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Chapters
What is brand awareness? 🔍
Picture this. You are at a party and someone walks in wearing a shirt with a funny quote.
You laugh. The shirt just became a conversational piece and you both talk about it. You're intrigued. You ask that person where they bought it and they tell you all about this amazing new company they found that sells these shirts. That, my friend, is brand awareness happening at a party. You just became aware of a new brand.
The Internet and social media, is really much like that party.
When we first launch a business or a brand, nobody knows us.
Brand awareness is how we get our brand known, how we get our brand out there to the public. It is like planting seeds in the minds of consumers, nurturing them over time until they eventually blossom into loyal customers.
Why is it important? ⚠️
Imagine you saved up enough money to open your dream business - a small cafe. Your goal is to one day grow it to a multi-chain mainstream coffee business. Not only is the cafe market really saturated in Malaysia, but if your goal is to become mainstream, you have one major competitor - Starbucks.
Your challenge is everyone knows Starbucks and no one knows you. That is where brand awareness comes in. The reason why brand awareness is so important is because it is the first phase in a common sales funnel.
Before you even think about how you convert people into your customers, you need to get them to not just know your brand, but to be interested in you and ultimately, remember you for as long as possible. That is how you become your version of Starbucks.
Do not take this as “going viral”. That should not be your goal.
Brand awareness is plainly to get noticed and to stay noticed. By being active on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or X (formally Twitter) you are starting to level the playing field against your other cafe competitors.
You are putting your brand out there, making it visible to potential customers who might not have stumbled upon it otherwise. The more people who know about your brand, the more likely they are to choose you over the competition when they are in need of a caffeine fix.
Ultimately, it is a numbers game, and like we said, because it is the first stage of the sales funnel, it is your foundation. Without it, no amount of advertising efforts will work. You may not have their massive marketing budget or widespread recognition as Starbucks, but you do have social media at your fingertips, and posting content is free.
8 Low-Cost Ways to Get Brand Awareness Online in 2024 💰
1. Live Streams
Here’s why you should consider live streaming.
• Real-Time Engagement. The real-time interaction with your audience cannot be achieved (or is harder to achieve) using other forms of content. This fosters a sense of connection and community around your brand.
• Authenticity and Transparency. Live streams allow you to showcase the human side of your brand by providing unfiltered, authentic content. By sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, demonstrating products in action or hosting live Q&A sessions, you can build trust and credibility with your audience.
• Repurposing Content. Live streams can be repurposed into other forms of content, such as blog posts, podcasts, or short video clips, extending their lifespan and maximizing their impact. This allows you to leverage the content across multiple channels and reach different audiences.
• Building Brand Personality. Live streams provide a platform for expressing your brand's personality and values in a dynamic and engaging way. By showcasing your team members, sharing stories, and demonstrating your brand's unique voice, you can create a memorable impression and forge deeper connections.
• Low Cost. Pretty straight forward. All you need is a phone and a strong Internet connection.
The key to live streaming is not just consistency and frequency but also the energy. You need to be able to entertain your audience live which can be tricky for some people. We suggest doing a couple of live streams to get started first and then gradually improve from there.
Platforms you should look into if you want to do live streaming are Instagram Stories, Facebook and TikTok. Shopee and Lazada are popular live stream platforms too in Malaysia if you have an online store there.
In fact you might want to look into Discord too because it is a great platform for connecting with your community live and it has a unique feature where you can create different rooms in a single server.
2. Start a podcast
If there is anything you need to take away from this blog post, it is this. Let me convince you that starting a podcast is by far the easiest and most sustainable way to create content, not just in Malaysia (where we are from), but worldwide.
When you just get started, all you need to do is press record and talk about a topic that you are passionate and knowledgeable about for as long as you can. Do not stress about perfection here.
After recording one podcast episode with your camera, here is the magic: With one podcast recording session, you now have
1 podcast in video format
1 podcast in audio format
Infinitely many short form content from the original long podcast
1 topic for a blog post you can link with the podcast
You see where we are going here? Podcasts can be repurposed into many other pieces of content for your organic content marketing needs, and the more content you put out the more awareness your brand gets.
You might think that podcasting is expensive. Not really!
“I don’t have a camera.”
Solution: Use your phone.
“I don’t have a microphone.”
Solution: Use the microphone from your earbuds or get a cheap one online.
“I don’t have lighting equipment.”
Solution: Use natural lighting.
You can start a podcast right now with less than RM50 (or free) and a great topic to talk about. In fact if you start a podcast and upload your first episode, tag us on our socials and we will be one of your first supporters.
3. Blogging
Around 55% of businesses in Malaysia have a blog today and more Malaysians are starting to recognise the value a well crafted blog can bring them.
Below are a list of benefits of blogging that you can consider.
• Enhanced Online Visibility. Blogs can help small businesses stand out by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). As long as you stay consistent and improve overtime this can attract a lot of organic traffic.
• Establishing Authority and Credibility. By consistently posting high-quality and informative content related to their industry or niche, small businesses can position themselves as thought leaders in their field.
• Improved SEO Performance. You can naturally incorporate relevant keywords and phrases into your blog content, which can improve search engine optimization (SEO) rankings. Not to mention with voice search rising in popularity, long-form, conversational blog posts can help businesses capture more voice search traffic.
• It’s Cost-Effective Marketing. Compared to traditional advertising methods, blogging is cost-effective considering that you do it yourself or within your team without outsourcing at the start.
