Out of the dozens of shaving razor products in the market, Gillette is one of the clear leaders. This is not to say that they necessarily have the best products, but rather that the company has established itself in the public eye garnering immediate recognition.
A company might have a great quality product out on the market, but in the face of increasing competition across industries, it is crucial to gain a prominent following among its target demographics.
What is Brand Awareness?
When walking down the aisle of a grocery store looking for some chocolates, aren’t you more likely to pick out bars of Kit Kat than a brand of chocolate that you don’t recognize?
Simply put, brand awareness refers to the extent that a market of customers recognizes a brand’s products or services, and its associated image. This is a crucial indicator of sales performance since brand recognition and awareness leads to a higher likelihood of purchase.
What is Lead Generation?
After branding your profile and establishing a comfortable place in the minds of a large audience, it’s important to convert these impressions into paying users. Lead generation refers to the process of getting the attention of potential customers to a company’s products or services, to increase sales of these goods to a larger share of the market.
Brand awareness and Lead generation. How do they go hand-in-hand?
Want to churn out organic leads? Pay attention to branding.
To see how branding leads to more organic leads for a company, let’s look at a company that’s been tremendously successful with raising brand awareness – Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has a well-established global presence and high-availability in most parts of the world. For a lot of people, the brand name is synonymous with soft drinks.
A large part of this is due to its successful branding strategies through paid advertising, maintaining a consistent brand personality and voice as indicated in its ads targeting the younger demographic. This has catapulted the company to the top of its market segment.
Key Takeaway: A company that invests heavily in branding reaps the rewards by generating
organic leads, which leads to massive profits when executed on a large scale.
Boost your online presence with social media branding
In today’s landscape, gaining a favorable social media presence is one way for brands to boost customer engagement and interest in their products. Data from a study by Mediakix, shows that the average time spent per day on social media apps is 40 minutes on YouTube, 35 minutes on Facebook, 25 minutes on Instagram and 2 minutes
on LinkedIn.
Given these figures, one can see that social media marketing is a big opportunity to form a lasting image on your customers’ minds. A well-executed social media branding strategy can lead to tremendous growth in brand awareness. This feeds into a lead generation that would otherwise be difficult to gain through other offline channels.
Harness the power of social media to generate leads
Lead generation using social media can take a variety of forms. Listed below are a few ways businesses rely on social media to gain traction and spark interest in new segments of customers
Influencer marketing
Brands can reach out to influencer (personalities that have a passionate following on social media) to promote their products. This is a good strategy for brands that share a common demographic with a given influencer, as this is likely to drive a high percentage of conversions.
Key Takeaway: Find influencers with content that is in line with your products, and work with them to convert their audience into customers of your brand.
Active engagement with users through conversations via posts and comments
An increasing number of brands are using Twitter to build up a personality for themselves by tweeting engaging content that can be quickly consumed. For companies that are looking to target the market of professionals who prefer reading longer-form content, LinkedIn lead generation can prove to be successful.
Key Takeaway: Find out what social media platforms your target demographic spend most of their time on and maintain an engaging presence.
Lead generation via LinkedIn can take the form of targeted ads in the newsfeed and sponsored ‘InMail’ messages for a personal touch to generate leads and drive conversions to a business. Hiring and training a LinkedIn marketing expert can, therefore, be a huge bonus to companies looking to gain professional leads.
Conclusion
As we have seen, an investment in raising brand awareness is crucial for companies trying to get a larger share of the consumer pie. Properly executed branding campaigns can result in an increased lead generation, which can set a company up for success in the face of massive competition.
In addition, social media can be a boon to companies trying to gain the consumer’s attention. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn branding can be useful tools to bolster business. Given the ubiquity of these platforms, brands have an alluring prospect of using them to craft an identity for themselves and boost recognition in the marketplace.
