Whether you have a small, single-location business or a growing midsize company, building brand awareness is a vital component of any marketing campaign. It can help turn one-time visitors into repeat customers who not only recognize your business as a provider of certain goods and services, but also see your brand as important in their lives.
TV, radio, and print advertising provides marketers with broad platforms capable of reaching thousands of consumers. Digital display and video help augment these marketing strategies and build brand awareness among targeted demographics with specific messages designed to increase knowledge and familiarity with the brand. These two approaches work particularly well in tandem, since one strategy alone simply isn't effective enough in today's media-saturated world.
A Good Combo
Media consumption is growing overall, according to a recent Nielsen cross-platform report. Driving that is a growth in digital consumption, although consumers still spend a fair amount of time in front of TV screens. You want to be sure to reach both of these audiences. While TV is a great place to run broad marketing campaigns, digital video and display ads can be hypertargeted to reach specific demographics and locations, making them more efficient (in most cases) for small and midsize business budgets.
For instance, if you're marketing a local gym, you can run ads on local TV to reach a general audience and then hypertarget local users of popular fitness websites or find local social media users who have "liked" fitness-oriented pages on Facebook with digital ads. This is a great way to make your marketing dollars work harder for you while driving casual awareness of your brand. Even if consumers don't immediately click on an ad or like your page on Facebook, they will be more aware of your name and logo, which could help drive conversions later — especially in January when many consumers are looking to join a new gym. So, while this type of advertising isn't necessarily designed to produce conversions overnight, building brand awareness can make all the difference when consumers are thinking about making a purchase or are faced with options from competitors.
Why Skipping the Ad Isn't a Problem
One of the biggest issues marketers face is that consumers often elect to skip pre-roll ads after a few seconds to quickly get to their desired content. Because so few consumers actually watch full ads, many marketers dismiss pre-roll videos and display ads as ineffective. However, a recent Nielsen study commissioned by Facebook shows this isn't true. Brands that created ads and video that were viewed for less than one second still saw increased ad recall, brand awareness and even purchase consideration. So even if consumers aren't exactly "watching" your video, as long as an impression is made, they're still impacted by the ad and you'll see a return on your investment as a result.
TV is a great way to introduce a broad range of new consumers to your business, but by adding video and display advertising, you'll keep your brand on the minds of those consumers who are most likely to convert.