• Engagement and Community Building. Through blog comments and social media shares, small businesses can engage with their audience directly and vice versa, fostering a sense of community around their brand.
• Cross-sharing on Various Social Media Platforms. Small businesses are able to share their blog content across all their social media platforms to drive traffic to the main website. This works for videos too! You can use your blog posts as YouTube video scripts so you can promote your blog on your YouTube channel.
Bubblynotes is a Malaysian blogger who writes articles about parenting and lifestyle. Ever since blogging consistently, she has garnered 1.8k followers on her blog site and 42k followers on Instagram.
She has also won multiple awards.
• Ibuencer Award 2021 - MY’s Most Influential Parents 2021
• Top 20 Inspiring Mom Blogs 2019
• Asian Mom Blogs Award 2018
• TOP 20 IBUENCER AWARDS 2018 by BPAM
4. Trend jacking
A cost and time effective way to get brand awareness in Malaysia is trend jacking. We’re going to use TikTok as an example here because we believe it works the best but you can also apply the same technique on IG Reels.
Trend jacking is perfect for brand awareness because:
• it unites multiple niches together
• you potentially reach out to a wider audience
• the algorithm loves it
• it’s low effort
• it’s low cost
• you can shoot multiple videos in a day to streamline your resources
Here’s how we recommend you to do it:
• Go to your TikTok search bar and search for “TikTok trending sounds right now”.
• Do your research. Watch a couple of videos that are performing well and save the audio they used.
• TikTok Creative Center is also a great tool to use for searching for trends and viral concepts to use and the great thing is you are able to narrow down your search based on categories like your location.
One thing to keep in mind is that trend jacking is something you should never do blindly. Do not hop on trends for the sake of it without doing prior research and understanding the reason why it works for other accounts.
A good trend jacking marketing strategy should be seamless, makes sense for your niche and it just naturally works, though we would not recommend you only stick to trend jacking as you are relying on trends.
5. Collaborations - UGC Content
Collaborations generally can be helpful in bringing two or more audiences together, which is why when done well it is a brilliant way to get brand awareness. Here’s how you can do it properly if you are a small creator or business and have a limited budget.
For instance, nano-influencers are great to reach out to do UGC (User generated content) for your brand. Instagram and TikTok are great places to do this. When finding a nano-influencer, here’s what you should look out for:
• Make sure they are posting regularly. We recommend at least weekly, but this also depends on the social media platform. Generally, the more active the better.
• Take a look at their niche and see if it aligns with your brand.
• See if their followers are part of your target audience.
• See if they are already actively doing UGC content for other brands.
• Skim through the comment section of their recent posts and see if their followers are interacting with their content.
• Ensure that they have a good personality online and offline, We recommend doing some research here. If someone is representing your brand, you need to make sure they can be trusted.
If all the above boxes are checked, you can consider kindly reaching out to them to see if these nano-influencers are willing to create UGC content for you. These can be in the form of product reviews, unboxing videos, vlogs, etc. the sky's the limit as long as it is genuine.
6. Be active on IG Stories
IG stories is a great way to stay on top of your audience’s mind.
This is because the more well crafted stories you post and the more your followers interact with them, the algorithm will more likely push your account to the front of your followers’ IG story queue at the top and your account will more likely be recommended to new users too.
Well crafted IG stories
• are designed to get your followers to interact with you.
• show the raw and real side of you or your brand.
• are not necessarily the most well designed or high in quality.
Here is a list of ideas for you to do on Instagram stories.
• Show your followers the behind-the-scenes of your brand or business.
• Create a fun poll.
• Post a question that is related to your niche.
• Add location tags whenever you visit somewhere while working.
• Write a short story that is broken up into a few story slides.
• Start a quiz.
• Go live.
• Build up excitement for a new product release or upcoming event.
• Tease new product releases or upcoming events.
• Tag other creators or your followers.
These are just the tip of the iceberg and we might even do a full article dedicated to this soon, but IG stories are meant to be fun, raw and real.
7. Get reviews
This is the final point as it starts to exit the phase of awareness and step into consideration and conversion, though you can still use reviews for awareness.
If you genuinely have a great product or service, it does not cost a single penny (or very little) to ask for a review. Reviews are powerful and it is honestly incredibly underrated in Malaysia.
Seeking and promoting your customer feedback and reviews serve as incredibly valuable social proof, reassuring potential customers about the quality and reliability of products or services offered by the business.
Take care of your customers and your customers will take care of you.
8. Talk about your brand
We put this as the last point because it is probably the most important one.
If you have a brand or business. Own it. Be proud of it.
Ever considered creating a mug or T-shirt with your logo on it and wearing it in your content?
What values do your brand stand for? Is it making better choices for our environment? Is it promoting free speech? Spread the value and what your brand's mission is to as many people as you can. This is why networking is so important. Don’t just post about your brand online and never talk about it in the physical world. You are missing out on opportunities that could help you get tons more awareness and grow way faster.
We are not recommending you to be sellouts. Nobody likes sellouts. But you need to make sure you grasp as many opportunities to leave an imprint in people's minds.
In a nutshell
Growing a personal brand or business online is simple. It is not about who shouts the loudest. It is about who leaves the biggest impression.
The Creative Pistachio was founded with a mission to help people like you share your ideas online by creating valuable content for your audience. We are constantly finding ways to help you get creating.
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Now that you know how to build brand awareness, your next step is learning how to build a community around your brand. We covered this in last week’s article if you want to learn more.
Further reading