The importance of brand awareness for small and growing businesses

It may be a little clichéd, but the saying ‘everyone starts somewhere’ is certainly true for businesses.

Whether it’s an acorn becoming a mighty oak, or the humble beginnings of Apple – now one of the world’s leading tech companies – there’s a lot to be said for starting small.

But if you heard of a new computer manufacturer that was running out of someone’s house, would you trust them with your IT budget?

Chances are, you probably wouldn’t. You would choose a brand you trust. One with a strong reputation that you’re familiar with. So how did Apple transition from acorn to oak?

One thing’s for sure, it wasn’t by spending all its budget on lead generation.

In fact, Apple owes a huge share of its success to brand awareness.

What do we mean by brand awareness?

Brand awareness is the extent to which people are able to recognise or recall a business, their products or services.

Using Apple as a prime example, we can begin to understand why brand awareness is so important. According to the Harris Poll, Apple computers were voted as the 2021 Computer Manufacturer Brand of the Year.

Still not convinced? Perhaps some more recent data will help:

In 2023, Apple became the first public company to be valued at $3 Trillion.

The reason that their brand is so effective comes down to a few key points:

• Innovation
• Ground-breaking design
• Seamless user experience
• Unique brand identity

Since its early days, Apple has always set itself apart from the competition. Part of this was its unique perspective and mission of bringing personal computers to the masses.

By designing products in a way that not only felt accessible and user-friendly, but aspirational, Apple stood out in its market (especially in the ‘70s before home computing was widely popularised) and attracted attention from a broad demographic.

But aside from a differentiated mission, the company has also been highly successful at balanced brand and product-level messaging, with iconic and memorable adverts that grab the world’s attention.

Fast-forward to today and everyone can recognise the iconic Apple logo. We all know what the iconic Mac interface looks like, and we can all appreciate its reputation as the more user-friendly, intuitive machine. In fact, as of February 2023, 2 billion people were actively using Apple products.

So, we all just need to be more like Apple, right?

Actually, no. We need to be more like ourselves.

But we do all need to ‘think different.’

Brand awareness for SMEs

Whether you call your business an SME, small business, start-up or scale-up, one of your main objectives will be (or should be) growth. This means building up an audience of both potential and existing customers.

Increasing your brand’s awareness has a host of benefits, and many of these will feed directly into the above.

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Benefit #1 – Trust

Brand awareness increases trust in your business.

With countless businesses trying to sell products and services, B2B buyers are almost 2x more likely to recommend a business to colleagues if they trust it.

But it’s not just in B2B markets that we see this trend – due to the lack of regulations online, consumers value trust and familiarity even more in e-commerce settings.

According to Forbes, “if a brand has a good reputation and is widely recognised, consumers are more likely to trust the company and its products.”

Building trust also leads to more positive reviews.

And when 84% of people trust product reviews from other customers more than they trust reviews from industry experts or brands, these glowing testimonials are invaluable.

While building your audience as a small business can feel slow, focusing on building trust is a great way to ensure you’re growing with an eye on quality over quantity.

Iron out your offering and hone your brand’s message and you’ll build a loyal customer base – and then, as you grow, you’ll become unstoppable.

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Benefit #2 – Familiarity

By increasing brand awareness, you’re paving the way to brand familiarity (fame).

This is beneficial because of what is known as the familiarity bias. The familiarity bias is the idea that people tend to prefer familiar options over unknown ones. It’s something that often comes in to play without people realising it.

For example, when you’re shopping in a supermarket, you’ll have go-to brands. This may because you know the quality of a product produced by one brand is greater than that of another.

However, sometimes your preferred brand is simply the one you’re more familiar with. For example, you may feel more inclined to buy Weetabix over a supermarket’s own brand of ‘Wheat Biscuits.’

But it’s important to note that a 24-pack of Weetabix costs £3.50 and the Wheat Biscuits cost just £1.33 from Sainsbury’s. Looking at the ingredients, you’ll find there’s little difference. The taste? You’ll have to be the judge of that.

But it’s largely through brand familiarity that The Weetabix Food Company stands to gain over twice the margin as the supermarket alternative.

In fact, according to a Nielsen survey, 59% of customers prefer to buy from brands that are familiar to them, so increasing your brand familiarity with your audience has a huge pay off.

But brand familiarity doesn't happen overnight. It’s a multi-step process that begins with brand awareness. By increasing your brand awareness, producing stand-out advertising and building a solid reputation for top-quality products and services, you’ll become well-known. Then beloved. Then famous.

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Benefit #3 – Becoming front of mind

Another benefit of having strong brand awareness is tied in with the 95-5 rule.

The 95-5 rule states that 95% of your potential buyers are out of market at any given time, and only 5% are in-market and ready to buy.

