Brand Awareness: What Is It & How Does It Work?

by Frankie Karrer

9 Min Read

At MNTN, we understand that brands value tangible results over everything, which is why we pride ourselves on being champions of performance marketing. Nevertheless, we’re also fully aware of the undeniable power of brand awareness and its role in fueling business growth. Our forte may lie in driving performance you can measure, but we still appreciate the art of building brand recognition.

Let’s take a deep dive into the ins and outs of brand awareness campaigns and the benefits they provide.

What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the level of familiarity and recognition your target audience has with your brand, products, or services. It plays a critical role at the top of the sales funnel, ensuring potential customers think of your brand first when they’re ready to buy.

Strong brand awareness leads to higher engagement, increased trust, and a more efficient path from MQL to SAL to SQL.

Benefits of Brand Awareness Marketing

There are many advantages to a strong brand awareness campaign, including:

1. Increased Lead Generation

Strong brand awareness fills the top of the sales funnel by attracting more potential customers who recognize and trust your brand. The more familiar your audience is with your brand, the more likely they are to engage with your marketing efforts and convert into leads.

2. Higher Customer Trust and Loyalty

People are more likely to buy from brands they know and trust, making brand awareness a key factor in long-term customer relationships. Consistent messaging and visibility reinforce credibility, turning first-time buyers into repeat customers.

3. Greater Competitive Advantage

A well-known brand stands out in crowded markets, making it easier to compete against rivals with similar offerings. When consumers automatically associate your brand with quality or expertise, they’re less likely to explore alternative options.

4. More Efficient Marketing and Sales Efforts

Brand awareness shortens the sales cycle by reducing the need for heavy education and persuasion at every stage of the funnel. When prospects already recognize your brand, marketing campaigns perform better, and sales teams can focus on closing rather than convincing.

5. Stronger Retargeting and Demand Generation

Audiences familiar with your brand are more responsive to demand generation campaigns, which include retargeting ads, email campaigns, and other mid-to-bottom funnel strategies. This boosts engagement rates and increases the likelihood of converting MQLs into SQLs faster.

How Does Brand Awareness Marketing Work?

Brand awareness works by introducing potential customers to your business in a way that’s memorable and positive, setting a great first impression and then proceeding to interact with them consistently. The goal is to turn your brand into a familiar and trusted name.

Here’s how it works:

Capturing Attention: High-visibility channels like CTV, social media, and search ads introduce your brand to new audiences.
Creating Consistent Exposure: Repeated messaging across multiple marketing touchpoints reinforces recognition and keeps your brand top-of-mind.
Establishing Trust and Credibility: Educational content, testimonials, and thought leadership position your brand as a reliable authority.
Engaging and Nurturing Leads: Retargeting, email sequences, and interactive content keep prospects moving through the sales funnel.
Driving Conversions and Loyalty: Strong brand awareness increases purchase likelihood and fosters long-term customer relationships.

Brand Awareness Campaign Strategies

There’s no denying that building brand awareness is important, but a question arises in knowing what the most effective types of brand awareness marketing are. And unfortunately, there are no one-size-fits-all answers.

Instead, you’ll need to tailor your brand awareness campaigns to align with the unique needs of your business and the preferences of your target audience.

Here are a few strategies to use as inspiration:

Social media platforms increase brand visibility and engagement, but focusing on the right platforms is key. Prioritize the channels where your audience is most active to maximize reach and impact.

2. Content Marketing

Create valuable content that educates and intrigues your audience without being overly promotional. Blog posts, videos, and infographics should provide insights that position your brand as an industry leader.

3. Influencer Partnerships

Collaborating with social media influencers expands your reach and strengthens credibility within your target market. Choose influencers whose audience aligns with your ideal customer to drive authentic engagement.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your website and content for search engines helps improve visibility in relevant search results. The goal is to ensure your brand appears when potential customers are actively looking for solutions you provide.

5. Paid Advertising (Online and Offline)

Invest in digital and traditional paid ads to increase brand awareness and reach niche markets. Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and social media ads allow you to target specific demographics with precision.

6. Public Relations and Media Outreach

Build relationships with media outlets, journalists, and community organizations to amplify your brand’s visibility. Positive press coverage and local engagement help establish trust and credibility.

7. Referral Programs

Encourage word-of-mouth marketing by rewarding customers who refer new business. Offering incentives like discounts or exclusive perks turns happy customers into brand advocates.

