Awareness Strategies

The awareness stage is when a potential customer first becomes aware of the product or service. This first impression counts.

Strategies support the plan to achieve the marketing goal and tend to be more general ideas. Tactics are actions taken to make the plan happen.

For example, social media marketing would be a strategy. It's a general idea. And actions on social media would be the tactics. These support the strategy.

It’s important to remember that as a digital marketer, it’s unlikely you’ll be implementing all these strategies at once. It’s more likely that you will build out one strategy at a time. Additionally, a typical small to medium-sized business may only focus on two or three of these strategies. In a larger company, digital marketers typically specialize in a particular type of marketing, such as search engine marketing or social media marketing.

Awareness strategies to get customers introduced to a brand -

1. Search engine optimization: If your website appears at the top of the search,

   they will become aware of your business.

2. Search engine marketing: It's when you increase a website's visibility in a search engine through paid advertisement. It's similar to SEO.

3. Display ads: Build awareness by getting display ads on websites your potential customers are visiting. Display ads are graphic-based advertising such as photos, videos, or text on various websites and applications.

4. Social media marketing: These are posts on any social media platforms.Typically, these are at no cost. One common strategy is to get a follower to share the brand's post to their followers. When this happens, new people get introduced to your brand.

5. Social media advertising: Similar to social media marketing, except that it's paid. A common paid opportunity that builds awareness is an ad that shows in non-followers' feeds. You can target new potential customers based on their interests.

6. Video marketing: A YouTube ad that plays before a video, similar to social media advertising. You can target potential customers based on what videos they previously watched.

7. Influencer marketing: Influencer marketing is when you partner with a person or

   a brand that has a large following. For a fee, they will promote your product or

   service to their followers. There are several types of influencer marketing partnerships.

   A common one to build awareness is a review.

8. Content marketing: This is a marketing technique that focuses on creating and

   distributing valuable content. An example of this is a downloadable e-book that your potential customers may want to read. It could also be an educational webpage. Content marketing is often tied with SEO or SEM, but remember, creating valuable content is just the first step of content marketing.

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Few Practical steps-

If the website doesn't appear on Google and Bing’s first page of search results for high trafic keywords or if the visibility is towards the bottom of the page, then consider SEM so that when someone searches for one of the products, the ad typically appears with other ads at the top of the search engine.

Instead of posting simple photos of the products, artfully pairing them with other popular items gives new customers a reason to follow the social media account.

Also advertise on social media platforms. Target customers based upon the customer personas previously created. For the ad content, re-use the new high quality photos on the Instagram account.

Pay an influencer with a large following to promote their latest product in a post. In the Instagram post, the influencer encourages followers to visit the brand's Instagram account and promotes a 15% discount on the next 200 purchases.

When setting up Google Ads, be specific about the type of product, even down to the color. For example, use “coral” to describe product like sandals instead of a more general color, such as “pink”. This ensures the products display for specific, targeted searches.

Promote ads that are typically lifestyle-based and promote the general brand, not always a specific product on social medias like Facebook and Instagram.

Write hand-written notes to over 100 influencers and include a free product. The idea behind this strategy is that the influencer will connect with the hand written note, enjoy the product, and then make a post with company's product. A key to this strategy leading to sales is ensuring the influencer has an audience that is interested in the particular type of product.