Starting a new business for your good or service can be an exciting time, but navigating the jungle of getting you and your brand recognised can be daunting, to say the least. There are so many brands offering the same thing that are way ahead in the competition; how can you compete?
Luckily, there are many ways to improve name recognition for you and your brand and get it the value and attention it deserves, from creating a blog related to your brand’s good/service to the simple “word of mouth” advertising technique. Below are 17 of the best ways to improve name recognition for you and your brand.
If you really want your business to stand out, try any of these methods to improve your brand’s name recognition and reputation.
If you are especially serious about making your brand well known, then you should register it as a trademark as soon as possible so no one else will gain notoriety from it first.
The process of getting a trademark in the UK can seem a little tedious, but here are some simple steps to get started:
This is one of the easiest things to do to get at least some degree of name recognition. Luckily, many packaging shops here in the UK offer services to print your logo for you! Some, like Precious Packaging, have a variety of designs for you to choose from. Others, like Printed Pack, have almost infinite customisation options for your packaging.
If you would rather print your logo onto packaging yourself, then that is also easy to do! You can buy a customised stamp with your logo to stamp onto a box or bag, or if you are a bit more artsy, you can screen print your logo onto packaging. E-How has instructions on how to do both methods.
If your brand offers a service instead of a good, then you can still take advantage of adding your logo to other stationery, such as business cards, to increase your name recognition.
Note: Make sure your logo can easily be associated with your business name. Avoid using imagery unrelated to your industry or name.
Drink coasters, pens, pencils, and plenty of other inexpensive souvenirs and merchandise are easy to buy in bulk, and many, such as Pencils Direct and Camaloon, have options to customise these freebies and even print your logo on them.
People always love free stuff; once you have the freebies you want to give out, you can utilise them in various ways! Perhaps you can add free stickers to every order for your brand’s products or give free pencils to those who use your brand’s service. You can also sign up to have a kiosk at a local event to give away your freebies and perhaps even offer free samples of your good/service if you wish.
Consistency is key to maintaining your brand’s image all across the internet. For instance, if your brand’s Twitter (now X) account is rather vulgar, but your brand’s Instagram account is family-friendly, toss out one social media personality in favour of the one that suits your brand more.
If your brand’s logo differs from place to place, make (or commission someone to make) one for all of your brand’s outlets. If your brand sells different products on different websites, consolidate everything into one place.
Just like how people like to see brands as living beings that talk to them, having a backstory for your brand can make this realism seem all the more sellable.
Every brand has a backstory, after all. Maybe you were tired of never finding cosmetics that didn’t trigger your sensitive skin, so you made your own to accommodate for that. Maybe you have always loved baking, and you want to share your treats and sweets with the world. Anything is possible for your brand’s story, as long as it is truthful and appropriate to your brand’s image.
Read more about: Brand Positioning
People have lots of personality, so giving your brand some is sure to make your brand seem more like a person, increasing its brand recognition!
Many popular brands have used this technique to glowing results. For example, the fast restaurant chain Greggs has fully embraced the cult status of its infamous sausage roll on Twitter, frequently posting references to them. The UK & Ireland KFC Twitter has a lot of fun with its followers, sharing memes and poking fun at people who tweet at them.
You do not have to share memes to have personality, of course. You just need to make your brand seem like a human being instead of a sterile corporation. This can be done in an endless number of ways.
Blogs may be everywhere these days, but plenty of people love to learn more about the person behind the brand, as well as plenty of ways to use your brand’s product or service to their advantage.
If your product has multiple uses, you can use your blog to show it off. If your product has made your own everyday life easier, blog about how it got easier. There are an endless number of options for you to blog about.
Many website-creating services make it easy for you to set up a blog alongside them, particularly Wix and Web.com. And both of them are completely free to use.
Just don’t use a service exclusively for blogging, such as Tumblr or Blogspot, for your brand. You should be able to advertise your brand and blog about it in the same place.
People love to be caught up with the happenings of their favourite brands through email, and you can take advantage of this tactic to improve your brand’s name recognition.
It can seem very difficult to make a good quality newsletter for your brand, but luckily, many services such as Constant Contact, Send in Blue, and Campaign Monitor make the process much more simplified than ever.