8. Sponsorships and Event Marketing

Sponsoring events, charities, or community initiatives helps increase brand exposure in a meaningful way. Aligning your brand with causes your audience cares about strengthens brand affinity and loyalty.

9. Email Marketing Campaigns

Use email campaigns to nurture leads and keep your brand top-of-mind with personalized, value-driven content. A mix of educational emails, promotional offers, and company updates keeps audiences engaged.

10. CTV and OTT Advertising

Leverage the power of CTV advertising and OTT advertising to reach targeted audiences with engaging content. You can pinpoint specific communities that reach out to custom segments on a national scale.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

Your first brand awareness campaign isn’t going to be perfect — none are — but the goal is to get a little better and more efficient each time. To do that, you’ll need to monitor the impacts of each campaign so you can identify what worked and what didn’t. Measuring brand awareness can be tough as it involves sifting through who simply saw your content and who actually engaged with it.

As a result, measuring brand awareness requires using a few different measurement tools.

Surveys and Customer Feedback

Gathering direct feedback from customers through surveys and feedback forms is one of the best ways of assessing brand recognition. It’s an approach that allows you to interact directly with your audience, and there’s no one better to ask than the people you are trying to reach.

That said, you’ll need to format your surveys to optimize participation. While it can be tempting, don’t ask too many questions. Keep surveys simple and easy to complete by limiting them to a few questions each.

Analyzing engagement metrics on your website and social platforms offers plenty of information regarding brand reach and impact. You can track everything from page views to shares, even the time spent on the site; together, these metrics provide a clear picture of how engaging your brand is online.

Additionally, every time you make adjustments to your brand awareness campaign, notice how your actions change engagement. Find out whether your actions have led to you getting more views or engagement falling off. Optimizing your strategy will require diligence and a bit of trial and error, but it is a worthwhile endeavor.

Branded Search Volume Data

Monitoring how often your brand’s name or related keywords are looked up on search engines can provide a clear indication of your brand awareness levels, as well as the visibility and searchability of your brand overall. An increase in search volume typically indicates growing interest and recognition.

Brand Recall and Recognition Studies

Conducting studies to measure brand recall and recognition can also reveal how memorable your brand is to consumers. These studies typically involve asking participants to recollect a brand from memory, and the results can help you understand whether your branding and marketing efforts are making you stand out.

Net Promoter Score

Your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a powerful tool to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction, both of which have a huge impact on your overall brand health. Your NPS provides a straightforward metric that reflects satisfaction and the chances that customers will promote your business.

Brand Awareness Examples

Brand awareness campaigns come in all shapes and sizes. Spotify, for instance, is a prime example of the versatility of brand awareness marketing. The company created a cross-platform application and prioritized accessibility, allowing it to reach more consumers at once. And once it gets its customers on board, Spotify delivers personalized recommendations to keep them engaged.

Similarly, many of Coca-Cola’s countless brand awareness campaigns over the years have been home runs. One of its most successful was the “Share a Coke” campaign, during which Coke printed hundreds of variations of its iconic labels, using different common names and specific phrases, to put on their bottles and cans. The effort encouraged people to buy Coca-Cola products not just for themselves but for their friends and family as well.

CTV Advertising Enhances Brand Awareness

Want to take your brand awareness to the next level? MNTN Performance TV helps you reach the right audience with premium Connected TV advertising that’s measurable, targeted, and built for performance.

With MNTN you get:

AI-Powered Audience Targeting: Get your brand in front of the right people with precision-based targeting powered by MNTN Matched.
Premium CTV Inventory: Appear alongside top-tier content, ensuring your streaming TV ads make a lasting impression.
Real-Time Performance Insights: Track exactly how your brand awareness campaigns drive site visits and engagement.
Effortless Campaign Deployment: Launch full-funnel marketing campaigns in minutes—no complex setup or media buying expertise needed.
Automated Optimization: Let machine learning refine your campaigns in real time, ensuring your brand gets the best results.

Build awareness with a performance-driven TV marketing campaign—sign up today to get started with MNTN’s self-serve software.

Brand Awareness Marketing: Final Thoughts

Consumer attention is the ultimate currency, and brand awareness is the first step to grabbing and holding that engagement. MNTN may be rooted in performance marketing, but our platform easily ensures that your brand isn’t just seen, but remembered.