Matthew LanghamWe now live in a digital age in which social media rules the roost if you want to market your business to a global audience. If you are a small business owner you may want to give the idea of “brand awareness” much more thought.
According to Google the definition of brand awareness is “The extent to which consumers are familiar with the distinctive qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services”. By having positive brand awareness you can have a significant edge over the competitors in your industry.
Some of the benefits of increasing brand awareness may include:
- Increase in word of mouth marketing
- Increase in sales and using online data to measure ROI of brand awareness efforts
- Increase in customer loyalty
- Ensuring your brand is competitive amongst similar businesses
Alongside your online efforts you can also combine this with offline, traditional advertising in order to generate further potential for online interaction.
Brands are increasingly organising events to generate human-to-human interaction and build relationships with clients and prospects. This may be a business workshop, careers fair, blogger social event, national business exhibition or even something as simple as sponsoring a charity event.
A great example of this the Blogger Bash held by Search Laboratory, in which footwear chain Wynsors World of Shoes were asked to take part alongside numerous other local and global fashion and travel businesses.
Held in London, the event attracted well-known fashion bloggers from across the country and gave them the opportunity to take part in giveaways, competitions and socialize; whist the brands benefitted from the potential of online coverage and opening up their brand to a new audience.
Social media was a big factor in the success of the event. By publicising the hashtag of #SLBloggerBash to the bloggers, the brands were able to receive on-going social mentions. The brands also used their social media to promote the event (before, during and after the occasion) and this opened up the opportunity with wider online engagement.
If you have never hosted an event it can demand a level of organisation but it really isn’t that daunting. Post-event you should follow up on any potential leads, as well as any online and offline coverage.
By hosting an event, for example, in the form of an exhibition, a blogger meet-up or a career workshop; you have the opportunity to combine traditional forms of advertising with online social media. With a good understanding of your budget, your customers and what you want to achieve, you can really reap the benefits of hosting an event as part of your marketing strategy.
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