Smaller businesses often struggle to compete with larger, more established companies that already have an established brand name and large customer base. Additionally, many consumers are prone to gravitate towards a well-known brand when given a choice to pick them or lesser-known businesses. Small businesses face brand awareness problems in different ways. In this article we shall list them and present viable actionable ways to fix them. Keep reading to learn more!

1. (Zero Marketing)

A business that makes no marketing efforts may fail before it even begins. Potential clients will not come to you if they are unaware of your existence.

Solution: There are several offline marketing tactics that can help you raise brand recognition. Offline techniques include the use of billboards, posters, commercials, and/or brochures to raise awareness and allow potential customers to see and recognize your company. Even though these tactics have seen less use in the contemporary digital world, they are nonetheless quite successful. A roadside billboard may be just what you need depending on the size and location of your business.

2.  Poor SEO Efforts

Many individuals are unaware of your website if it does not appear anywhere near the first page of search results.

Solution: You must improve your website's SEO by optimizing your keywords, website title, and meta descriptions. It will also benefit you to post valuable attractive material on your website, speed up the page, and perform some backlinking with other credible websites. These efforts will progressively raise your SEO rankings to the first page for the featured keywords.

3.  Targeting the Wrong Audience

Sometimes the intended audience is the incorrect one. This will have a negative impact on brand awareness and cause it to fall.

Solution: The company must correctly identify its consumer avatar and ensure that their products and services satisfy the actual needs of that customer. Once they've determined who they want to target, they must figure out how to reach that person and do everything possible to get in front of them. Influencer marketing, in which they collaborate with influencers who speak to that target market, is one method they might employ. Check out platforms like social cat and aspire for more insight on influencer marketing.  Other techniques include attending festivals and local events as a great way to meet your target customer and create memorable connections with them.

4.  Getting Negative Reviews.

The success of each small business is determined by how it conducts brand awareness. It is possible that there are unfavorable evaluations and bad publicity because of poor customer service or low-quality products. These are the variables that drive clients away and force a business to close.

Solutions: Because unfavorable word of mouth spreads quickly, businesses must prioritize resolving unwanted PR. Most notably the best PR method is when you prioritize providing high quality products and or services! It is almost always seen as the number one way to position your business as one of integrity and value, that cares for their customers experience.

In addition, to that simply being responsive to client feedback negative or positive is a best practice for success.

Another alternative is to hire a public relations firm to help with negative market publicity. By providing intriguing and useful content, the organization can also help to re-brand the company as an expert. When your company releases high-quality PR, your brand reputation improves since your company is perceived as a reputable source of information. Quality public relations communicates to clients that the company is more inventive and forward-thinking in terms of concepts. When your target audience begins to visit your website, public relations will assist in generating new leads for your company.

Lastly, your business can collect positive customer testimonials and share them on their social media pages, branded documents, and website to counter any negative feedback.

5.  Low Customer base leads to low brand awareness

Because the brand is not well known, a new firm is bound to start with a few customers. Economically, the company must increase the number of clients.

Solution: The company can launch a referral program in which new customers are encouraged to bring a friend in exchange for a gift. This is because clients are more likely to spread the word about your products and services if they believe they will receive something in return. Drop Box, a software cloud file storage provider, is a wonderful example of a successful referral practice. They offer 500MB of extra storage space for every friend you mention in their referral program up to 16GB of extra storage space for referrals. storage space for referrals. In this way, Dropbox gains new clients and referrers get more free space as a reward.

6. No Brand Personality

When you make a new friend, there are certain things you want to know about them. You may be interested in learning about their personality, what they like and dislike, and so on. Similarly, your brand should be able to determine and speak for itself about its characteristics and giving your brand a personality will strengthen it.

Solution: Your brand should be able to connect with your target audience so that people remember what your company does. Depending on the services or products you sell, brands that speak for themselves are clever, amusing, emotive, or even nostalgic. Strong brands are memorable and speak for themselves. Create a voice for your brand that is consistent with the services you provide. Nike's brand personality, for example, is a sportsperson who is active, energetic, and so on. The brand personality of McDonald's is lighthearted, welcoming, and dependable. Starbucks, on the other hand, is sophisticated, innovative, exciting, artistic, modern, and youthful.

As your brand establishes itself, it will begin to attract others who share its characteristics.

Conclusion

Small businesses should realize that growing brand awareness is an on-going effort that even big brands like Coca Cola still do! Most importantly they should start and be consistent! With time, they will enjoy the perks of a being a well-known brand!