By Dany Ortiz, on 5 November 2021
The inbound marketing methodology is based on attracting users to your company in non-invasive ways, then converting them into leads and finally into customers. To do this, the first step is to make them discover your brand. But how can you generate brand awareness without resorting to outbound methods? Here are 20 ideas to get you started!
20 Ways to Generate Brand Awareness With Inbound Marketing
1. Publish Content on a Regular Basis
In inbound marketing, the saying "content is king" is totally true. Creating quality content that meets the needs of your target audience and positioning it in search engines is one of the most useful ways to get discovered.
Publishing on a regular basis makes it easier to create a broad base of content and also helps to improve SEO, so it is in your best interest to create a routine of publications and a content calendar. Keep in mind that quality is preferable to quantity. At Cyberclick, we use AirTable to plan our content.
2. Promote Your Content
If you want to improve your brand awareness, promoting your content is as important as creating it. Therefore, along with your publication calendar, you should also create a content dissemination plan through different channels like social networks, a newsletter, company email signatures, publications in your sector, etc.
3. Try Multimedia Content
Video and multimedia content is becoming increasingly popular and is an excellent format for telling stories and communicating your message with maximum clarity. Add videos, presentations or webinars to your content mix and experiment with different formats to see which ones resonate with your audience.
4. Add Infographics and Visuals
Another format that has triumphed in recent years is infographics. According to Protocol80, users like and share infographics 3 times more than other types of content. In addition, if the content incorporates color images, users will be more willing to read it.
When creating infographics, keep in mind that most users are likely to view them on their cell phones, so they should be optimized to be readable on small screens.
5. Use Interactive Content
Another successful format that is ideal for generating brand awareness is interactive content. Interactive experiences encourage users to share content and increase conversions, as the content is very relevant to them.
Creating an interactive experience may seem intimidating at first glance, but there are many simple formats you can try like quizzes, personality tests, calculators, checklists, etc.
6. Use Remarketing
Reaching users for the first time is very important, but to generate long-term brand awareness and turn that into conversions, you need to impact each user several times.
The easiest way to ensure this is through remarketing strategies, or targeted impacts aimed directly at the people who already know your business. For example, you can launch an ad campaign on search engines, websites or social networks targeting users who have already visited your website.
7. Implement a Guest Blogging Strategy
Guest blogging is an excellent way to make your blog (and by extension, your brand) known to an audience that is likely to be interested in your products and services. To put it into action, find out which blogs in your sector have a similar audience to yours and propose an exchange of articles.
8. Create a Referral Program
Word of mouth is one of the oldest marketing methods precisely because it works. One of the best ways to improve brand awareness is through satisfied customers recommending you to their friends and family. To boost this process, you can set up a referral program with incentives, for example, "bring a friend and you both get 10% off."
9. Collaborate With Other Brands
Co-branding is a strategic collaboration in which two or more brands team up to offer a single product or service for a limited time. In this way, both can mutually benefit from each other and improve their profitability and positioning.
If you are looking to improve your brand awareness, it is in your best interest to look for opportunities to collaborate with established brands with a good presence in the markets you want to reach.
10. Get Involved Locally
Sometimes the best strategy to improve brand awareness is not to reach everyone at once, but to focus on specific communities. For example, you can sponsor local sports teams, run campaigns in shopping malls or organize your own events.
11. Public Relations
Public relations can multiply the impact of your brand awareness campaigns, since the media can reach where your own channels cannot. Think of ways to awaken the interest of the media through events or by sending them news about your brand in a novel and impactful way. If you get them to publish content about you, you can benefit from their audience both on their own site and through their social networks.
12. Take Care of Your Presence in Social Networks
Just as it is important to publish content regularly, it is also important to have an active presence on social networks to improve your visibility organically. To maximize visibility and brand awareness, adapt your messages to the formats that resonate most with your audience and focus on offering them value rather than just talking about your brand.
13. Use Social Ads
Social networks not only help you achieve visibility organically, but also allow you to multiply the reach of your publications through promoted posts and other social ads formats. One of the great advantages of this technique is its great segmentation possibilities, since you can filter your audience by a large number of interests and behaviors, do remarketing or even target users similar to your current customers.
14. Launches Contests and Sweepstakes
Contests and sweepstakes are very popular inbound marketing strategies on social networks, as they have great potential to go viral and attract users to your brand. To maximize the viral potential, ask your audience to interact with your brand and share your content in exchange for participating. If you offer a high-value prize, you can also take advantage of the opportunity for user generated content by asking users to post their own photos or videos and tag the brand.
15. Use Hashtags
A few years ago, brands and users filled their posts with hashtags, but nowadays less is more. Even so, it's still worth researching which hashtags are most relevant to your brand and including them in your posts (sparingly) to make it easier for users to discover you.
16. Ask Your Audience Questions
Social networks are made for conversation, not monologues. Asking your audience questions stimulates interactions, makes your potential customers feel heard and helps you get to know them better - all advantages!
You can ask open-ended questions in your posts, or use the different social media options to create multiple choice polls. In any case, analyze the results and incorporate them into your inbound marketing strategy to make it more and more effective.
17. Launch Limited Offers
The sense of urgency is one of the most powerful resources to incentivize conversions. When people see an offer with a limited amount or time, they feel the urge to take advantage of it before it runs out. To get even more out of this, you can include a countdown button on your website or in your emails.
18. Create "Freemium" Plans for Your Services
The "freemium" model is very popular among service-oriented brands. Users can access some features for free, but others are only available on a subscription basis. If you are focusing on improving brand awareness, it is most effective to promote the benefits of your free accounts to attract new users.
19. Create Exclusive Pre-Releases
People love to feel that they are getting something before anyone else, so take advantage of this to generate brand awareness around your launches. For example, you can launch a sweepstakes or contest and have the winners enjoy your product exclusively first.
20. Take Care of Special Customers
Satisfied customers naturally generate brand awareness by using and sharing your products and services. To enhance this satisfaction, you can reward your most loyal customers with free products or exclusive discounts. In addition to launching one-off campaigns of this type, many brands have tiered or points-based loyalty programs.
