Brand Awareness: What is It and How to Expand It through Mobile App?

Introduction

The success of any mobile app heavily relies on brand awareness. It's like a hidden power that makes your mobile app unique and turns users into a more loyal audience. In today's world, where everyone is always online, and mobile apps are a big part of everything we do, it's harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. Brand awareness is the lighthouse that helps users find your app in a sea of other options.

Read on to get insightful tips on how to build brand awareness and bring your marketing strategy to the top. But first, let’s go over the definition.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how well consumers are able to remember and recognize your brand. It's the first step customers take when they start thinking about buying something. A brand awareness strategy goes beyond having an enticing logo or an exceptional tagline. It's about the lasting impression your brand makes on people.

Brand Recognition vs Brand Awareness: What’s the Difference?

There's something we want to address upfront: Brand recognition and brand awareness are two separate terms, although some may confuse them as similar ones. 

That is, brand recognition is the first stage of brand awareness. It arises when consumers are able to recognize your brand by its visual characteristics, like logos, color schemes, or specific brand visibility elements. When people see your app's icon or logo, they immediately connect it with your brand. It's like a natural, automatic response. Brand recognition is vital because it helps users feel familiar with your app, which increases the chances of them considering it as one of their options. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have a complete understanding of the unique aspects of your brand. 

And why is brand awareness important? Because it goes deeper – it's about people knowing what your brand stands for, what it offers, and how it makes them feel. It's all about how users see your brand as a whole — the emotional branding, connections, and experiences they associate with it. Brand awareness is achieved when a business consistently communicates its message, engages in positive interactions, and establishes a distinct brand identity.

Basically, brand recognition is where it all begins, while to grow brand awareness is the ultimate goal. It's about creating a deeper and long-lasting bond between your app and its target audience.

Why is Brand Awareness the Key to Success?

Builds trust and loyalty among consumers

When people are comfortable with your brand, they tend to trust it more. And when customers trust your app, they become loyal to it. This increases the chances of them choosing your app over other competitors.

Promotes the use of word-of-mouth marketing

Customers who are happy with your products or services and are emotionally satisfied with them are more likely to become passionate supporters. They recommend your app to those around them; and word-of-mouth marketing is a highly effective and affordable marketing campaign.

Attracts potential investors and partners

Investors and potential partners are often drawn to well-known brands with strong reputations. It provides chances for working together, securing financial support, and growing the business.

Now you see that building brand awareness is more than just a trendy marketing term; it is crucial for the success of your app.

Brand Awareness Strategy for Mobile Apps: Proven Tips & Examples

Creating and increasing brand awareness for your mobile app is not something you do once and forget about; it's a continuous process. Here are some effective strategies and brand awareness examples of the best mobile brands for you to consider:

Content Marketing

Example: 

Apple makes interesting content through its website, app store, and events for when new products come out. Tech fans are looking forward to their material about products, as they are more than just plain updates.

Tips:

• Make a content schedule to plan and manage your content strategy consistently.
• Improve your content for search engines. Use important terms, meta descriptions, and titles to boost your site's exposure.
• Prioritize quality over number. Offer material that is useful, helpful, and appealing to your users.

How to avoid mishaps:

• If you don't do audience study, you might make content that doesn't hit the point. Find out what your audience wants and what bugs them.
• Use tools for measuring brand awareness to look at how your content is doing. Change your plan based on how the target audience acts and what they tell you.

Personalized Suggestions to Match Customers Needs

Example: 

Netflix uses a complex algorithm called the "Netflix Recommendation Engine" to give its users personalized ideas for movies. This enhances the brand awareness marketing strategy, as users know: if it’s complicated to choose a movie for tonight, Netflix will help them out.

Tips:

• Get as much information as you can about a customer's tastes, purchases, and viewing habits, so you can make a profile for each user that is unique to them.
• Send personalized emails with product recommendations based on how they've interacted with you and what they prefer.

How to avoid mishaps:

• Be honest about how you gather data and let users know how it will be used; otherwise, this brand awareness campaign could bring more harm.
• Don’t overstep with personalization because it can make people feel uncomfortable or like they're being invaded.

App Store Optimization (ASO):

Example: 

Spotify leverages keywords in its app store listings to perfect ASO. They also often change the app's description, pictures, and title to show new features and content. This keeps the app fresh and interesting for users.

