Small and midsize businesses are a crucial part of any economy, and many people rely on them every single day. Whether you are still planning your launch or you have been steadily growing for a handful of years, chances are that you envision a future where your company has immediate brand recognition.
You might love your niche followers or your local customers, but that doesn’t mean that you want your reach to end there. Expanding your brand awareness can help you to reach new people and win over new customers. In this guide, we will discuss how small and midsize businesses can build brand recognition quickly and effectively.
Brand Recognition and Brand Awareness
When you are looking to make a purchase, chances are that you will look for a brand that you recognize. As people, we tend to trust what we know—even if we don’t actually know it. Recognition is a powerful tool in marketing and advertising.
The difference between your brand fading away unknown and your brand drawing in new customers often comes down to brand recognition. You want people to recognize your brand. On average, it takes 5 to 7 interactions to build brand recognition. Recognition can be used to convince them to choose your brand over another one that they don’t recognize.
With brand recognition, you must also consider brand awareness. Brand awareness is how well the general public knows your brand by name or image. It is how familiar people are with your company and can determine how likely they are to choose you.
5 Reasons Why Brand Awareness Matters
If your company has been experiencing steady growth, you might wonder how much brand awareness actually matters. Since you are growing, do you still need to generate more brand awareness? In most cases, yes. Brand awareness offers these great benefits.
Public Awareness
Brand awareness matters because it determines general public awareness. When you focus on brand awareness, you can make sure that more people know your company. This, in turn, makes them more likely to choose your company when they want what you offer.
Customer Trust
People trust brands that they know, and they show a strong preference for them too. In fact, 71% of consumers reported being more likely to purchase something from a brand name they recognize. When people can recognize your brand, they are more likely to trust in what you offer.
Investment Potential
Investors don’t want to work with no-name brands in today’s world. They want brands that are already growing and gaining a following. Exceptional brand awareness demonstrates this and highlights your brand’s potential.
Word-of-Mouth Advertising
When more people know your brand, more people talk about it. You might not always discuss the products that you own or services you pay for, but chances are that you talk about some of them. People knowing your brand makes them more likely to potentially discuss it with others.
Community Excitement
Although modern businesses can achieve global reach with ease in today’s world, the power of communities can never be overstated. Having a brand that is visible and easy to recognize can create excitement in industry communities and local communities too. An excited community will do a significant amount of lifting when it comes to marketing on your behalf.
Building Brand Recognition for Small and Midsize Businesses
For the average business owner, brand recognition often seems like a long-term goal more than anything else. Many business owners even believe that brand recognition will just naturally come with time. While it can, that doesn’t mean that it will. Fortunately, you can build brand recognition yourself.
Can Small and Midsize Brands Be Recognizable?
There is no threshold that companies have to hit before they become recognizable. Businesses of all sizes are recognizable from ads, social media posts, and news articles. No matter how established your brand is or how many customers you have, you can build brand recognition.
Building Brand Recognition Through the Internet
Fifteen years ago, a local pizza shop had to put out signs and hope that people saw them while driving by. Now, that same pizza shop can have 10,000 Instagram followers before it even opens its doors. The internet brings amazing power to business owners.
Advertising in your local area is a good idea, but to save money and reach more people, the internet is the obvious solution. Through websites, social media profiles, and the 24/7 press flow, the internet is full of ways to help people recognize your brand.
Knowing Your Tools
As long as you know how to leverage the growing market for marketing strategies, you will find that creating brand recognition is pretty easy. There are a lot of very friendly resources and systems that modern business owners can use and most of them are perfect for a small or midsize business budget.
Common Tools for Generating Brand Recognition:
- Press Releases
- Social Media Posts
- Web Content
- Pay-Per-Click Ads
- Interviews
The Power of the Press for Brands of All Sizes
It is often believed that the press only cares about the biggest and brightest, but that actually isn’t true. Every single day, small and midsize businesses are featured in compelling press releases and news articles online, and yours can be too.
For small and midsize businesses, press releases are the ideal way to reach the masses. These releases can be distributed to readers, listeners, and viewers all around the world. No matter who your ideal customer is, you can easily reach them through popular and niche news networks.
What does that look like in practice? Let’s find out.
What Are Press Releases?
A press release is an update about a business, product, or brand that is featured in the news. These neutral articles offer important facts about certain topics, businesses, and trends in every industry. Focused on a specific company (or companies), press releases convey relevant information to the public through various news sources. The cost of press releases can vary.
Press Releases and the News
Most business owners imagine a bright future for their businesses, and being featured in the news is a great way to get there. Using the power of the news, you can give your brand new credibility and place your brand on a pedestal in a positive way. People tend to assume that any brand that is featured in the news is a notable brand, so it helps to make sure that your brand is the one they see.
Reaching Major News Networks and Affiliates
In order to be truly effective and deliver good results, press releases must be shared through highly public platforms. The larger a news network is, the more readers, listeners, and viewers it will have. Ideally, you want to reach networks that have millions of members in their audiences.
The Impact of a Global Audience
Global reach is the goal for most modern businesses. Now that we have such easy access to global shipping and a growing list of digital resources that allow us to communicate with people all around the world, many businesses target global customers. News networks with expansive reach have the ability to connect you with customers living in countries around the world.
Press Release Distribution Services
Unless you personally know a journalist that wants to share your story, you will probably want to work with a press release distribution service. These services take press releases and distribute them across a wide net of news networks, allowing you easy access for a fee. Some of these press release services will also draft press releases for you, making it possible to outsource this important part of your marketing strategy. If you are low on budget, you can even use free press release distribution services.
What You Get with a Press Release
A press release offers countless benefits. Most companies do not even realize just how much a single press release can do until they launch one of their own. Currently, there are three major benefits that you can expect from sharing a press release.
Massive Attention
Global reach is not just about location—it is also about visibility. When you publish press releases on platforms that offer global reach, you gain access to a lot of people. Not every person is going to read your article, but quite a few people will. You can see a spontaneous spike in traffic and customer interest after a press release goes live.
The “As Seen On…” Badge
Being featured on a major channel is something that your brand deserves—and that you deserve to be proud of! The “As Seen On…” badge is a great way to show off your reach and share the exciting news that you have been featured on major platforms.
Most modern businesses have a list of places where they have been featured and links to the articles. You can do this on your own website once your press release has been featured on prominent platforms. Your website and marketing material can display “As Seen On…” followed by top network logos.
Online Trust
A brand that doesn’t show up on search engines is one that customers are going to be uncertain about. Fortunately, having press releases on major networks can solve that problem immediately. You can establish online trust by being presented through high-quality mediums online when people look for you.
Get Your Brand Recognized with the Public Using Brander
Brand recognition and brand awareness are essential, and you can build both one press release at a time. It doesn’t matter if it is your first week or you are entering your fifth year; your brand deserves recognition, and at Brander, we can help you get it. Our press release writing and press release distribution services empower businesses to get in front of potential customers every day. Sign up with us today to learn more.
