For any brand or product to survive and succeed they must earn a level of brand awareness that is greater than or at least equal to their competition.

But what exactly is brand awareness and how does a product or brand generate this level recognition?

Brand Awareness (n.): a measure of how readily members of a target audience remember a commercial brand, what it is about, and their level of trust in the brand. The proportion of target customers that recall a brand. (source: dictionary.com)

Determining brand awareness is a primary goal of marketing or advertising departments as it is a reliable indicator and measuring stick for the success of their strategies and tactics.

And there are three primary levels of awareness that can be used to measure marketing and advertising success:

1. Aided Awareness: Recognition of a specific brand or product from a list of possible
names offered as a prompt.
2. Unaided Awareness: Recognition of a specific brand or product without being
prompted with possible names.
3. Top of Mind: Highest level of awareness, the brand dominates the mind and pops up
first whenever applicable

For obvious reason awareness has a high correlation to purchasing habits; if a company creates an awesome product but no one has ever heard of it no one will buy it. Let’s face it humans are creatures of habit and rarely stray far from the path when making purchasing decisions. We like what we know. But gaining a high level of awareness is more than throwing your brand’s name in everyone’s face, you must also back up the awesome logo, flashy packaging, and advertising with a quality product or the awareness you’ve built as a brand will only last so long.

While there are many ways to increase exposure and awareness some of the most tried and true tactics include:
• Publicity via brand related stories/articles
• Direct marketing
• A strong web presence (both in search engines and social media)
• Word of mouth marketing
• Strong presence at tradeshows and industry events (particularly for B2B sales)
• Consistent brand message throughout all touch points