The mistake many businesses make, is only appealing to the 5%.

If your brand awareness strategy is effective, your out of market audience should never forget you. By putting your business on the radar of the 95%, you’ll ensure yours is the first brand they think of when it’s time to buy.  

These are just 3 advantages of investing in brand awareness, but the benefits are truly endless. Because, let’s face it, when a company gets to a certain size and establishes itself in the mind of its audience, a large portion of brand awareness generates itself (i.e. through word of mouth and social proof).

But, as a small business, it’s imperative that you’re constantly working on your brand’s visibility and building the right reputation, so that you can reach the same level as those in the big leagues.

Where do you start as a small business?

Depending on your industry, the specific avenues you take to boost your brand’s visibility may vary. But there are a few ways every business can increase brand awareness – even those with smaller marketing budgets.

A healthy mix of content types is the best way to approach brand awareness and increase your reach.

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Digital advertising

You may not have budget for TV ads, billboards or even bus stops, but digital advertising is a cost-effective way to build brand awareness. You may already be using it for lead generation or to sell specific products with unique benefits. But have you considered always-on brand awareness ads?

The difference is that these ads won’t be timed with a product launch or designed to boost traffic to your key services pages. They’ll be designed with much broader goals. For example, to make people think, make them smile, or help them remember you.

They’re less about clicks, and more about mindshare.

Because, by priming the 95% not yet in market, you’ll make other advertising and lead generation activity all the more effective on that 5%.

Thought leadership

Blogs, e-books and whitepapers are an excellent way to establish your business as a thought leader in your sector. They also give you the ability to convey unique insights on specific topics relevant to your business, and explain the need for the products or services that you offer.

In addition, blogs can also help your business with SEO and ranking higher on SERPs (search engine results pages).

Impact Plus reports that 71% of business bloggers report that they’ve increased their visibility within their industries through their articles.

There are various approaches you can take when deciding what topics your thought leadership content will discuss:

• Industry news and trends
• Customer pain points and FAQs
• Company culture and CSR
• Keyword-first (targeting the most common searches relevant to your products and services)

We would recommend a mix of all the above for most businesses. The benefit of going keyword-first is that you can ensure you’re always tackling SEO.

However, building thought leadership is also about authenticity and building authority in your industry, so don’t forget to prioritise quality storytelling and useful content for your target audience – even when starting with keywords and commonly searched queries.  

Social media

Social media has the ability to help your business reach more customers than ever before.

As of January 2024, there were 5.04 billion social media users worldwide, accounting for 62.3% of the world's population.

With such a vast potential audience, social media platforms can help you attract new customers and increase your brand’s overall visibility.

But social media is a tricky beast to master. You’ll need to choose the platforms that best suits your business to avoid spreading your resources too thin. For example, LinkedIn is the most effective platform for B2B lead generation, so if your business falls into this category it would be worth focusing efforts here. You’ll also want to have a solid content plan to ensure you’re achieving a cohesive tone and consistent quality.

It’s important to post a variety of content formats to keep your audience engaged. For example, reels/shorts, text-based posts and images.

Finally, social media algorithms favour those who post consistently. This means posts from consistent accounts are more likely to show higher up in people’s feeds and increase the likelihood of getting seen.

Consistency also allows you to maintain a strong relationship with your audience as you can reply to comments quickly and stay connected. Remaining consistent can be difficult, but with a bit of planning it isn’t as daunting as you may think.

Case studies

Case studies and success stories improve brand awareness in a few ways.

If, for example, you have a case study working with a well-known brand or company, you can piggyback off that brand’s reputation. This will help you build trust, and potentially achieve recognition by association.

In addition to this, case studies are an effective way of showcasing the quality of your work.  This is especially true if the case study includes quantifiable results. Because whatever your brand’s personality, you’ll always want it to be associated with great results and best-in-class quality.  

Case studies also help with brand visibility as they can help you rank on search engines for the services on show. This means prospective customers who may not yet be aware of your business are more likely to find you by searching for a service you provide.

Planning is the key to success

Ok, so you understand the importance of a marketing mix that includes both brand awareness and lead generation. But now you have to actually implement it. Does that mean twice the work? More marketing resources?

Have no fear, we want to help you work smarter, not harder. And that’s why planning your content in advance is crucial.

Content plans help you see the big picture and align your marketing with your overall business strategy, but they also help you to keep track of all the detail– from establishing KPIs and ensuring consistency to generating fresh ideas and learning what works well.

To help you plan your way to fame, we’ve put together a free downloadable content plan.

Download your free content plan

The plan is split into quarterly chunks with frequency and formats, so you can achieve the perfect marketing mix and spend more time ‘thinking different’ and less time playing catch up.