Brand recognition is defined as the point at which a consumer is able to identify your brand over another one through visual or audio clues rather than being explicitly exposed to the name or the product itself.
Brand recognition is when you hit the sweet spot and know your brand identity has worked.
Standing apart from your competitors is a key aim for your branding, and brand recognition works by helping consumers recall a brand through a logo, slogan, packaging or an advert, and thus making it memorable. This gives the product or service a head start in building brand loyalty and encouraging the consumer to pick yours above a competitor. But while there are many ways to make your brand more recognisable, there are also plenty of ways to get it wrong.
Here I have put together some common mistakes with branding which may lead to poor brand recognition.
No connection
It is hard to measure whether a brand truly ‘connects’ with its target audience but it is a pivotal factor in the success of a brand and can be achieved in a number of ways. So if your brand isn’t connecting with your target market, is it because there is no emotional or personal attachment? Do you have the wrong target audience for your brand? Maybe there is not enough personality or you haven’t told your story strongly enough? People need something to buy-in to with a brand so maybe that connection hasn’t yet been formed?
Poor logo
A strong identity is crucial for a good brand and your logo is the visual identifier. Have you got the typography wrong? Are the graphics or colours not connecting with your market? Is the logo too old-fashioned or too contemporary? Maybe it’s too literal or a bit naff, or dreary, or it’s a poor copy of an existing logo? Your logo has to be unique and it has to stand out, so good logo design is definitely something to look at.
Social media
Social media isn’t deemed too important to a lot of brands but it is a great way to build brand recognition. If you are not using it well then maybe there is some inconsistency in the images used or your content is not very good, or you are not targeting the right people. If you are not using it at all then this is an obvious way to improve your brand recognition.
Not transferrable
It is important that branding is transferrable to all formats, meaning that colours, logos and names can be used the same way and look the same on the product itself, on packaging, on your website design, on social media, in literature and in advertising. If a font or logo is too small or the images are poor quality, your branding won’t look good in some formats and that can be a contributory factor in poor brand recognition.
No added value
You can only hope to establish brand recognition if the consumer is fundamentally getting what they want from your product or service. Is it fit for purpose? Are consumers receiving poor service? Or a poor quality product? You should have mechanisms in place to recognise and improve these issues of course, but to get consumers on side they may need an incentive in order to re-build your brand recognition. Think about good quality content on your site, such as blog articles or videos, think about sales and discounts and freebies, consider competitions with great prizes and maybe an awareness advertising campaign. These are all good ways to repair any damage to your brand.
No market research
A cardinal sin when launching a new brand is not testing it in the market. This is naïve and a little arrogant also. You can’t pretend to know how the market will react to your brand and product/service without testing it. And if you did test it and ignored the feedback then that’s just as bad. Ultimately, the market is the true barometer of the success of your branding so if you haven’t tested it, then you don’t know if any of the factors listed above will work, ie. your brand connection, your logo, your social media, whether the branding translates to all formats and whether the brand represents good value.
If you have a product or service that is struggling for brand recognition then contact me at Rebus Design and Branding Agency and I can help you identify where you might be going wrong. Your brand is absolutely essential to the success of your business, so let me help you get it right.