Brand Awareness: How to Build, Increase, and Measure Your Brand’s Visibility

Brand awareness is the foundation of a successful business, if no one knows your brand, they won’t be using your products or services. Simply put, brand awareness is how familiar your target audience is with your business. The higher your awareness, the more it can influence purchasing decisions, both positively and negatively. When your brand has strong, positive recognition, customers are more likely to choose you. Starting from scratch? No worries! We’ll go over the key pillars to building your brand next. And even if you’re not new to the game, this might be a helpful checklist for you!

How to Build a Brand

Building your brand isn’t just about creating a cool logo or a catchy tagline. It’s about developing an identity that’s truly unique to your business. This includes defining your brand’s voice and value proposition, making sure they resonate with your audience. After all, there’s no point in pushing out an identity that doesn’t align with what your audience wants to hear.

Here’s how to get started:

• Define Your Brand’s Identity: Begin by establishing your mission, values, and unique selling points (USPs).
• Understand Your Audience: Do thorough market research to understand your ideal customers and their preferences.
• Create a Memorable Brand Name & Logo: Yes, a strong name and logo still matter. Make sure your visual identity reflects your brand’s personality.
• Develop a Consistent Brand Voice: Keep your tone and messaging consistent across all platforms so your audience becomes familiar with your brand.
• Build an Online Presence: Make sure your website, social media profiles, and content marketing strategy all align with your brand’s voice.
• Deliver on Your Brand Promise: Ensure consistency in product quality, customer service, and overall experience.

Increasing Brand Awareness

Once you’ve established your brand and your offering, the next step is to make it more recognisable. Often, people see business and marketing as two separate things, but without marketing, your business won’t get anywhere. No one will hear about it, especially when your competitors are shouting about theirs. You’ll get lost in the crowd.

So, in the next section, we’ll focus on the core strategies to use. However, it’s important to understand the basics of the marketing funnel.

The TOFU (Top of the Funnel) stage is all about awareness. However, customers behave differently at each stage of the marketing funnel, so it’s crucial to recognise these behaviours and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

The Marketing Funnel: Brand Awareness Stages

At the TOFU, customers are in their awareness stage, meaning they are just starting to recognise a problem or need but are not ready to make a purchase. Their behaviour differs significantly from those further down the funnel. Here is how they typically act:

They Seek Information, Not Products

Customers at this stage are not looking to buy; they are looking to learn. They consume content that helps them understand their problem better. Examples include:

• Reading blog posts or educational articles
• Watching explainer videos
• Downloading free guides or whitepapers
• Engaging with social media content

They are Passive and Less Committed

Unlike customers in the decision stage, TOFU customers are often casually browsing and have low intent to engage with sales teams or make a purchase. They might:

• Skim through content without taking immediate action
• Follow brands on social media but not engage deeply
• Click on ads but not convert yet

They Are More Likely to Compare and Explore Options

Since they are still exploring, they will compare multiple brands and solutions. They might:

• Research competitors
• Read reviews and case studies
• Look for free resources before committing

They Engage More with Brand Awareness Channels

Because they are in discovery mode, they interact more with:

• SEO (searching for general information)
• Social Media (consuming educational posts and videos)
• YouTube & Display Ads (engaging with visual content)

How to Nurture TOFU Customers

To move them down the funnel, businesses should:

• Provide educational, engaging content (blog posts, videos, webinars)
• Build brand trust through thought leadership and valuable resources
• Use retargeting ads to stay top-of-mind after an initial interaction

“Let’s Just Skip to the Customers Ready to Buy!”

Hold your horses. Yes, it might seem like a good idea to skip this section and focus only on the BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) customers who are ready to buy, but that’s not the case. If potential customers don’t know your brand exists, they won’t think of you when it’s time to buy. The TOFU stage introduces your brand in a non-salesy, value-driven way, helping build the trust that’s so crucial early on.

By offering educational content, you can attract a larger pool of potential customers who might not be ready to buy now but will be in the future. If you skip this stage, you risk reducing the number of leads moving through the funnel. Nurturing these leads can also help lower your overall customer acquisition costs (CAC), something we talked about earlier in the year as part of the Digital Periodic Table and the key elements you should incorporate into your marketing strategy.

Taking a full-funnel approach reminds you that marketing isn’t just about immediate sales. It’s about guiding your customers through their journey. TOFU content is the first step, helping prospects move smoothly from awareness to consideration to purchase.

Brand Awareness Channels

Using the right channels in this phase to maximise brand exposure is crucial. So, we’ve highlighted the key ones that we recommend for driving the best results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for Brand Awareness

SEO helps your brand show up at the top of search engine results, boosting visibility and organic traffic. And yes, you definitely want to rank highly on your key service or product pages, no question about it. But why not expand that to other pages as well?

Targeting educational blog content, for example, is a great way to attract potential customers at the TOFU stage. By ranking for those informative, high-intent keywords, you position yourself as an authority in your field and build trust from the start. For instance, a tree surgeon might write a blog post like “How to Tell if a Tree is Diseased,” which introduces the topic and naturally guides visitors toward your services.

