How to Turn Brand Awareness Into Retail Sales
Turning a potential customer’s brand awareness into a sale essentially means you’re helping them move their way down the conversion funnel. So, if you’ve recently received some exposure that helped increase your brand awareness, you’re at the first level of the funnel. Next, you’ll need to know how to measure it — then, maximize those learnings to take potential customers down the funnel from awareness to conversion.
To do just that, here’s what you need to know about turning your new brand awareness into revenue.
Know What to Measure
The digital space makes tracking your brand’s impact easy, whether it’s on social media platforms or via a content management system (CMS). You can even find some of this information on your page’s posts, which makes it even easier to find this information. Plus, popular CMS platforms like WordPress have analytic tools built in so you can see how your content is performing on your website.
Mentions
Track how many times your brand is mentioned on social media, in the press, and online. Most social media platforms’ search functions make this pretty simple — all you need to do is type in your brand name and hit enter. You can even filter your search by most recent posts, locations, and dates. Also consider jotting down what the conversation is per mention so you can keep track of the buzz around your brand name. You can track online chatter about your brand with a variety of social listening tools.
Reach
Track your reach per post on your social media platforms. You can find this information on the Facebook insights tab or below each post on your page’s feed. Instagram provides this data, too.
Engagement
Engagement comes in a few forms across social media — usually through likes, reactions, or comments. This will help you determine how many people stopped in their feed to view your content and actually engaged with it in some form or fashion. Be sure to take note of which way users engaged, too.
Ways to Measure Brand Awareness
Now that you know what to pay attention to and how to track it yourself, there are tons of other tools that take measuring brand awareness even further. Here are some simple methods to consider:
Surveys
Lots of conversations happen offline that you obviously can’t track through social media or website analytics. One way to determine what your brand awareness looks like offline is through surveys — this can take place through your website, or even email or by phone if you have contact information available to you. Surveys will help give you an understanding of how people hear about your brand and how many people are already familiar with it. And there are tons of free tools online to try out, too:
Search Volume Data
Similar to how you can search for mentions of your brand on social media, you can do the same for search engines with the help of tools that give you the search volume of your brand name.
Social Listening
Your social media insights may not be able to pick up every mention of your brand in the social space, which is why social listening tools are so important when measuring brand awareness. Not only can you find even more social mentions you may not have seen initially, you can find additional conversations across the web, too.
How to Turn Awareness Into Sales
Now that you know the various ways to track your brand awareness, here’s how to pique potential customers’ interests and desires so you can make product sales.
Be Available in Multiple Formats
Research suggests that the majority of shoppers are using their smartphones to compare prices and find retailers, product info, and coupons — all before making a purchase. So, what does this mean? Essentially, a brand needs to be marketing itself in wherever their customers hang out (online and offline) so there are more opportunities for a shopper to consider them prior to purchase.
Since shoppers can consider a brand from literally anywhere they are with the use of a smartphone and/or Internet connection, it’s important for a brand to be available in multiple formats. To do this, ensure that you either have a mobile app or a mobile-friendly website. And, always be available on multiple social media platforms while knowing how to use them correctly for each intended use and update them frequently to remain relevant and top-of-mind.
Put Search Results to Use
As stated before, search is an important aspect of building brand awareness. It’s an equally important part of taking that awareness and turning it into sales. That’s why it’s vital for your brand to have an SEO strategy. It’ll help you continue to create content on your digital website and social media platforms that answer your target consumers’ frequently asked questions.
So, utilize your learnings from social listening and search tools by applying keywords to your marketing efforts. Make a little of relevant keywords and use them in web articles, social posts, and even product pages. But ensure that you avoid keyword stuffing — where you simply add keywords in the content section of a site incoherently — so you can continue to provide content that’s organic and engaging.
Don’t forget ‘search advertisements’ either: these are the sponsored links at the top of a search page, and they can be easily set up through Google AdWords. Search can impact brand awareness in the moments that matter to consumers when they are shopping and gathering product information; in other words, brands get access to an interested audience at the moment the consumers are interested.
Continue to Invest in Your Content
As with most things, quality sells — and the same rings true for content. So, when you want to turn your brand awareness into product sales, start with making your content engaging right at the beginning. And a great place to start is with your headlines. Whether it’s an article, product page, or even social copy, ensure that the first part of the page or post is as attention-grabbing as possible so the visitor will continue down the page and even consider visiting the website again and again.
You can also optimize your product pages and descriptions to make the copy more compelling, and use content marketing to engage customers and build an audience online.
Taking a customer down the brand awareness lane can be tricky if you’re not equipped with the right knowledge and tools. But with this guide to turn brand awareness into retail sales, you can create smart marketing campaigns that will continue to build brand loyalty for your company and result in revenue.
