Building brand awareness on the Internet – Facebook and Google Ads

Internet marketing today plays a key role in achieving success, and there is no doubt about that. In the distant horizon, we will usually consider success to be the fulfillment of a company’s mission and goals, such as making high profits or scaling the business. Before we get to that, however, we need to show up in the market. Our sole focus must not be on immediate revenue, but also on building long-term relationships with customers and increasing brand recognition. It is this recognition (awareness) that is crucial at the very beginning, when our company is still anonymous or little known.

Brand

One of the most important marketing experts – Philip Kotler – wrote that „A brand is not a stamp; it is a kind of pledge, a promise that should shape the entire behaviour and strategy of a company. It is all marketing communication in a nutshell.” It is worth emphasizing here the complexity of the term „brand.” Many people mistakenly equate a brand with a company’s branding when, in fact, we should consider it as a set of characteristics and values that customers associate (or will associate) with a particular company, product or service. Therefore, when creating awareness-raising campaigns, we should focus not only on our company’s logo or name, but also on distinctive features, history or reliability (confirmed, for example, by customer recommendations). 

What is brand awareness and its role in the sales funnel?

Brand awareness is the stage of the „organization life cycle” where consumers can identify a brand from among other products or services. It is the first part of the sales funnel, during which potential customers become aware of the brand’s existence but are not yet ready to purchase the product or service. Building brand awareness is aimed at attracting attention and interest and making it memorable to users so that later, at later stages, they will convert. The higher the brand awareness, the higher the percentage of people who will associate the brand and associate it with given characteristics or events. In this way, Coca-Cola is not only a sweet drink but also a distinctive logo, refreshments, Christmas trucks and a history associated with a pinch of cocaine.

Objectives of brand-awareness campaign

The main goal of a brand awareness-building campaign is to reach the widest possible audience and communicate to them the value and unique features of the brand. It is usually not enough here to present a product or service. The key is to build an emotional connection between the brand and the consumer, who, in the future, is more likely to choose that brand over the competition.

The most important goals of this type of campaign are:

1. Targeting a wide audience: we will not use targeting on specific users here. Thanks to such settings, the campaign will have a chance to reach people who have not yet been exposed to the brand. Based on the analysis of ad audiences, we will later be able to select the most engaged users and build a base of potential customers.
2. Presenting unique values: Our company cares about the environment. We support the development of young athletes. The price is one of the lowest on the market. These are just examples of features to build the entire campaign communication. These features must be real and measurable. It is not enough to write that your products are „of the highest quality” – almost everyone has used such clichés.
3.  Create a positive image: it happens that some features of the company are unique but not unequivocally positive. It is then worth simply passing them over in this type of campaign.
4. Building an emotional connection: one of the most effective messages is to present the company’s history, the people who work there and the values that the company espouses. 

It is important not to forget to build relationships when reaching a wide range of users. A campaign that reaches millions of people won’t be effective if it doesn’t attract the user – and, as we all know, emotions are responsible for capturing attention.

The campaign will not be effective if it doesn’t attract the user.

Building brand awareness on Facebook

That all META products are powerful marketing tools, no one needs to be told. Their global presence and mass of features allow them to be used for various purposes. With more than 2 billion active users (who use the portal daily), it allows for extensive activities that can be seen even on the other side of the world. And where the audience groups are extensive enough, that’s where brand awareness-building activities will work.

Regular posting

One of the key elements for success on Facebook is to publish content that engages and provides value to users systematically. In addition to expanding the reach of our page, this will also affect its credibility. Probably everyone has encountered „dead” fan pages where the last post appeared several months ago. It is obvious that such a company will seem less reliable than one that regularly provides valuable content. If we are starting to build a brand, our audience is likely too small to post content on our „board”. It is then worth using, for example, groups of different communities.

Original content

As I mentioned, we can’t flood the Internet with something already there. In addition to graphics containing elements of the brand’s visual identity, the content should carry some value. Something that will attract the user, who will then subconsciously link our logo or colours to a particular post. In addition, sharing articles related to the brand’s industry or values strengthens its authority.