Advice:

• Do a thorough keyword study to find high-volume, important keywords and use them in metadata.
• Encourage users to leave reviews and scores. Respond quickly and properly to all comments.

• A/B test different parts of your app store descriptions to find out what your targeted users respond to best.

How to Avoid Mishaps:

• Make sure that your images correctly reflect your app’s features. Misleading pictures or videos might frustrate users and derail brand awareness strategies.
• Don't ignore user comments, especially negative inputs.

Gamification

Example:

Duolingo embraces the importance of brand awareness techniques and applies game mechanics to make learning a language fun. Users get points, welcome back rewards and app money when they finish lessons and hit daily goals.

Advice:

• Create a reward program with real benefits. Make sure that prizes are easy to get and fit users' wants.
• Make clear steps or ways for users to move up in your app to keep them interested and motivated.
• Get feedback from users on a regular basis to make your gamification features better.

How to Avoid Mishaps:

• Avoid prize systems that are too complicated and confuse users.

• Keep a balance between the game-like elements of your app and its main functions.

Community Building

Example: 

Twitch app knows how to create brand awareness. The brand has various loyal fan bases and provides features such as subscriber-only chats and badges to acknowledge and reward members of the community.

Advice:

• Choose the right places to interact with your community, like social media, groups, or in-app chat. Create platforms when needed.

• Put the needs and feedback of your users first when interacting with the community.

How to Avoid Mishaps:

• Don't ignore conflicts or disagreements in the community. Take care of problems quickly and with tact.
• Don’t overpromote within the groups. Find a good balance between advertising and valuable, engaging material.

For more inspiration, check out our article on recognizable eCommerce brands.

How to Increase Brand Awareness with Reteno: 4 Mobile Omnichannel Tactics

Reteno is a mobile retention platform that provides a wide range of strategies and tools to help you increase your mobile brand visibility. We know how to improve communication with your users in a more transparent, personalized, and beneficial way for everyone involved. Let’s explore this topic further and discover more ways to increase brand awareness: 

Omnichannel Approach

Reteno lets you interact with your audience across multiple channels, including push notifications, in-app messaging, app product recommendations, email, and SMS. Omnichannel marketing guarantees that your brand message is conveyed to your audience across all channels to provide a single, consistent brand experience. 

Personalized Communication

A personalization approach, such as addressing users by their first name or recommending products based on their past interactions, helps create a stronger connection with your audience. This feeling of being noteworthy is a vital element of increasing brand awareness.

Launching effective in-app messaging

With Reteno, you can craft and send in-app texts just like push notifications that grab users' attention at key times. In-app messaging is a great way to build brand awareness and make sure your brand's voice is heard in important events like announcing promotions, introducing new features, or asking for feedback.

Making data-driven decisions with analytics

Data is the key that leads your efforts to raise awareness of your brand. Reteno lets you learn more about user behavior, campaigns performance, and the general visibility of your brand. Below, we’ll look at the brand awareness metrics you should track to make the most out of your app.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

Quantitative metrics

• Reach: means how many unique users have seen your post. Track it through in-social media dashboards, Google Analytics, etc. 
• Impressions: counts how often consumers interact with your brand's content or adverts. It's an important metric for tracking to figure out how to drive brand awareness.
• Customer Engagement Rate: tracks the level of interaction through likes, shares, comments, etc. Can be counted through Engagement Rate = (Engagements / Total Reach) * 100.

Qualitative metrics

• Brand Surveys: Having your target audience fill out surveys or forms can give you useful personal information with such brand awareness KPIs. Ask questions like how they identify your brand.
• Sentiment analysis: Analyze how these people feel about your brand to find out if they like it, don't like it, or don't care either way.

Online Tools

• Google Analytics: You can use it to track traffic to your website or landing page in connection with other platforms, including where the traffic is coming from and how people use your site.
• Tools for Brand Monitoring: Put money in brand monitoring tools to keep track of where your brand is mentioned, how people feel about it, and what trends are unfolding. Use brand monitoring tools to keep yourself updated on the changes every day and discover where to improve brand awareness.  

Final Thoughts

Today, we’ve learned details on brand awareness definition and how it affects customer attention and loyalty. Brand awareness is a powerful tool in the highly competitive sphere of mobile apps. The power that makes you unique, fosters trust and drives progress. It's important to have a well-rounded brand awareness marketing strategy to make a strong impact on users. Utilizing tools like Reteno can effectively leave a lasting impression on your mobile app users.