How to create a cost-effective brand awareness strategy

Building brand awareness can be costly, especially for small businesses with smaller and limited budgets, and this is why it’s essential to develop a cost-effective strategy that maximises reach without breaking the bank.
And remember, a brand awareness marketing strategy doesn’t just mean reaching a consumer audience, it works and is needed for B2B marketing, too.

Here are our key steps on how to create a brand awareness strategy that’s cost-effective as well:

1 – Define Your Key Market & Target Audience

Before you can effectively build brand awareness, you need to know you’re target market; essentially, who are you trying to reach? Who do you want to sell your product or services to? And who do you want to be visible to? You’ll need to define your target audience based on demographics (such as age, gender, location), interests, behaviours, and needs. Understanding your audience will help you create your messaging in the correct tone and will enable you to choose the most effective channels to reach them.

2 – Use Social Media To Your Advantage 

Social media platforms offer a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. To effectively use social media as part of your brand awareness strategy, identify which platforms your target audience uses the most and create content that engages and resonates with them. This could be anything from informative blog posts, eye-catching visuals and infographics, or entertaining, factual or even laugh-out-loud videos. How-to videos are also a great way to get your content out on social media (TikTok is full of them and they’re really well received), with The Sprout Social Index™ 2023 finding that the content they like to see the most from brands are posts that highlight a product or service and real customer demos

Making consistent and relevant content will help increase your brand’s visibility and engagement.
You can also take advantage of paid-for social media advertising options, such as Facebook Ads or sponsored posts on Instagram. These paid-for advertising methods allow you to target specific demographics and interests across the platform and reach more than your followers. You can even start with a small budget and track your results to make sure your campaigns are working hard for your money and gaining the maximum traction possible.

3. Collaborate With Influencers

Influencers are now becoming a brilliant marketing tool, with Influencer Marketing now becoming one of the most effective ways of building brand awareness. To use this form of marketing, you’ll need to identify the influencers who align with your brand values and have a significant following within your target market. Collaborating with them will help you to create authentic content that introduces your brand to their audience. Plus, when top influencers share your content, it immediately increases your brand credibility. 

Some influencers may charge high fees for collaborations, but many micro-influencers are willing to work in exchange for free products or services. Either way, Influencer Marketing can be a cost-effective way to leverage their reach and credibility to boost your brand awareness.

4. Create Valuable Content

Content marketing is another effective way to increase brand awareness without spending a fortune. A high value content strategy will depend on what your target audience deems most valuable. You could focus on how-to guides, product user guides, whitepapers, how-to-guides and more.

Whatever content you create, if using online, you’ll want to optimise your content for search engines to improve organic visibility and attract relevant traffic to your website. Making sure your SEO is on point will help to get your content seen by the correct people and make it appear higher on search engines like Google.
You should also share your content across social media channels to engage with your audience and create a sense of community around your brand.

5 – Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to nurture relationships with your audience and keep your brand at the forefront of their minds. 

To use emailing as an effective marketing tool, you’ll need to build an email list of subscribers who have opted in to receive communications from your brand and regularly send them updates on your brand, promotions, competitions, offers, news, and anything more which will resonate and matter to your audience.

Sorting your email contact list based on demographics, interests, and behaviours will help you to deliver specific messages that resonate with different segments of your audience. Personalising these emails to each audience list will help the recipients feel valued and increase their engagement.

6. Be Seen In Your Community/ Industry Space

Building brand awareness doesn’t always have to happen online. Be visible. Join, sponsor and support local organisations and events. 

Participating in local events, trade shows, charity days and partaking in sponsorships can also be an effective way to reach your targeted audience. Look for opportunities to showcase your brand at relevant events or sponsor local sports teams, charities, or community initiatives. Not only will this help to align your brand with causes or events that your target audience will also attend, but it will also increase visibility and build goodwill within your local area. This is great for your B2B brand awareness strategy, too, as it’s a way to be seen among other businesses in your sector.

7 – Always Monitor Your Strategy

Once you’ve implemented your brand awareness strategy, it’s essential to monitor your progress and adjust your strategy based on what’s working and what’s not. You can track key performance indicators such as website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and sales metrics to measure the impact of your efforts.

When building your brand awareness strategy, it’s important to experiment with different channels, messaging, and tactics to find the optimal mix for your brand and budget. Then, by continuously evaluating and updating your strategy, you can ensure that you’re maximising your resources and driving meaningful results.

Overall, building brand awareness doesn’t have to drain your business bank balance. By defining your target audience, leveraging cost-effective channels such as social media and influencer marketing, creating valuable content, utilising email marketing and being seen in your local community, you can develop a cost-effective brand awareness strategy that effectively reaches the right people.