Paid activities – campaign with recognition goal

Facebook makes its living mainly from advertising, which will be one way to reach new users. If we do not yet have our own audience and using free methods is too time-consuming, we can use a paid campaign. How to create it

1. Create a campaign:

Create a campaign in the same way as any other campaign. After logging into the ad manager, we select the green „+ Create” button at the panel’s top. Next, we indicate the campaign objective – in our case, it will be „Recognition”. We then name our campaign and proceed.

2. Campaign configuration:

If you create the first campaign and want it to be the simplest but perform its functions, the main settings will not be changed. In the later stages of campaign optimization, you must consider using A/B Testing and allocating the budget automatically (option Advantage campaign budget). This, however, applies to extensive campaigns that use several sets of ads and different types of creatives.

3. Configuration of ad set:

At this stage, we must make several decisions that will later translate into the campaign results. First of all, we need to determine the goal of the activities. In the case of recognition, we will choose between:

• Maximizing the reach of ads
• Maximizing the number of impressions
• Maximize the increase in ad recall rate

All of these options will work well in other cases, but the safest would be to use maximizing reach (reaching specific users). 

Then, we determine the budget of the ad set and the audience. In theory, we want to reach as large an audience as possible, but it’s a good idea to limit the location to our company’s reach and the age of the users depending on the industry in which we operate.

The rest of the options are intuitive, except perhaps for placement, which you will learn more about in one of the previous articles.

4. Ad configuration:

A single image, video, and collection format will work here. The content must be engaging, original and evoke emotion. I use the carousel ad format less often for recognition-oriented ads – it’s not as effective and requires more engagement from the user on entry than the other formats.

A campaign prepared in this way allows us to publish and wait for the first results.

Building Brand Awareness with Google Ads

To build brand awareness and reach in Google Ads, we mainly use two types of campaigns: on the ad network and video The first type allows us to reach customers using more than 3 million websites and applications, and the second type targets viewers of YouTube videos. 

Ad network campaign

Configuring an ad network campaign is hardly different from the standard configuration of other campaigns. We set up locations, languages and budgets in the same way. The difference is the goal of determining rates, where we will focus on visible displays, setting a target CPM rate. 

This type of campaign also allows us to target ads to specific groups of users. According to the theory, we want to reach the widest possible audience, so here, we will add all interests and behaviours that at least somewhat fit our industry. We may not set targeting if we advertise universal products (e.g., FMCG).

The ads we will use should be characterized by what I wrote above: engaging, emotional, original, and rearranging the company. With a combination of these characteristics, it will be easier to associate our brand.

You can read more about display ad types and configuring this campaign in our earlier articles.

Video campaign

Video campaigns are a bit more elaborate. When creating such a campaign, at the very beginning, we have to choose the subtype we are interested in:

• A video campaign of the type „Reach.”
• Sequence of ads
• Audio

Each subtype will be effective in a different situation. You can find more about them inan article on video campaigns

Video advertising will be the most expensive option for building awareness. After all, the preparation of quality material itself is expensive (you can use the built-in video creator for this, but the quality is noticeably lower). The price is followed by high effectiveness – videos, especially those impossible to miss, engage the user not only by sight but also by playing sound. If the content is still interesting, the effectiveness of building awareness will be much higher than static material’s.

Do you run a company, but no one knows about it? Get in touch with us!

We will prepare a marketing strategy to make your business more popular. Facebook and Google Ads campaigns are just the beginning of our capabilities.

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Other channels worth considering

META and Google are not the only platforms to reach users. Depending on the industry you specialize in, you can also use other options:

• TikTok: in case you want to build awareness among young audiences.
• Pinterest: for example, if you are in the furniture or fashion industry.
• Pinterest: if you are in the furniture or fashion industry.
• LinkedIn: when we want to show ourselves in a professional environment.
• Content Marketing: e.g. in the form of sponsored articles in popular sites.
• Influencer Marketing: we can locate our brand’s products in videos or posts by well-known people on the Internet. It is important to choose such people, not randomly.

Summary

There are indeed numerous options for building brand awareness on the Internet. From the simplest and free ones to the more complicated ones and those requiring a significant financial contribution. However, the most important thing to know is that this is the first step we should not skip when planning our company’s marketing efforts. After all, awareness is at the top of the marketing funnel for a reason. Although at first, the activities aimed at recognition may seem like a waste of time (and money), they should result in a loyal group of customers after some time.