Read more about: Copywriting
Partnering with local companies with goods or services related to your business can do wonders for increasing your name recognition! Here’s an example to show how:
Suppose you run a dog grooming service. You can partner with another dog-related business, such as a premium pet food shop, to promote each other’s business. You can recommend the food shop to people who go to your dog grooming service, and the food shop can recommend your grooming service to its customers.
Partnering with related businesses is beneficial to both you and the other brand, as both can attract business to one another. Just be sure that the business you work for is reputable; you wouldn’t want to recommend your customers to go to a bad business.
Alternatively, you could also sponsor a nonprofit organisation; this way, you can give your brand some credibility and help a great cause at the same time.
Popular websites, such as Buzzfeed, work with freelance writers all the time to promote brands, whether it be through fun little quizzes or articles, and you can take advantage of this opportunity.
To do this, write a professional quality email to the writing or pitching arm of a website with a basic idea of what you want to write and how posting the article can be beneficial for both you and them.
This may not work all the time, but it’s a surefire way to get more people to be aware of you and your brand.
Most, if not all, brands use at least some form of social media to advertise, and you can too! It’s super easy to create a Twitter and an Instagram related to your brand, and Instagram even has a “business account” option to further professionalise your account. Just make sure you’re regularly posting, so you can stay at the forefront of peoples’ minds.
You can also buy advertising on both platforms to extend the reach of your content and make more people aware of your brand. They usually charge relatively low fees for local advertising and allow your social media posts to be accessible to anyone within your advertising demographic!
Sharing content on social media is just one of many ways people find something new, so making sure your content is physically easy and pleasant enough to share across the internet is key to improving brand recognition.
Be sure that all your social media accounts allow people to share your brand’s content, and frequently make sure that any and all pictures or videos you post are consistent with your brand’s image. Never post anything that contradicts what your brand is supposed to stand for.
If you’ve posted about your brand before on your personal social media, repurpose that into something you can use for your brand.
All you have to do is save the original content, write a new description that fits with your brand’s marketing and image, and upload it. There is no sense looking over some brand-related things you may have already posted on non-brand social media accounts.
Mostly based on social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram, influencers are often paid to promote a wide variety of products and services, from makeup to books to even banking accounts.
To get an influencer to promote your brand, try and find one that best suits the image of it, then contact them (or their agent, if the influencer has people go through an agency to promote things) and negotiate a payment for them, whether it be a lump sum, or a cut of purchases made by the influencer referring others to your brand.
A YouTube channel for your brand can do all sorts of things, from demonstrating your product to explaining what kinds of services you offer, depending on what it is you actually do.
Making a YouTube account is free and easy, and you can share your uploads all over social media, thus gaining more brand exposure. However, you will also have to add relevant tags and descriptions to your video to make it stand out in YouTube search results more.
You can also advertise these videos to your target audience as will be discussed below. Just be sure to pick a video that is sure to drive traffic to your brand for the advertising.
If you have the materials to make a quality video ad, record one that promotes your brand’s good or service and use it to advertise on YouTube. Many popular brands do it, and local businesses often buy some advertising as well.
To make your video appear on YouTube, upload it to a YouTube channel first. Then, follow the same instructions required to create a Google Ad account; just use the YouTube option and link your video to the ad instead.
Like influencers, YouTube channels can be a valuable method to improving your brand’s name recognition, but in a slightly different way. You almost always pay YouTube channels a certain percentage each time someone signs up using a special link or code, rather than a singular lump sum.
Sponsored videos might also not have much to do with the product itself, as they are almost always used for regular content. However, YouTube channels with large fan bases will give you a great deal of exposure, which will help more people to recognise you and your brand.
A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is rather straightforward: If your brand has a website (which it should if it doesn’t already, a brand website can direct more people to your brand’s product or service), you can organise its content to improve its ranking in search results.
Some people hire consultants to engage an SEO strategy, but if you feel tech-savvy enough, you can do it yourself through these simple steps:
If this sounds a little complicated, do not worry: There are services such as HubSpot that can help you do all the heavy lifting and create an SEO strategy in no time at all.
Google Ads is one of the most well-known advertising services on the internet, and it is easy to use. All you have to do is decide where to advertise (be it local or global), write a message to advertise your business, and set a budget for monthly advertising.
Just as a blog can show the person behind the brand, standard social media can be your time to shine to improve your image as a person and a brand. This is especially important if you want to improve name recognition for yourself AND your brand, not just either/or.
