Using Content Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness
Increasing brand awareness is important for your business for a number of reasons. Brand awareness is defined as the extent to which consumers are familiar with your business and its qualities.
So how do you use content marketing to increase brand awareness?
For internet businesses, recognition means more than just your logo, it’s recognition of your brand and what it represents, whether it be technology, women’s fashion, or health, etc. Brand awareness is important because people are more likely to purchase from a brand they recognize and trust. It’s also important for standing out in your industry, and since on-site content is such a key part of digital marketing, content marketing and branding go together like peanut butter and jelly.
There are a number of ways you can build brand awareness through marketing but we’re going to focus specifically on the importance of content marketing.
Quality content gives you the opportunity to show consumers who you are as a business and what your brand represents. It’s more than just name recognition, it’s how well consumers understand the qualities that make your brand stand out among the competition in your industry.
Unlike your revenue driving content (like ads and even your content in product descriptions) your brand’s content should be focused on interesting, relevant, and valuable information about your company. Rather than selling your products, content marketing for brand awareness focuses on selling your values as a business.
Branded content is where you can share all the details about your company and why consumers should choose to purchase from you. With so much competition out there, why wouldn’t you want to stand out?
How to use content marketing to increase brand awareness
Content marketing takes time and effort but it’s important for achieving your brand goals in the long term. Here are our tips for using content marketing to increase brand awareness:
- Understand Your Target Audience
The first step to creating your content marketing strategy is to understand your target audience. If you want to connect with the people in your target audience, you need to cater your content to them.
First you should figure out who your audience is. This step is important for almost all marketing strategies. Consider demographics, location, online tendencies and more to determine the structure of your content.
It’s important to appeal to their interests and values to show them that you’re dedicated to providing them with a great product or experience. In the end your goal is to address their wants and needs to keep them coming back to your website.
- Analyzing Audience Data to Improve Content Performance
Two of the most popular ways to analyze data include Google Analytics and Google’s Search Console – both free tools that help business owners track traffic on their site and collect data on metrics like visitors, transactions, revenues, and more. Plus, they help businesses optimize their content marketing for brand awareness by offering information on things like time-on-site, search traffic, click-through-rate (CTR) and more.
Use Analytics’ Landing Pages report to see how traffic is coming to your site through important segments like paid ads and search engines. The Analytics platform also allows marketers to see audience info with reports on demographics, interests, geographical location, what devices they are using, and more.
Search Console, on the other hand, is limited to only information on how websites are performing in Google’s search results – but it gives businesses a way to better understand which search queries are important for their brand as well as ways to track brand awareness by analyzing CTR for both brand specific keywords.
The Search Console Performance report is an important tool for improving content marketing brand awareness strategy. By optimizing your SEO strategy with data driven feedback, organic traffic can grow further, which can help brand awareness grow too.
- Draft Your Content Strategy
Now that you understand your audience and their habits, you can begin to create a strategy for reaching them. Start by telling consumers your brand’s story. Build out an “About” or “Our Story” page where you can tell your audience who you are and what your do (and why you stand out).
Tell them how you started, what you believe in and what your company’s values are. It’s important to keep these at the forefront of your campaign in order to clearly define who you are as a company.
Your story allows you to connect with your customers beyond your products and services. This can help you build trust and encourage repeat customers.
Beyond telling your story there are several ways you can use content marketing for brand awareness. Consider building content for other site pages like:
- Blogs and inbound marketing material meant to take advantage of audiences already interested in your products/services.
- Guides, how-to content, and informational pages that help readers move along through their shopping journey – as well as help your brand seem more authoritative.
- Videos and multi-media elements for content marketing to increase brand awareness in image search, YouTube, social-media, and more.
Your site pages will include your brand’s history or story pages but can also include pages about your mission and work environment depending on your business. These pages are a really great opportunity for you to explain to your audience why you are unique.
Your blog posts are going to be your company’s bread and butter. Blogs are one of the most effective ways to drive search traffic to your website and among the best channels for content marketing. Not only can you share your knowledge and stand out, but you can become a trusted source for your industry which can also increase your perceived EAT (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness).
