Brand awareness

Brand awareness, or brand recognition, refers to a customer's level of familiarity with a product or service by name. It marks the beginning of a consumer’s interest in a product or service. Brand awareness is also the first step on a consumer's path to purchase, as well as the starting point of their relationship with a brand.

Ever wonder why you recognize, remember, and have an association with a company, even if you don’t use their products? It’s because they have strong brand awareness, which means consumers are familiar with, or aware of, their brands.

A business’s brand is much more than just a logo or a tagline. It’s a combination of what products they sell, how they tell their story, their aesthetic, the customer and brand experience they deliver, what the company stands for, and more.

For example, think about your best friend. The first time you met that person, they made an initial impression on you. Additional interactions with that person informed your feelings about them over time. And based on that, you’ve developed a sense of who they are and what they stand for. In your mind, your best friend has a brand. It’s formed through the combination of all your experiences with them.

A customer’s perception of a brand is based on a range of inputs over time. Companies build brands by delivering a consistent message and experience across touchpoints. That consistency—that repetition of messaging and experience—is fundamental to making your brand memorable, which is key to building brand awareness.

Brand awareness helps your brand become top of mind with potential customers when they begin to consider purchase decisions. After all, a strong brand is important, but to grow your business, you need consumers to know about it. Brand awareness is important because it helps foster trust and allows brands to tell their story and build brand equity with consumers.

According to a 2022 global survey from Statista, 5 out of 10 consumers said they would be willing to spend extra for a brand with an image that appealed to them. “In 2024, the aggregate value of the world’s 100 most valuable brands increased by over 20% and reached a record $8.3 trillion,” according to Statista. “By comparison, this figure stood at around $5 trillion just four years earlier.”

Brand awareness is also important because it helps develop a strong identity through which a company can share its values and mission. This type of connection is important to consumers. According to the HAQM Ads Higher Impact study, 79% of respondents said they are more likely to purchase a products or services from brands whose values align with their own.¹

Brand awareness works to help familiarize customers with a brand or product through promotions, advertising, social media, and more. A successful brand awareness campaign will work to help differentiate a brand or product from others. Many brands may connect brand awareness with consideration: The more consumers who are aware of your brand or product, the more likely they may be to consider purchasing.

Though the purchase journey is not linear, the traditional marketing funnel still provides a useful way to visualize it and to demonstrate the importance of awareness.

Awareness is at the very top of the funnel, where there are consumers who may be interested in learning more about your products. Here, a brand that can grab customers’ attention with a positive experience will help raise awareness and possibly inspire them to seek more information.

When customers begin to seek information, they enter the next phase of the funnel: consideration, when they are considering making a purchase. Their intent to purchase has increased, based on the inspiration they’ve received at the awareness level. Those who are compelled further, through additional information, then enter the conversion phase, when they’ll look to make a purchase.

Throughout the process, your potential customers are narrowing down their options. Companies that already have brand awareness with customers are ahead of the curve, because they don’t have to explain who they are and what makes them different. Essentially, they’ve already introduced themselves, so they can focus on delivering more specific information that is relevant to a potential buyer’s purchase decision.

Let’s say you’ve just heard about a cutting-edge new television that piqued your interest. And let’s say that two companies are selling the same TV at a similar price—the first is a company you know nothing about, and the other is a company with strong brand awareness. Even if you’ve never purchased a product from the second company, its brand awareness is a strength that lends credibility to its product. And that’s why building brand awareness is so important.

Everyone’s attention is limited. With countless brands vying for the same consumers’ attention, it is useful to be the first brand they think of when considering a product in your category. Big brands know this, and that’s why we know them. It’s no coincidence that many consumers have existing associations between these brands and what they offer. And it’s no mistake that these well-known brands have long invested in increasing awareness.

Companies can help increase brand awareness through promotions, social media, influencer programs, and, of course, brand advertising. Brands are also finding other creative ways to increase awareness through streaming, content marketing, immersive storytelling, interactive advertising, experiential advertising, and more. According to Statista, as of August 2024, approximately 87 percent of business-to-business (B2B) content marketers surveyed worldwide said their organizations successfully created brand awareness with the help of content marketing.

For example, brands can use Sponsored Display video to make a product and brand story more memorable while customers are shopping or consuming the content they love. Advertisers who used video creative for Sponsored Display and selected the “optimize for conversion” bid optimization saw on average 86% of sales from new-to-brand shoppers, compared to 78% for those using image creative.¹ Sponsored Brands can help brands get noticed with creative ads that showcase a brand or product in shopping results. Advertisers who used all Sponsored Brands ad formats saw, on average, 79% of their sales from new-to-brand customers.²

HAQM Ads offers several ways to measure brand awareness, such as new-to-brand metrics. Sponsored Brands offers unique reporting with new-to-brand metrics, which help you measure the total number of first-time customers or total first-time sales in the past 12 months.

Knowing that many non-HAQM channels play a role in the customer journey, you can gain visibility into how audiences discover your products with HAQM Attribution. The console helps you unify your advertising measurement, across search, social, video, display, and email. By understanding the impact of your digital advertising across touchpoints, you can better drive awareness and achieve your brand marketing goals.

No matter what your budget is, there are solutions that can help you drive measurable outcomes.

Brands of all sizes have driven awareness and grown their businesses on HAQM by using a range of complementary brand-building solutions—whether they’re large companies, or first-time authors promoting a new self-published Kindle novel, and everyone in between.

To raise awareness and develop a deeper relationship with potential customers, HAQM Ads offers a range of relevant and effective solutions. Sponsored Brands, for example, helps brands engage shoppers as they browse and discover products on HAQM. You can create a custom headline to share your brand message and showcase products to customers when they’re looking to buy. If they click on the logo in your ad, they’re taken to a custom landing page or to a Store, where you can showcase your brand products further through a more immersive shopping experience. A self-service Store helps raise brand awareness at no additional cost, as do Posts and streaming with HAQM Live.

Capture attention across content and commerce using unparalleled insights and innovative ad formats from HAQM Ads.