Brand recognition

Brand recognition

Brand recognition is about making you immediately recognisable to your target customer group. The aim is to be first in mind when thinking about a product group. You should be recognisable from characteristics like a logo or colours. There is an overlap with brand awareness where customers first become aware of you and then gain a deep understanding of your offerings and values.

Brand recognition has a big impact:

  • Customers can be less price-sensitive from trusted brands

  • Customers may even look forward to new products from you

Improving recognition for a target customer group

  • Create a consistent user experience across all platforms

    • Repetitively use words, visuals and audio to help people remember you

    • Have a clear, consistent tone of voice for communicating. This should match the expectations of your target audience. For example, are you fun or a serious thought leader?

    • Have a visual identity that:

      • Is clean and simple to aid memorability

      • Reflects your brand’s values

      • Has a consistent look and feel, including aspects like colours and fonts

      • Matches the expectations of your target customer group

      • Is consistent across all platforms

  • Regularly engage with social media such as LinkedIn. Interact with your audience, such as responding to comments or creating new content based on their questions.

  • Engage on an emotional level, as this helps customers remember you

  • Take a stance based on your values. Be careful not to alienate your target customer group with your views.

  • Improve website usability and implement SEO to rank higher on search engines

  • Use digital marketing - the use of digital platforms to grow your visibility online

    • Market your valuable content over digital channels (known as content marketing)

    • Link your digital assets to your organisational goals. For example, if you are driving retention, look at the assets you have that would help with this. Assess those that are working and those that aren’t, and create more content based on the successful ones

  • Use email marketing

    • Engage potential customers who have shown an interest in your product

    • Run personalised campaigns to increase success

  • Use PR campaigns to gain positive media coverage

  • Use influencers where your potential customers are within their audience to promote your brand

  • Incentivise customer referrals, this could include giving benefits to both the person being referred to and the referee

  • Optimise your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) so that your content gets found easily by search engines

  • Run advertising campaigns in the channels where your customers spend their time

    • Your campaigns can highlight your brand’s values as well as just selling products

  • Hire a person(s) or mascot that represents your organisation (for example, George Clooney for Nespresso)

  • Partner with other brands that complement you, in particular, those that are popular and align with your target user group

  • Pitch your products, services and updates to the media

  • Community events that align with your brand and create a positive opinion of you

    • Sponsor an event

    • Host an event, either in person or via webinar

Measuring brand recognition

Surveys

Here are a couple of simple surveys:

Customer Survey 1 - Aided brand awareness

  1. Run a survey with your target customer group

  2. Show multiple brands, including yours

  3. Record the percentage of those who recognise you

Customer Survey 2 - Unaided brand awareness

  1. Run a survey with your target customer group

  2. Ask each customer to name brands they know of in your product category

  3. Record the percentage of those who name you

Direct website traffic

Using website tracking tools, review how much traffic is coming into your website directly through URL entry, e.g. if you typed https://www.innosee.co.uk/

Search data

The number of people searching for your brand name in search engines such as Google. Google Trends offers functionality that shows your performance over time.