Brand Awareness vs. Brand Reputation: What They Can Both Do For You

Do people know about your brand or company? Have they heard of you before? If no one is aware of your company, it will be challenging to convince them to buy your product or service.

But what if people do know about your company or brand - but don’t associate good things with it?

Both of these questions are extremely important to keep in mind when it comes to starting a new business, recovering from a situation, or going into a new market.

The answer to these questions comes down to brand awareness and brand reputation.

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is when potential customers recognize your brand and correctly associate it with what you are trying to sell. Again, you don’t have to reach global status; you just need to be sure your brand is an option on the table when people begin their search for your product or service.

Brand awareness is important to all brands, no matter what they sell or how complex their buying process is.

Brand awareness can take on many forms. The Nike swoosh is a great example. You see the mark, and you know exactly what brand that is.

On a smaller scale, your local grocery store can have high brand awareness in your neighborhood because people drive by it, and it is convenient. Simply existing in an area where people need groceries makes people aware of the business.

Benefits of High Brand Awareness

There are so many benefits of people knowing what your brand is and what it does.

The most important benefit of brand awareness is that potential customers actually know you exist and are a solution to their needs.

When you have a strong presence in a market, you can typically charge a premium for your products or services (i.e., Rolex).

Lastly, a great perk for high brand awareness is that you may own your market so well that people can’t think of another option off the top of their heads - making your brand the more obvious choice.

Brand Reputation

So, we’ve talked about people knowing about your brand. Let’s add another incredibly important layer - people having trust in your brand.

While brand awareness is what most people will discuss, I like to add on the layer of brand reputation. People can be aware of your brand - but in a bad way. And in my opinion, a bad brand reputation is worse than no awareness at all.

Brand reputation is exactly what it sounds like - the reputation of your brand. How do your potential customers perceive you?

So the first step - is to get in front of your audience with your brand, so they know to look for you, but the second step - is to provide a good experience so that people keep coming back. This experience needs to be shared - there is no better marketing strategy than word of mouth, but you have to have a good product in order to earn that strategy.

Benefits of a Good Brand Reputation

The benefits of a good reputation are very similar to the benefits of high brand awareness, but I will add in one thing - your cost per acquisition (or customer) should decrease.

As I mentioned before, there is no better marketing strategy than word of mouth, which means there is no cheaper marketing strategy than word of mouth.

The stronger your brand reputation, the less you will need to spend on other marketing, causing your cost per acquisition to decrease and your marketing ROI to increase - which is what we all want to see!

Why You Need Both

Make tracking and increasing your brand awareness and reputation a priority for your business this year.

You may have a strong customer base, but if no one is searching (or asking about) your business - it doesn’t really matter.

Vice versa, everyone may know about your business, but you could have left a bad taste in consumers’ mouths causing you to lose vital business.

Don’t forget about both of these important goals when it comes to planning out your marketing strategy.