting personalized options to your customers, you will also increase your sales by showing every subscriber products that are relevant and desirable to them.
Tip #2 – Build a Private Community
Think back to your middle or high school years: if you weren’t popular then, you wished you were. This mentality carries over into adulthood – everyone wants to be part of the in-crowd.
Whether you are selling a product, service, or SaaS, you can drive customer engagement and your brand’s recognition by creating a private community for your consumers. Membership to your community can either be paid for separately or come with the purchase of a product.
By offering a private community for members to talk about your products and ideas involving them, you are creating a level of exclusivity. This exclusivity helps your customers feel as though they are part of something bigger than themselves while still maintaining a personal feel.
If you’re thinking that you don’t have the time or knowledge to create a community like this, think again! There are several BuddyPress themes that are designed with businesses like yours in mind. From simple membership websites to more complex social media-type platforms, you can find a theme that will increase your brand’s recognition.
Tip #3 – Utilize Social Media
This number is approximately 49% of Earth’s population – and that is how many people are using social media!
Your business already has a social media presence (and if it doesn’t, now is the time to create one.) The question is, are you using it effectively?
Social media allows you to create engaging and interesting content for an extremely low (or no) cost. The amount of money you spend on social media will vary based on the number of ads you run but if you post content that users want to share, they’ll do most of the work for you.
In order for any social media campaign to be effective and drive community engagement, you must understand which platforms work best for your message and what audience you are targeting. This shows that your brand is in touch with what your customers want to see and offers them another way to contact you.
When choosing to use social media, it is important to respond to and engage with customers. Take the time to answer messages, reply to or like comments, and continually update your followers with posts, even if it’s just a funny meme. By taking this initiative, your current customers and potential leads will likely follow suit and continue the engagement.
Tip #4 – Blog With a Purpose
Your social media campaigns should include links to your website. These links can be products or to a landing page but they can also lead to your blog. A well-written blog can help customers make purchasing decisions, inform them about various products, or offer insight to your industry.
Each of these types of blogs can be helpful in one way or another; they will also help drive traffic to your website if they are optimized for search engines.
The key to a successful blog for your business is in creating posts aimed at helping your consumers, posts that they want to read and look forward to each week. This means you should try to avoid the overly spammy articles and try to build a connection to your audience.
At the end of your blog, you should have a ‘call to action.’ This is where you ask the reader to make a purchase, share the content, or ‘comment below.’ Depending on the topic, you can tailor the final paragraphs to fit your needs.
Once you’ve developed a blog that people find helpful, your brand will become recognized as a high-authority source, both in search engine results and by your customers. Becoming an authority on a subject will always come with some level of brand recognition and vice versa.
If you are feeling bold, you may also consider asking other blogs for backlinks to your website. The idea behind a backlink is for a higher-authority source to include a link in one of their posts to your website or blog.
Backlinks offer three distinct benefits:
- You receive referral traffic from their site when users click the link
- Search engines can discover and index your website (allowing it to be categorized and easily found)
- Your content will begin to rank higher on search engine results (which continues to drive traffic)
Asking for backlinks can be as easy as reaching out to a webmaster and politely stating what you want. However, don’t be surprised if there is a small fee for this type of service or if the blogger wants reciprocity.
Tip #5 – The Use of Influencers
Before you skip this section, you should know that there are varying degrees of influencer marketing. You don’t need a big name (and a high price tag) to promote your product. In fact, there are smaller, niche influencers that often specialize in certain types of products or services.
Instead of setting your sights on a member of the Kardashian clan, research which influencers are popular among your followers and opt for nano-, micro-, or mid-tier influencers to help build your brand recognition.
Opting to use a lesser-known influencer means that they will engage with your potential customers and have a more targeted audience. They also come with a lower price tag that can allow you to build a long-term relationship with them.
Tip #6 – Create a Recognizable Logo
The biggest brands all have a logo that you can recognize without thinking about it; if they don’t have a memorable logo, you certainly know their color schemes. To create a perfect logo for your brand, you will need to consider the following:
- The font used
- Color(s) included
- Scalability (does it look good when blown up/downsized?)
- The overall shape and;
- Whether the design is memorable
Each of these aspects can affect how customers subconsciously relate to and remember your brand. When done correctly, the design of your logo can be recognized even when your company name isn’t recalled. This is practically the definition of brand recognition and will give your company the upper hand when customers are faced with similar products and values.
A customer is much more likely to choose a brand that they know or recognize over ones they don’t, even if the other company is offering a product at a lower cost. This happens because people tend to trust logos or brands that they remember over competitors who are new to the market and are not as ‘established.’
Why Brand Recognition and Community Engagement Matters
If you happened to have missed this idea, building brand recognition and community engagement helps people to trust your business and become loyal customers. Both of these aspects will also help create a conversation between a satisfied customer and a lead who may have never heard of you.
All of this ultimately leads to an increase in sales as well as loyal customers who refuse to shop anywhere else. By creating recognition and engagement, you are creating loyalty, trust, and cornering a market that may otherwise be overrun with competition.
Use this loyalty to help promote new products or services but never attempt to take complete advantage of your customers as doing so will ruin the brand recognition you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
About the Author!
Sherryn is living in the beautiful city of Cape Town. She worked with a startup brand that launched in South Africa called GoBeauty where she was assisted with content generation, as well as conceptualized events focused on women’s health, fitness, careers and fashion to run alongside the brand. She has extensive experience in writing and use a lot of her practical experience to create useful content in digital marketing, e commerce business, saas tools, finance etc.
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