Why Is Brand Awareness Important in Franchise Marketing?
Are you ready to expand your business? Franchising is a major step, and there’s a way to accomplish it without sacrificing what makes your brand so unique. No matter where a franchise location ends up, you should be able to recognize your brand’s modus operandi. That’s why brand awareness is so important.
Read on below to learn more about brand awareness marketing and setting your company’s brand up for success:
What Is Brand Awareness?
Broadly speaking, brand awareness is how recognizable your company is to consumers. How many people are familiar with your brand, service, and/or product? How widespread is your company’s name recognition? Can your company be identified by aspects such as a logo or signature color scheme?
What Are the Types of Brand Awareness?
The types of brand awareness can be broken down into three parts:
- Awareness of a brand by name
- Awareness of a brand’s products and services
- Awareness of a brand by characteristics, such as logos, colors, typeface, slogans, and other messaging
How Do You Know When You’ve Reached Brand Awareness?
One key way to know brand awareness has been achieved is when customers are able to recognize the specifics of your brand no matter the conditions. For instance, no matter where you go in the world, the golden arches of the McDonald’s logo are recognizable. Specific menu items may change, some have special features, and some design elements in the building will vary, but you’re always going to recognize the logo.
Why Is Brand Awareness Important?
When people start to recognize your brand, that’s how you know you’ve officially made it.
To expand on that statement, brand awareness is how everyday consumers are able to distinguish between your company and your competitors. Making choices as a consumer is hard. Oftentimes, the deciding factor in making a choice between twelve different items like watches is which brand has the best reputation and is the most widely known. If a person is preparing to spend a lot on a watch, will they go with a reliable and known brand like Rolex or Omega, or are they going to take a risk with a brand they’ve never heard of?
How Is Brand Awareness Measured?
Accurately measuring brand awareness is something to turn to a marketing agency for, but in general, brand awareness is measured by factors such as:
- Social media engagement
- Search engine optimization results
- Google Alerts
- Company website traffic
How Does Measuring Brand Awareness Help Franchise Marketing?
Before you look into expanding your business, you want to be sure you’re setting yourself up for success. There’s no one way to define success, so don’t take steps until you have a more specific idea.
Measuring brand awareness requires you to know two things for certain. These are:
- Where your level of brand awareness is currently
- What awareness level you are planning to reach for your brand
By looking at data on where your brand awareness is currently, you’re able to see how far things have come over periods of time. By gauging where you are now, you can estimate and project timelines of potential future growth.
Brand Awareness Is One of the Most Important Parts of Franchise Marketing
To start offering franchise options, a company needs to have a solid and impressive reputation. The level of brand awareness proves the business’s staying power and how it can be duplicated into a franchise.
Brand awareness gives an idea of the consumer’s experience, which is often the most memorable part. This includes the values that a brand represents. In order to succeed at franchise marketing, these brand values, experiences, and other associations must remain positive across the whole company.
How Is Brand Awareness in Franchise Marketing Improved?
Don’t underestimate the power of good word of mouth. Customers are more likely to recommend a brand when they’ve had an extra-rewarding experience. A reputation for great customer service will get a business to go far, especially when it’s consistent across multiple locations. Another aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked is a brand’s unique story, like the story of Apple Computers starting out in a garage.
That’s not the only narrative. Customers are drawn to stories about how a company has made a difference for people, the trials and tribulations of building up success, and the impact on a local community where it all began. These stories build an emotional connection, make a brand appear genuine and trustworthy, and set a brand apart from the pack. Again, franchise marketing is set to soar and win out over the competition when a brand is unique.
Brand awareness doesn’t end once it’s started franchising, either. Some other tips to build and maintain a reputation include:
- Marketing campaigns should remain consistent while also being created for the local, regional, national, and even worldwide levels.
- Franchise locations should be kept in the know in order to maintain consistency. This may be through a guide that covers the logos, colors, slogans, latest offerings, and so on. Different franchises should also be alerted to updates on these elements as needed.
- This may sound contradictory, but there should also be local- and regional-based factors in the marketing. Targeting specific areas and demographics is possible while still keeping things consistent and recognizable everywhere.
Our team at InnoVision Global Marketing is made up of cream-of-the-crop marketing experts. Our work is renowned not only in our home base in the San Diego area but all around the globe. We tailor our marketing plans for your specific brand so that no matter what, your signature identity becomes more recognizable and never gets lost in the shuffle.
You can find more information on our website. We even have a quiz for those who are interested in global brand awareness marketing; it can help determine whether or not your brand is ready for the worldwide franchising stage. If it is, trust our marketing group to get you the best and most successful results!
