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PROMOTING YOUR BRAND Brand Awareness = Top of Mind Awareness

PROMOTING YOUR BRAND
Brand Awareness = Top of Mind Awareness
Let’s not “split hairs” trying to define the difference – brand awareness and top of mind awareness are synonymous. They mean the same thing. Simply put, both terms underscore the critical importance to ensure that … when it’s time to buy your product or service … your customers, prospects and referral partners (your TOMA Audience) think of you first as the primary choice.

Two points to remember. First, no one ever bought a product or service they never heard about. Second, people buy from people based on trust and relationships – that means from businesses they know and trust. Creating and maintaining top of mind awareness enhances relationships and builds trust.

And it does not matter what business you are in. The principle is the same whether you are an accountant, printer, restaurateur, provider of portable johns or a clothing store.

Diligently position your brand awareness so that whenever anyone in your TOMA Audience is ready to buy your product or service, your brand immediately rises to the pinnacle of their top-of-mind awareness.

OK, so much for the “what to do”. Now let’s take a look at the “how to do”. It’s as simple as initiating and maintaining regular contact with your TOMA Audience. Ideally, do so via a variety of media that fits your budget – emails, newsletters, networking, vehicle branding and, as appropriate, newspapers, radio and TV.

Here’s a guiding principle. Your objective is to be perpetually visible. To be remembered, make your message and delivery vehicles visible. That will differentiate you from your competitors and position you at the peak of the top-of-mind awareness hill.

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Visible and Not So Visible
Did you ever hear someone say (in effect), “I’ll never forget old Whatsisname”? Lesson: When you are out of sight – you are out of mind.

To attain and maintain top-of-mind awareness with your TOMA Audience (customers, referral partners & prime prospects) be visible. If your brand is visible, that means it is readily apparent, plus –

Arresting, big as life, bold, clear, conspicuous, discernible, distinguishable, in sight, in view, manifest, obvious, out in the open, pointed, pronounced, striking and unmistakable.

If your brand is not visible to your TOMA Audience, then you will not enjoy top-of-mind awareness, but your brand image will be perceived (if at all) as:

Concealed, hidden, invisible and obscured.

Cultivating Brand Awareness
So, where to create and maintain top-of-mind (brand) awareness?
Your TOMA objectives:

  • Encourage repeat business from existing and past customers

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Your best customer is your competitors’ best prospect. It is 14 -17 times more costly to develop new business from non-customers than to win repeat business from customers who have had a successful experience dealing with you.

  • Convert prospect to customers

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Keep your pipeline full. There will be natural attrition of customers through sale of the business, competition, retirement, death, and insolvency. So keep packing in the reserves to replace those lost plus enhance your core base of new business.

  • Cultivate referral partners

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Foster relationship synergy where 1 + 1 = 3 or 4 or 5 or more.

  • Nurture suspects to get to know you

You have a large untapped pool of potential customers. Invest in some “missionary” work to reach out and touch them.
And the noted marketing guru, Seth Godin addresses the need to be persistent in all these efforts. Here’s a synopsis. Click here for the full text.

The Curse of Frequency by Seth Godin

“The most indisputable truth of outbound marketing: Frequency improves compliance.

“If you promote something twice to one hundred people it will lead to more sales than if you promote it once to two hundred people.

Frequency galvanizes attention and improves trust.”

Godin goes on to say that you run the risk of annoying those in your TOMA Audience who have already acted on your offer. In his words, “Those folks don’t want or need to hear the message again.”

“The line between frequency and annoying is thin indeed. You believe in what you sell or you wouldn’t make it, wouldn’t devote yourself to it, wouldn’t sell it. At some point, though, the frequency of repetition stops being helpful enthusiasm and starts being selfish.”

“Jay Levinson likes to say that you should change your marketing not when the staff, your family or your agency tells you to–but when your accountant does.”

“I’d like to tell you that there’s a magic solution to not repeating yourself as a marketer, to respecting the best and brightest of your tribe and being able to merely whisper about your new project … but most of the time, as you work to reach the edges, frequency works.”

“Curse or not, the fact remains: frequency works. We’re going to be stuck with it for a while, I fear.”

Conclusion
Identify your TOMA Audience(s). Initiate and maintain a regularly frequent series of efforts to ensure visibility of your brand. Here are four that you’ll find helpful.

Four Proven Ways to Create and Maintain Top-of-Mind Awareness – and Affordable Resources to Help You:

  1. Join and actively participate in networking groups – WHIMBY, BNI
  2. Aggressively use all social media outlets that reach your target market – LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
  3. Seek testimonials from customers and referral sources and post prominently – Your website, Your blogs
  4. Prepare and deliver high volume informational (not selling) E-Newsletters