Brand Awareness Influences Search

I’ve worked with many clients who have launched new brands and aren’t sure where to start when it comes to their brand awareness strategy. I always explain that brand awareness is important for search engine optimization (SEO) and vice versa.

There is a close relationship between brand awareness and SEO.

Some users are more likely to be influenced by social media trends than others. This was the case with fidget spinners, which became popular after they were first seen on social media. Then, people started searching for them on Google.

The popularity of fidget spinner searches went up and then quickly dropped when the fidget spinner trend died out.

If you want to improve your website’s visibility on search engines and increase the amount of organic traffic it gets, you should consider adopting a holistic content marketing strategy. The more people are aware of your brand, the more likely they are to search for your website on Google.

Search Influences Brand Visibility

SEO can help you increase brand awareness by driving users to your website using non-branded search terms.

For example, if you have just launched a new invoicing SaaS for business owners, you can target terms like “small business invoicing software” or “how to create a business invoice” to attract users to your website, even if your brand name does not have any Google searches yet.

This will be their first encounter with your new brand.

What This Means For Your Brand

Content marketing is necessary to increase your organic traffic and create brand awareness.

You should have a two-part content strategy that promotes your brand on different platforms and brings organic traffic to your website.

Content marketing can help your brand:

• Attract more followers on social media
• Generate social/referral traffic to your website
• Form strategic brand partnerships
• Improve the organic ranking of your website
• Earn high-authority backlinks to your site
• Improve customer retention over time

Here are some advantages of content marketing which can help to increase brand visibility.

Now that we know how important content is, let’s explore ways to make your content work for you and turn your brand into a household name.

12 Content Marketing Tactics For Brand Awareness

I’m a big fan of creating content that serves multiple purposes, as an SEO content strategist. The following strategies could not only help your brand awareness efforts, but might also increase your visibility and traffic on other platforms.

1. Research Your Target Market And Audience

Before you create any content, you should first decide who your target market is and what kind of audience you want to reach with your brand.

If you don’t take this step, you might create content that isn’t appropriate for the platform or audience you’re targeting, and end up wasting your time.

Thankfully, market research has become a lot easier as we now have numerous tools we can use. Personally, I really like Google Forms as it allows you to survey potential audiences and see how interested they are in brands similar to yours.

2. Define Your Brand’s Unique Selling Proposition

You need to find what makes your brand unique and use that to your advantage in the market.

There may be a more efficient way to solve a customer problem, a more affordable solution, or better customer service. These are all called unique selling points.

Your USP is a statement that defines what makes your brand unique and how this can provide value to your target audience.

3. Create Non-Branded, Searchable Web Content

This is the stage where you want to use non-branded search to your advantage to get people to your website.

4. Forge Strategic Industry Partnerships

If you want your new startup or business to be successful, it’s important to form close partnerships with other business owners. Referrals and word-of-mouth marketing are very powerful tools that you shouldn’t ignore.

While in-person networking will certainly serve these interests, your content marketing can as well. Here are a few ways to use content to build industry partnerships:

• Publish thought leadership content on LinkedIn and form new connections.
• Join Facebook groups and share insights with other industry professionals.
• Host a Facebook Live or other live chat to grow your following.
• Post informative video content and engage with other business owners in the comments.
• Conduct email outreach to form third-party publishing opportunities.
• Invite business owners to contribute to or be interviewed on your blog.

There are many benefits to forming partnerships with other businesses. You can expand your referral network, and take advantage of the other business’s authority and reach to help promote your content.

5. Publish On Third-Party Websites

If you have a new business, your website likely doesn’t have the authority to make your content appear at the top of Google search results.

The age of your domain, your backlink history, and the amount of optimized content on your site are all important factors.

Fortunately, you can use other websites’ authority and influence to boost your own. Here’s how this works:

1. Create a list of industry-related websites which may be likely to publish your content (think: small businesses, not Forbes).
2. Reach out to the publisher or business owner via email asking if you can contribute blog content on a periodic basis. Specify that this is not for linking purposes, but to share your industry experience.
3. Once accepted, write content on topics that your audience would find valuable (again, keep your USP in mind). However, avoid being self-promotional.
4. Share this content with your growing audience. See the results of publishing your content on larger platforms.

6. Capitalize On Influencer Marketing

You can use influencer marketing to reach a larger audience, this is especially common for ecommerce brands who connect with influencers to share their products.

Find people in your industry who have a lot of influence and could potentially shout out your brand to their followers. This could be in exchange for free products or other incentives. If they accept, this could be a great way to increase the number of people who follow you.

7. Let Data Drive Your Content

Your content marketing will be more successful if you use data to drive it, rather than just publishing and praying that it works. That’s why we start your content plan with audience research.

There are many tools you can use to help you interpret user data and use this to inform your content strategy. Some of these tools include:

• Google Analytics – for performance insights, user demographics, and user behavior.
• Google Search Console – for keyword performance, click-through rate, and positioning.
• SEMRush – for keyword research, competitor analysis, content analysis, and backlinks reports.
• Hootsuite – for social media engagement, impressions, and brand awareness.

8. Diversify Your Content Strategy

When you are starting out, it is difficult to know which platforms and what type of content will be most appealing to your target audience. Try different content strategies to see which ones have the most impact on your brand.

9. Utilize Social Listening Tools

and where you might need to focus some efforts to improve things. Sentiment analysis uses machine learning to analyze how people are talking about your brand online. This can help you see whether your brand is being portrayed in a positive light and where you might need to improve things.

Content is what shapes the conversation over time.

Many brands are using consumer intelligence to stay ahead of the curve, shift their perspective, and increase awareness online.

10. Establish A Content Publishing Strategy

After you’ve done your audience research and collected data from analytics and social listening, you need to determine what to publish. Getting the content out there is the next step, but it can be difficult. It’s important to be consistent with your messaging during this time to build brand awareness.

If you don’t stick to a publishing schedule, you could miss out on chances to increase brand awareness. If your messaging isn’t consistent, your audience may not understand what your brand is about.

If you want to be held accountable for regularly publishing content, you should establish a publishing schedule that includes topics and dates. This way, you can keep track of what you’ve already published and avoid writing about the same thing twice.