Proactive Ways to Achieve Top of Mind Awareness for Your Brand.

Have you ever wondered why consumers refer to certain products by a brand name rather than the product category? It is not strange to hear people say Google instead of search engines, Morning Fresh instead of dish wash, Sunlight instead of detergent, Indomie instead of noodles, etc. It’s a big deal when customers immediately think of your product when they are describing or talking about an entire product category. In marketing, this act is known as Top of Mind Awareness. And over time, any serious brand can achieve it by remaining consistent.

Here’s a list of some proactive steps to take if you desire to achieve top of mind awareness for your brand.

Create  Products Customers Need

Start here. Your product is what your customers spend their hard-earned money to purchase so it must be worth their investment and not a duplicate of what already exists. Before deciding to create any product at all, you must have studied the market and your ideal customers.

Create Unique Products

You must come to terms with the fact that there aren’t really any new products. Whatever product you create has once been created by someone; this is where innovation comes in. Before going ahead to create any product or render a service, you should be able to predict if your customers will embrace or neglect you. Take out time to study your competitors’ products, the impressive aspects of those products, the gaps, flaws, competitive advantage, and every other detail. 

A good place to start is to visit platforms where customers are able to drop product reviews. For consumer products and other popular categories, check out Amazon, Jumia, Esty, and any other platform users of your product already shop. If you are a service-oriented business you can consider creating social media polls to ask prospects relevant questions. Clutch.co is also a great place to check if you intend to offer digital services. Your goal is to continually improve upon what your competitors are doing and even what you’ve already created.

Develop a Marketing Strategy

With a marketing strategy in place, every aspect of advertising/marketing your product/service is properly planned out. You can’t afford to miss out on any aspect or opportunity to promote your business. Make a list of what platforms you’ll be advertising on, the frequency, proposed budget, expected outcome of the marketing effort, etc. As much as every business is trying to embrace and maximise digital marketing channels, you must not forget the place of traditional advertising. Especially in developing countries where only a fraction of the population have access to internet facility, you shouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to reach out to customers via billboards, newspapers, radio, television, and other effective traditional media.

Market Consistently

Like I mentioned above, in your marketing plan, you must include the frequency of how you intend to run the marketing campaigns. If you aim to achieve top of mind awareness for your brand you must consistently be in the faces of your customers. They need to keep seeing you until you are registered in their subconscious and they just can’t resist you. Be cautious too, as there’s a thin line between being consistent and being annoying. You can’t afford to launch a marketing campaign for three weeks then go silent for the next couple of months and expect to achieve top of mind awareness. Create a budget that affords you the opportunity to put yourself out there consistently.

Be Creative and Memorable 

Who doesn’t love creative and memorable marketing messages? Well, everyone does. Customers don’t want to be interrupted by your adverts while watching their favourite skits or show online. Having creative adverts is a plus for you as prospects will see it as appealing and won’t be resistant to your message. The best adverts are those that cause your audience to sing along, or pick out slangs, or laugh out loud. In fact, your prospect should be so interested in your ads that they don’t mind replaying it over and over again. Some communication brands in Nigeria do this so flawlessly as they mix music, drama, and humour all together to recreate ads we can all sing along to.

Be Sociable on Social Media

Relating with people on social media should be different from how you respond to your official emails. As much as you mustn’t come off as disrespectful or overly-friendly, you should interact with your customers in a less formal way. Even when your aim is to achieve top of mind awareness, you don’t have to jump on irrelevant trends on social media. Startup or join conversations that positions your brand in a positive light and has the potential to elevate you.

Partner and Sponsor Events

This is a very important and strategic way to achieve top of mind awareness for your brand. It might be quite expensive to put together, but it’s usually worth it. Depending on your marketing objectives and budget, you can sponsor or partner with organisers of events ranging from large to smaller events. At these events, you can have a stand where you run experiential marketing campaigns. Get attendees to visit your booth and let them experience your product in person. You could run a raffle draw, contest, or other things to capture their attention and even get them to buy your product.

Create Variations of Your Product

If you’ve noticed, almost every big brand out there has several variations of their product. This is majorly to cater for the needs of different customers. If you are a service-based business, give your customers an opportunity to customise your services based on their preference/needs. You should check out how brilliantly this digital tech company created a subscription model for their business where people can select whatever services they need.

Be as flexible as possible with your business and always take advantage of any chance to promote your business. Another really important thing to do if you want to achieve top of mind awareness is to always deliver an amazing customer experience to every customer as they’ll remain delighted and even refer you to their communities. We hope you’ve learnt one or more tips to take your business to the next level. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends.