In this week's roundup, Sarah Fieldhouse talks boosting your brand awareness while keeping it cost effective. From levelling up your content to collaborating with other brands, read more.

Client Leadership Digital Roundup: Boosting Your Brand Awareness, But Keeping It Cost Effective

We are all aware of the opportunities with paid channels to drive brand awareness – from launching engaging videos through YouTube to creative content on Facebook and Instagram. This can provide an effective boost in visibility for your brand, but always at a cost. So, what about the channels and strategies you can utilise to provide brand awareness in a more organic way? Business 2 Community have reviewed the 5 Digital Marketing Strategies to Boost Brand Awareness, while keeping cost in mind. 

The key starting point to this is understanding your customer feedback. Understand what your customers do and don’t like and build your strategy around it. From there you can create awareness through:

• Leveraging Influencers

We see this more and more, with influencers on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. They have very smart ways to provide recommendations to potential customers in a more organic way, from reviewing products to showcasing your key USPs in real life. Influencers can really talk to your customers on a more personal basis, which can result in building stronger brand awareness and more customer loyalty.

• Level Up Your Content Game

Good quality content can have a huge impact on everyone that sees it. Content may not build brand awareness immediately, but it will also have a much more long-lasting impact on your brand. Well written content that is highly relevant to your customers can be read for months and even years after it was created, so focussing your efforts on creating great content is key to building your brand.

• Get Your SEO Techniques Clear

Planning is key to utilising your SEO for brand awareness. Although it can be a slow burner, the results are always worth it.

• Be Creative

Take inspiration from what other brands are doing, think about what captures your own attention and use this. If you want to outshine in the market you need to have creative ideas, which is a simple solution but one that gives some of the best results.  Concentrate on greater human interaction to drive users to talk about the brand and recommend to friends and family.

• Collaborate Where Possible

Collaboration with other brands for things like cross-promotions or even just social mentions can help you cast the net wider.

Driving innovative strategies to keep your brand visibility is key to surviving in such a competitive climate.

What Can We Learn From Online Gaming’s Winning Playbook

In the current climate, the volume of search and interest for online gaming has significantly increased, and it’s no surprise. But this isn’t just about discussing my love of games. Game marketers have not sat idle and have instead been smartly adapting their strategies to maximise opportunities – from introducing new features and products to simply updating their messaging and how they position their brands. Google has reported that there has been a 100% increase in searches for ‘best online games’ since last year, with steep increases for searches like ‘online games to play with friends.'

One thing we can really learn from this is how gaming brands are really learning to build a community with their offerings. This is an opportunity for you to create a true personal and emotional connection with your customers, and to show your care and support for them through a difficult time. Google reference a study by Edelman that states:

“89% of consumers surveyed would like to see brands offer free or lower-priced products to health care workers. That’s important for all brands to consider, but especially those who now find themselves in a position to give back.”

Why Your eCommerce Campaign May Have Failed

There are sometimes clear reasons why your campaign has not provided the results you were initially expecting. As eCommerce marketing is such a fine balance between art and science, there are many factors to consider. These factors can include looking at creatives, videos and images, to analysing behaviour and targeting metrics. Sometimes it is clear that it was due to a lack of visibility or poor targeting that led to poor results for your campaign. However Business.com have reviewed some other underlying reasons that you should consider when planning your campaigns in the future.

1. Premature campaign termination

Campaigns take time to succeed, and this involves testing and tweaking to understand what really works. Far too often we pull the plug on a campaign early on when we feel it isn’t working, but actually, we did not set SMART campaign goals before the launch. This can help to make sure that the campaign has the right amount of time to run and hit objectives, and to also make sure we can measure success clearly.

2. Bad merchandising

You cannot overpromise and underdeliver, no matter if the campaign is a great success. If the consumers end up disappointed in their purchase, there will of course be a negative response.

“While marketers do not always have control over the quality of a product, they do have control over how the item is portrayed to consumers. Therefore, it is critical that campaigns do not oversell a product's abilities or make promises that cannot be fulfilled.”

3. Not enough experimentation

Sometimes there are constraints on why we would not want to experiment; for example, tight budgets can leave little room to feel like testing is a possibility. However in reality, experimenting is a necessity and the process of trial and error can ensure you are getting the most out of your campaigns.

The key here, is that you must make sure you factor testing into budget planning if you are to optimise campaigns to their fullest and generate an meaningful ROI.

4. A closed-minded perspective

Sometimes marketers feel they know best and are adamant that the plan will work. Although when it comes to building your campaigns, ego needs to be left at the door and its critical to get input from all parties involved to ensure success. Flexibility is key to getting a winning strategy, so whilst sometimes the idea may look great on paper, it may not work so well in practice.

You must make sure you spend time listening, experimenting and trying new approaches to compete in a highly competitive marketing ecosystem.

5. Unwillingness to push into new territory

A final reason why campaigns can fail is the unwillingness to challenge the status quo. Neglecting innovation means you are likely to blend in with competition rather than stand out. Instead of playing it safe and following footsteps, try and think about how you can push the boundaries.

One of the most important lessons to learn here is not to dwell on failures, but to learn from them.

If you’d like to discuss any of the news I’ve included in this update, get in touch with our digital marketing experts today. You can also tweet us @clickthrough.