Brand recognition

Brand recognition is a concept that defines a customer’s ability to identify a particular company based on its visual assets like logo, slogan, packaging, style, or colors. With brand recognition, a brand can obtain higher customer loyalty, advertising effectiveness, lower price sensitivity, and more word-of-mouth.

In this article, we’ll unveil the importance and benefits of brand recognition and explore how it differs from brand awareness. We’ll also uncover seven strategies to increase your brand recognition and ways to measure it.

Why is brand recognition important?

If you aim to keep your brand in consumers’ minds, improving your brand recognition is crucial. Marketers of different companies often come up with various visual and audio clues to make customers recall their brands. They create the world’s most recognizable packaging like Tiffany and Co., famous symbols like McDonald’s Golden Arches, and memorable slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It.”

If a brand’s value has a direct connection with consumers, it shows that a company is moving in the right direction. For example, when consumers think of soda, the first brand that emerges in their minds is Coca-Cola. When customers remember a brand, it means that they are more likely to buy its product. As a result, a company obtains a significant sales volume and a bigger market share.

Both startups and big corporations are ready to do all it takes to develop a brand recall since it brings the following benefits:

• increased customer trust;
• reduced price sensitivity;
• improved brand equity;
• better user experience;
• higher sales volume;
• increased revenue;
• bigger market share;
• more conversions;
• expanded customer base;
• active word-of-mouth promotion.

Now that you know the pros, let’s jump into the next section to discuss how brand recognition differs from brand awareness.

Brand Recognition vs. Brand Awareness

Brand recognition refers to a brand’s visual and audio clues, such as logos, slogans, styles, colors, etc. These visual assets help people identify a certain company. For example, when people think of foam clogs to wear to a picnic, they instantly recall Crocs because of its logo, name font, unique design, quality, and bright shoe colors.

Brand awareness refers to the person’s knowledge that a certain company exists. If people are aware of the brand, it means they know that a company offers some products or services. For example, if people didn’t know about the existence of Samsung, they wouldn’t recognize its visual assets and wouldn’t buy its smartphones, laptops, TVs, tablets, etc. Check out our article to find out more about brand awareness.

The difference is that a person learns about the existence of a company first. After it happens, brand recognition appears. It shows that a customer can already identify a brand from its logo, colors, slogan, etc. Hence, the two terms are interconnected and represent two different stages of one process.

Now when you are acquainted with the basics, let’s walk you through some strategies to improve your brand recognition.

There are many great ways to improve brand recognition, but we’ll unpack the most effective ones. They can help you connect with your target audience, win customer trust, enhance brand recognition, and make your company prosper.

Consider guest blogging

Creating a blog is a must-have for a company if you want to show your knowledge and expertise and prove that your brand is an industry leader. Providing users with informative and interesting blog posts allows you to improve your rankings. Ultimately, more and more people will be not only aware of your brand but also identify your visual elements.

If you want to reach a wider audience, try to foster guest blogging. Writing for other websites related to your industry enables you to boost traffic, increase domain authority, build customer trust, and attain new readers. By visiting your website, new users can get to know your company and recognize it in the future.

Improve your ranking

SEO is the best way to show the quality and usefulness of your website to users. Consequently, you can rank higher and be available to a wider audience of Internet users. By reviewing your SEO strategy and improving it, you have an excellent opportunity to advance user experience, win new customers, and establish your credibility and brand awareness.

Remember to produce evergreen content so that both visitors and Google can appreciate your articles. You should also make sure that you post only unique and quality content. Try to publish and update relevant posts frequently, share infographics and informative videos, create quality links, and use alt tags.

Let’s search for an evergreen article. Below you can see a post that was published in 2011, but it is still relevant and has a high ranking on Google.

Think of running paid ads on social media

Now when the number of social media users amounts to 4.33 billion, using paid ads on social media channels is a wonderful idea. Especially when advertising through social media proves to enhance brand recognition. Besides, running paid advertising allows you to obtain more loyal customers, make more conversions, reduce marketing costs, and also obtain a higher ranking on Google. You can run your ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other popular platforms.

Let’s take Isla Ida, a company that sells sustainable bracelets, for example. The brand’s sponsored ad on Instagram introduces its bracelets made from shells, black tourmaline, pink quartz, etc. It makes viewers recognize the brand and order its products to support our environment. Conscious buyers will definitely appreciate the idea and remember Isla Ida.

Implement influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is extremely popular because of the positive results it brings to businesses. Brand awareness and recognition, trust, authority, credibility, and lead generation are only a few benefits it brings. With opinion leaders, big corporations and startups manage to connect with a wider audience, boost conversions, increase their following, and build long-term partnerships.

For example, Dua Lipa, a famous singer and opinion leader, promotes Puma, a world-known footwear manufacturer. For sure, the influencer’s audience will identify Puma’s renowned logo and unique design of sneakers. The photo and mentions encourage people to buy its products because of Dua Lipa’s recommendation.

Conduct giveaways

To increase the digital footprint of your brand, consider creating giveaways. By promoting such contests on your social media channels, you’ll be able to attract prospects and increase your brand recognition. Digital platforms are a perfect choice if you strive to promote your product through giveaways, create buzz around your company, and attain new followers. Select an appropriate prize, think of your rules and conditions, and set the time frames to conduct effective contests.

For example, let’s take a giveaway on Mother’s Day from Olukai, a brand that creates sandals, shoes, and slippers. By becoming word-of-mouth promoters, new followers will be able to remember and recall Olukai’s visual elements and footwear.

Create podcasts

There’s no need to talk merely about your product. Say, you have a marketing company, so you can start with a podcast about product promotion. Find the areas you know best to share your knowledge and experience in your podcasts. By doing this, you’ll reach your audience, build trusting relationships, communicate your expertise, share some stories, give valuable advice, unveil some life hacks, or teach something. Remember, the more value you bring to your audience, the more they will appreciate, recognize, and recommend your brand.

Let’s take ACCA, for example. The company has a series of podcasts that contain helpful information for people who are interested in accounting.

Leverage native advertising

If you aim to effectively enhance your brand recognition, consider leveraging native advertising. It implies ads that suit the form and function of a website where they are placed. By employing this type of advertising, you can improve awareness, increase click-through rate, and encourage more people to purchase.

Take a look at Fast Company’s website. You can see one of their native advertisements below. The ad is from CareerFoundry, a German company that teaches people how to become UI designers.

It’s time to find out the ways to measure how well customers can recognize your company.

How to Measure Brand Recognition

If you want to measure how well customers can identify your brand, there are two easy ways to do it, and we’ll show you how. By analyzing your audience and conducting surveys, you’ll know how well your brand is performing.

• Unprompted brand recall. In this situation, you have to measure the number of people who think about your company without initial prompting. The main goal is to determine the proportion of customers who recall your brand when they think about a certain product category. Firstly, ask your consumers what brand comes to their mind when they hear about a certain product category. Secondly, calculate the number of people who can think of your company, and divide it by the total number of survey participants. Thirdly, multiply the number by 100, and obtain your metric.
• Prompted brand recall. This approach implies showing your respondents some materials about your company to see if they can recall your brand. You need to create a list of brands (including yours) that offer products in the same category and ask customers to choose companies they are familiar with. The metric will show you how many people have heard of your and your competitors’ products.

In a nutshell, the concept is an essential part of each company’s growth. It sets the direction for the number of sales and profit and defines the market share a business can win. Hence, if you want to improve your company’s performance, follow our tips and strategies above.