How to pump brand awareness on the Internet?

Any business owner wants everyone to know their company. But it is worth noting that this process is long and not free at all. Therefore, the question arises, how to make people talk about your brand?

A brand is defined as a specific brand or name. For an example, see the logos of different companies below. I think without further ado, you found out which companies they belong to.

By the way, if, when searching in Yandex or Google, you enter the query "buy Aeroflot tickets", then such a query will be considered branded, since the name of the company was used. The same goes for other topics, for example:

Even if the query is entered incorrectly and with typos, the search engines will still evaluate it as branded.

But not only the naming and logo play an important role, but the positioning of the company among customers, that is, how people relate to the brand, what emotions they experience, what they say about it.

Brand promotion on the network

Positioning a company in the market is a huge and difficult task, it is necessary to correctly build not only the work of the company, but also get PR in the media, television, and the Internet. Let's talk about the last point.

As practice shows, most people share their experience of working with a company online. That is, users leave their reviews, recommend a product on their page in social networks, discuss products and services of different companies in communities. All this provides great opportunities for improving brand reputation and increasing its awareness.

But not everything is so simple. In order for a company to be talked about and leave good comments, it is necessary to do reputation management. To do this, you can follow the following scenario:

Step 1. Analyze brand queries

At the first stage, you need to find out by what names users are looking for you. This is necessary in order to understand exactly which brand queries to work on in the future.

For analysis, you can use the Yandex.Metrica "Search queries" report.

In the report, you will see different options for how customers are looking for your company. For example, users find the anti-cinema "Kino House" by the following queries:

Also, do not forget to look at the frequency in Yandex.Wordstat. So you will understand how often such requests are driven in and how popular they are.

You can find out the dynamics of changes in demand through the additional function "History of requests". Here you can clearly see in what months there was a decline and an increase. The data obtained can be linked to your promotional activities.

You can also conduct a SERM audit and, in practice, find out under what names users write the brand name. The easiest way is to enter “brand + reviews” into the search box and go through the comments.

After you know what queries to focus on, you can move on to the SERM strategy.

Step 2. Develop a reputation management strategy

A brand promotion plan first and foremost starts with the domain name. It should match your brand name. This will give you extra points for capturing the attention of your visitors. Agree, if you enter the name of a company into the search box, then at least you expect to see a site with a similar domain.

Let's take any site as an example:

But, unfortunately, this picture is not for everyone. Therefore, if your site name does not match the brand, you can buy a suitable domain and set up a redirect.

It is also worth paying attention to the names of groups in social networks. Since social networks rank well in search results, this makes it possible to get new subscribers.

Now here are the must-haves for every company looking to improve online brand awareness:

1. Add information about the organization to directories, maps, etc.

Although some people think that this is a waste of time and does not need anyone at all, it is necessary to do it. After all, the majority of users are looking for information about nearby cafes, printing houses, stores through such sites.

The most popular of them are 2GIS, Google Maps, Yandex Maps, Maxikarta, YP. Such placement will definitely not harm anyone, but, on the contrary, will be an additional plus and a mention of your company.

2. Publish your articles in the media and thematic portals

Flickering on large thematic platforms, first of all, you show yourself as professionals. And secondly, this is additional PR. The more often the name of the company is heard, the better.

Getting into such media on a non-commercial basis is difficult, but possible. If you want to publish your article, then you need quality material. Nobody has refused good content yet. But it is possible that the portal publishes materials only on a commercial basis.

3. Work with reviews and crowd marketing

This point needs to be given special attention. Reviews directly affect a company's reputation. If only negative things are written about your brand, hardly anyone will want to buy goods from you at all. Therefore, we recommend that you periodically monitor the mentions. This can be done in two ways:

• Manually. You do not need any special knowledge, but only time and the ability to find information. This method will help to analyze in detail the current situation of the company's reputation.
• Special monitoring services. In this case, you just need to pay for the service, set the settings, and you will receive all information about new mentions automatically.

It is good if they write about the company, but it may be that no one knows about you yet and is in no hurry to share their experience. In this case, we recommend, firstly, to stimulate customers to leave reviews about you, and secondly, to do crops. Read how to get users to write about you here .

4. Speak at industry conferences, webinars

These can be both online and offline events. You will be able to work directly with your target audience, as well as establish yourself as an expert. After all, they will not take the first comer to speak at the conference.

It should be noted that such events are actively announced in the thematic media, on event sites, partner sites, and social networks. The coverage is large, which means that your participation will definitely be noticed.

5. Maintain social networks

I will say right away that the option to start a community is only because there are competitors, and you do not, do not even consider. Social media requires the same attention as a website. Therefore, they need to be maintained in such a way that the user wants to read and read you.

But not all topics need to be promoted on social networks. For example, this is hardly suitable for accounting and legal services. Since it will be difficult to make a really interesting community, and in most cases users use social networks exclusively as an entertainment portal.

Remember that content always clings first. If it is interesting, informative, then with a high degree of probability they will subscribe to you. To check your group, you can independently audit the checklist .

6. Advertising

An important component that makes your company remember. To decide on the type of advertising, first set a goal for yourself - what you need it for. Based on the task, you can choose a specific type. Here are the main types of advertising:

• Contextual . It is shown in search results and on partner sites. Helps to attract users to the site and increase sales.
• Media . Aimed at brand awareness. If you want to get traffic to your website, then this is not the option. It is also worth noting that you will be charged for impressions.
• Targeted . Shown on social media. You can customize the display conditions for a specific target audience. There are many options that allow you to reach the users you want.

In order for users to pay attention to your ad, work out the ads, that is, do not forget to indicate why you are better than your competitors and how users will benefit if they contact you. The same goes for banners - they should be bright and eye-catching.

As a whole, the work on the reputation will look like this:

As you can see, almost all areas were affected by the company: the domain coincides with the brand name, the organization is present in social networks and on Yandex.Maps, there are customer reviews.

Step 3. Maintaining reputation

Reputation is not something that you once worked on and forgot. Regularity is important here, otherwise you may be forgotten. So make yourself a plan for improving brand awareness for the year. For example, it might look like simple tasks:

• publish 5 articles in major thematic media;
• speak at 10 conferences;
• attract 6 thousand visitors to the site monthly from advertising;
• enter the top 20 best companies in Russia;
• arrange at least 4 large-scale actions.

The most important thing is that the goals are realistic and with specific KPIs.

Instead of output

If you do nothing, nothing will happen. In all other cases, you will get the result. Therefore, think about the directions in which you need to work to become more famous. Also make your brand promotion plan for the year and, of course, do the implementation.