Using internal linking, you can direct these readers to relevant service pages, case studies, or deeper MOFU (Middle of Funnel) content, helping nurture them towards conversion. We recommend:

• Optimising website content with relevant keywords.
• Creating high-quality backlinks.
• Enhancing site speed and user experience.
• Regularly publishing valuable content.

Paid Social for Brand Awareness

Paid social media advertising lets you target specific audiences and expand your brand’s reach. Unlike organic content where you’re simply publishing and hoping it lands where you want, paid social gives you full control over who sees your content and when.

If you know your target audience, you can get incredibly specific with your targeting. For example, if you run a high-end fitness studio, you can target professionals in your area with an interest in premium health and wellness. You can also use interest-based targeting on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to fine-tune your reach.

Another great tactic is retargeting ads, which allow you to reach people who have visited your website but haven’t signed up yet. With data from your site, you can create lookalike audiences based on your best existing customers to attract similar high-value leads. By using these precise targeting options, you ensure your ads are reaching the right people, boosting brand awareness and increasing the chances of turning these potential customers into long-term ones. You can run ads on platforms like:

• Facebook & Instagram Ads: Ideal for visual storytelling and engagement.
• LinkedIn Ads: Best for B2B marketing and professional networking.
• TikTok & Twitter Ads: Suitable for viral and trending content.
• Pinterest Ads: Great for visually-driven industries, perfect for products like fashion, home decor, or food.
• Spotify Ads: Effective for audio-based advertising, ideal for reaching users during commutes or workouts, especially in lifestyle, health, or entertainment sectors.
• YouTube Ads: Excellent for video content, perfect for demonstrating products, sharing customer testimonials, or providing educational content.

Email Marketing

Email marketing gets a lot of hate, but when done right and personalised for the customer, it remains a powerful tool. It can be used at every level of the marketing funnel, but it’s essential to keep customer behaviour at the TOFU (Top of the Funnel) stage in mind. Your content and messaging should align with these behaviours.

Brand awareness email campaigns should focus on providing value rather than pushing for a sale. Instead of overwhelming new subscribers with discounts or service promotions, share educational content, such as snippets from your brand awareness blogs, along with links to your website or industry insights that match their interests.

Another great approach is introducing your brand story to help build an emotional connection and establish credibility. Newsletters are a perfect way to wrap up all the above points, offering useful tips, trends, or case studies to keep your audience engaged. By crafting emails that match TOFU behaviours (curiosity, research, and problem awareness) you can create a positive first impression and nurture leads, increasing the likelihood that they’ll move down the funnel when THEY’RE ready to take action. For the best results, we recommend:

• Personalising email campaigns.
• Segmenting audiences for targeted messaging.
• Offering exclusive deals and valuable content.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising for Brand Awareness

Now, you might think I’ve lost the plot suggesting a well-recognised BOFU strategy in TOFU (Top of the Funnel) marketing, but hear me out, it has elements that work perfectly here. Focusing on Display Ads or YouTube Ads is a great way to build brand awareness without necessarily pushing for a sale.

Display ads let you showcase your brand across a wide range of websites, placing visually appealing banners in front of people who match your target audience. This method helps you reach users who may not be actively searching for your product yet, but who fit your ideal customer profile. With eye-catching creatives and engaging messaging, you’re creating brand familiarity before they even realise they need you.

YouTube Ads work similarly, but with the added benefit of video, one of the most engaging content formats. Running awareness-driven YouTube campaigns, like short bumper ads or skippable in-stream ads, lets you introduce your brand story, highlight your USPs, or educate your audience in a non-intrusive way. You can target people based on interests, demographics, or even remarketing lists, ensuring you’re reaching the right people at the right time without forcing a hard sell.

The key here is to optimise for impressions, reach, and engagement rather than immediate conversions. Think of it as planting a seed. When users are ready to buy later, they’re far more likely to trust and remember a brand they’ve already seen.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

Now, you might think measuring brand awareness is tricky, but in fact, it’s not as hard as it sounds, and there are plenty of ways to track whether your strategies are working. Key metrics to focus on include:

• Website Traffic: Monitor direct and organic traffic.
• Social Media Metrics: Analyse engagement rates, shares, and mentions.
• Search Volume Data: Check how often your brand is searched online.
• Brand Mentions: Use social listening tools to track brand mentions across digital platforms.
• Customer Surveys: Gather feedback on brand recognition and perception.

How DNRG Can Help with Free Resources

At DNRG, we offer businesses free resources and expert guidance to help boost brand awareness. Our support includes:

• SEO Audit: Free evaluations to improve your search rankings. We’ve talked about how important SEO is for brand visibility, so why not take advantage of a free audit to see how your website is performing from a broader perspective?
• Social Media Audit: Discover valuable opportunities your business might be missing out on today.

By using the right channels and tracking your success, businesses can greatly improve brand awareness and foster long-term growth. Reach out to DNRG today to access our free resources and start building a stronger brand!

The Verdict

Brand awareness is essential for long-term business success. It’s about creating recognition nd trust so that when customers are ready to make a purchase, they choose you. By focusing on awareness at the TOFU, you’re setting the stage for building relationships that last.

Remember, brand awareness isn’t about immediate sales, it’s about laying the groundwork for future conversions. Keep your messaging value-driven and customer-focused, and your brand will naturally stay top of mind when they reach those lower levels.