You can do this in a variety of ways. You can make yourself the face of your own brand and thus morph your brand’s image into a part of you instead of vice versa, or you can set up a personal social media account that not only promotes your brand but also shows who you are as a human being!
Customers love when a brand can be seen as a human instead of just a faceless organisation. Of course, this can easily be done with customer service and listening to feedback, but directly interacting with your customers on social media is always a good idea!
Perhaps you can share posts of people who have used your product - with their permission, of course. You can also reply to comments people give in your social media posts, answering questions and thanking people for their compliments, as well as apologising for any mistakes you make.
Honesty is key to ensuring your customers’ trust in you and your brand, which can, in turn, increase your brand’s reputation, and thus its name recognition.
Do not embellish what your good or service can do for people, as that can leave them disappointed in the brand and angry at you for lying to them. Also, do not outright deny that a product sent to a customer is faulty; that will make you seem like an obvious phony.
Customers always like to be treated nicely, or they will not buy your product or service. If a customer is not satisfied with your product or service, work with them to make them happy, whether it be a product exchange or even a full refund.
Consistently great customer service will make people gain more trust in your brand, which can cause people to not only come back to it but refer other people to your product or service.
It may seem old-fashioned, but traditional word of mouth advertising is more effective than you think. When people talk about your brand, they’re effectively doing the advertising for you—and for free!
To engage in this kind of advertising, go above and beyond for your brand’s customers. If they think your brand is great, they will recommend it in casual conversation to their people, who will then be directed to your brand. The cycle will continue on and on.
Many successful brands got their boom from word-of-mouth advertising. Tinder, Dropbox, and many other household names never used conventional advertising to promote their brand. It is completely possible for you to do so, too!
Some of us may dread the horrors of negative feedback but listening to comments from your customers can improve reputation, and thus name recognition, for you and your brand.
Now, this does not mean you should bow down to absurd requests from your customers, but if they think your website should be more user friendly, or if one of your product’s suppliers has a sordid history, take it with grace and try your best to fix any and all problems customers may have.
This will work wonders, as it shows customers that you listen to them and strive to be better. And besides, improving your reputation in the eyes of your customers is always a good thing to do.
The more options there are out there for your brand’s goods or services, the fiercer the competition. You may need to up your game to stand out from the crowd, especially if your brand is new to the scene.
You can do this by any of the means already discussed in this list, but if you want to go all out, consider emphasising how different or better your product or service is compared to its competitors. People like things that are new or improved, and this has been shown to work wonders before.
According to The Association for Psychological Science, it is hard to remember names because names are seen as arbitrary labels in our memory system. That’s why people typically remember one another through distinguishing characteristics or details about each other, such as unusual hair colours or what they do for a living.
Luckily, there is a surefire way to remember names: all you have to do is repeatedly expose yourself to the same name and face, thus associating the face more with the name.
How does this apply to you and your brand? Well, if people are repeatedly exposed to your brand’s name, they may begin to associate it with the products you sell or the services you offer.
Some of the most notable benefits of improving you and your brand’s name recognition are as follows:
People do not usually buy goods or services from brands they do not trust. This is why new brands often have difficulty finding customers; they do not have enough of a reputation to immediately be deemed trustworthy.
But, by building a good reputation for your brand, people will begin to associate its name with good quality and transparency, thus driving more people to buy goods and services related to it.
Much like Kleenex and Google, people recognising your brand’s name can cause more people to associate your brand’s product or service with it. This means when people need whatever goods or services your brand provides, they will think of your brand and work with you again.
Remember how you can try repeatedly exposing yourself to a name to associate it with someone? Well, the same thing can cause people to associate your brand more with what it provides. Consistent quality and customer service will cause customers to return to you, again and again, repeatedly exposing them to your brand.
The reason why many popular brands are so successful? The recognition of their name adds value to whatever it is they are selling, whether it be from notability or something else entirely.
Adding value to your brand will add to its esteem in the business world, thus causing more people to associate your brand with something that is good quality and worth their while. This will help you gain an edge against your competitors.
And there you have it, 17 ways to improve name recognition for you and your brand, along with a couple of other helpful tips along the way. Remember, though: you don’t need to use every one of these techniques to improve you and your brand’s name recognition. Use the ones that work best for you or the ones you feel the most comfortable doing in the context of your brand.