Guides are great if you have products or services that are a little more difficult to understand. For example, user guides, assembly guides or even a guide to return products. Offer downloadable guides on corresponding pages or link to them from products to help your audience learn more.
Videos are a fantastic way for you to visually tell your story. Create behind the scenes videos about production or an interview with your founder. You can also go beyond your brand itself and offer a video version of user guides and other information.
When creating content, try to do it regularly. Whether it be every week or every month, try to regularly add something fresh to your site. Being consistent is also important for your strategy whether it be in frequency or in overall tone.
- Be Authentic
Another important aspect of content marketing for brand awareness is how you present yourself in your content. Are you being authentic to your brand or are you just trying to appeal to the masses?
Remember that your brand and your presence online should be who you are as a company and your content should reflect that. You content is like your voice and how you market it is going to help you build your brand awareness.
Everything you post on your site and related business accounts should be consistent in style and personality, so be authentic and show consumers who you really are as a business.
- Use your Company Blog
As mentioned before, blog posts are going to be vital for your content marketing and brand awareness strategy. There are a number of benefits to creating a company blog page including increasing your brand awareness.
It’s also important that your produce new and unique content on a regular schedule. Although it can be time consuming, at least posting a new blog every two weeks or every month can help you build your brand. People are always looking for new information so staying up to date on industry trends and writing about them is a great start.
Don’t be afraid to take on new topics and angles within your blog posts as well. Find a new way to talk about a specific topic or break it down into easy to read listicles. Don’t just follow your competitor’s examples, look for new information to share with your audience or new ways to display that information.
Beyond creating unique blog content, it’s also important to be accurate and be aware of length. The average blog post is anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 words. Blog posts that are a least longer tend to be more successful because they offer the consumer the most valuable information.
Really try to build out those posts to stand out and be sure that the information you’re using is accurate and up to date. If your industry’s trends are always changing, it’ll be important to refresh those blog posts in the future or follow them up with more information later on.
- Use Social Media to Promote your Brand Content
Not only are social media platforms important for building your brand, they’re also important for promoting your brand-building content.
Not only are you sharing information with your own followers, you’re also sharing it with their friends. Posting your new content on your social accounts allows users to share it with their friends and followers which will help you reach more potential customers.
Social media is also a great way to become more involved with your online community via comments and messages. This is big part of inbound marketing strategy – and increasingly popular style of marketing for garnering high-value leads based on audiences that are already interested in your products, services, and content!
- PPC Content Marketing and Branding
For businesses that use paid search ads as part of their SEM, there are a few other techniques to improve brand awareness and drive revenue even more.
Some research suggests that organic searchers are 5X more likely to convert to customers based on branded keywords, and 4X they more likely for PPC search results – since these keywords can place your content front and center for people who might already be interested in your brand. It can seem counterintuitive to focus this much on branded search marketing (since a lot of people considers these keywords as “free”) but including your brand name in your meta title-tags or in your PPC search ads can help to squeeze more value out of your existing content.
The other benefits of content marketing for brand awareness
Content marketing can help your business in ways beyond building brand recognition, including by improving your SEO and EAT reputation.
Creating valuable content is not only good for building your brand, it’s also good for SEO. Search engines value quality information, so providing your consumers with high-quality, well researched information can benefit you in the long term.
Whether it be products, informational pages or blog posts, the more information you provide the more value you provide. Tied into SEO you also have your EAT rating, which stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness – sites that make an effort to create high EAT content have an advantage in SEO and are more likely to improve their algorithmic rankings through increased shares and increased backlinks.
Creating valuable content for your site can help establish you as an expert in your field. To combine your strategy for brand awareness, take your information and present it in a way that engages your consumers and exceeds their needs.
With all that valuable information on your website, you may find other sites in your industry citing you as a source for information. When you become the source of information, you’re establishing you’re also establishing your authoritativeness.
Lastly, proven trustworthiness is a very clear sign of the quality of your business. While expertise and authority can help boost your SEO ranking, lack of trust can negatively impact it. Adding content to your site like contact info and forms, your company’s physical location, store policies, reviews and more can help promote your trustworthiness.
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