How to Increase Brand Awareness: Expert Tips for 2025

With more content, more competition, and less attention to go around, brands that don’t build awareness early often get left behind.

With that said, brand awareness requires a bit more thought than just having the best logo or a clever tagline. It’s about being remembered at the right moment, when someone needs what you offer.

This guide walks you through what brand awareness really is, why it matters, how to track it, and 12 smart ways to grow it. You’ll also get tips, FAQs, and a simple tool to help speed up the process.

Let's dive right in.

Key Takeaways

Brand awareness is what makes people think of you first when they need what you offer, and it’s built through repetition, relevance, and emotional connection.
Brand awareness can be raised through a number of channels, like social media, branded content to influencer partnerships, giveaways, and experiential campaigns. Each one helps you stay top-of-mind in a different way.
Consistent branding across every channel helps people recognize your content even without a logo. Familiarity accelerates trust and recall.
Brand awareness can be measured through KPIs like direct traffic, branded search, social mentions, and share of voice. These metrics help you track both visibility and impact over time.
Building awareness takes time, patience, and a clear story. Brands that show up regularly with helpful content, real voices, and a sense of purpose are the ones that stick.

12 Effective Ways to Increase Brand Awareness

Here are 12 effective brand awareness strategies that will help you reach new audiences and tell them exactly what your brand is all about.

People use social media to stay connected, learn new things, and be entertained. If your brand shows up in a consistent, thoughtful way, you’ll stay in their feed and, more importantly, in their mind.

Pick the right platforms for your audience: LinkedIn for B2B, TikTok for Gen Z, Instagram for visuals, Twitter/X for ideas.
Show behind-the-scenes content to humanize your brand: messy processes, real faces, and day-in-the-life snippets.
Balance content types: share stories, start conversations, drop value bombs (tips, insights), and yes; sell occasionally.
Use short-form video like Reels or TikToks to get discovered, and carousels or threads to dive deeper with your audience.
Engage actively: comment, reply, duet, reshare. Visibility isn’t just about posting, it’s about participating.
Use smart hashtags to boost discoverability: Combine broad, trending tags with niche-specific ones your ideal audience is following. Some examples include the following: #MarketingTips meets #WellnessCoaches or #BookTok meets #SelfPubAuthors.

2. Start a Podcast or Video Series

People form stronger connections with personalities than with products. A podcast or video series humanizes your brand and gives your audience a reason to come back regularly. It also positions you as a thought leader, someone who doesn’t just sell, but shares ideas, insights, and real value.

How to start a branded podcast or video series:

Choose a theme or format that aligns with your brand values: interviews, tips, storytelling.
Stay consistent with episode release dates to build anticipation and trust.
Add video snippets from your podcast to social platforms like Instagram Reels or LinkedIn to increase reach.

3. Collaborate with Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers (typically 1K–100K followers) often have niche audiences who deeply trust their recommendations. These kinds of partnerships can feel more natural and sometimes get better results than a large, flashy campaign.

How to collaborate with influencers for brands:

Find creators who align with your brand values and audience demographics.
Offer value beyond money: exclusive access, co-creation opportunities, or affiliate partnerships.
Encourage them to create authentic content, not just sponsored posts. Let them use their own voice.
Use tools like Upfluence or CreatorIQ to discover and vet influencers in your niche.

4. Launch a Memorable Giveaway

Giveaways work best when they feel fun and thoughtful. Don’t offer something random just to get likes. Choose a prize that reflects your brand and attracts the right kind of attention.

How to create a giveaway:

Offer a prize that’s desirable and relevant to your brand (not just a generic iPhone or Amazon card).
Make entry fun and shareable: tag friends, post a story, complete a challenge.
Collaborate with other brands or influencers to expand reach and credibility.
Require entrants to follow your brand, engage with your content, or submit UGC (user-generated content) to get more long-term value.

5. Create Branded Content or a Signature Series

Branded content, which could be a specific concept tied to your brand, helps your audience know what to expect and look forward to. It becomes your “thing.”, something that people know belongs to your brand.

How to create branded content:

Start with what you can sustainably maintain: “Monday Mindset Tips,” “Founders Friday,” or “Summer Spotlight Series.”
Use a consistent style, tone, and visual design so it’s immediately recognizable and tied to your brand.
Make it interactive: invite followers to contribute questions, vote on topics, or join live.
Repurpose: Turn the best-performing episodes or posts into a downloadable resource or email mini-course.

6. Tap Into Online Communities

Communities already exist around almost every topic or interest. If you can find where your audience is spending time, you can learn a lot just by listening. Once you’ve built a sense of trust, you can start joining conversations and offering useful input.

How to start an online community:

Join relevant Reddit threads, Slack workspaces, Discord servers, or Facebook groups.
Engage genuinely: answer questions, offer advice, and join conversations without pitching.
Once established, subtly introduce your brand or share your content as a helpful resource.
Create your own branded community around a shared goal or interest, like a challenge group or private mastermind.

You don’t need to start from scratch every time. You can repurpose. People absorb content in different ways, and repetition (when done thoughtfully) helps your message stick without feeling stale.

How to repurpose content:

Turn a blog post into a podcast episode, a Twitter thread, a LinkedIn carousel, or a YouTube tutorial.
Pull quotes or stats into infographics or social graphics.
Compile related content into an ebook, webinar, or downloadable PDF for B2B platforms like LinkedIn.

8. Own Your Visual Identity and Be Consistent

Your brand should feel familiar even when your logo isn’t visible. When someone scrolls past your content, they should be able to tell it’s yours before they even read it.

How to create a visual brand identity:

Create brand guidelines with a set colour palette, fonts, graphic styles, and logo rules.
Apply them across all channels: website, socials, emails, videos, everything.
Use templates (e.g., Canva or Figma) to keep your visuals consistent even when different people are creating content.
Consider developing a custom icon, mascot, or recurring design motif for added memorability.

9. Run Experiential Campaigns

People remember how something made them feel. That’s why experiences tend to stick longer than ads. A campaign that invites people to participate or interact in real time, whether it's online or in personm, helps your brand stand out.

How to create an experiential marketing campaign:

Host a pop-up shop, behind-the-scenes livestream, or real-time product test.
Involve your audience, let them vote, co-create, or appear in the campaign.
Document the entire process in stories, reels, or a blog/vlog to extend its life and impact.
Use hashtags and tagging prompts to encourage user participation and social sharing.

Sponsoring events, podcasts, creators, or community projects is a smart way to boost visibility and build trust. It means you’re showing up in places your audience already cares about.

Look for sponsorship opportunities that align with your brand values: industry meetups, local events, nonprofit causes, or niche creators.
Go beyond logos: ask about speaking spots, content collaborations, or giveaways tied to the sponsorship.
Prioritize relevance over reach. A small but targeted audience often brings better results than a massive but mismatched one.
Follow up with content. Share moments, shoutouts, or recap posts to extend the impact long after the event ends.

11. Get Featured Elsewhere

Being seen on other platforms builds credibility, introduces you to new audiences, and creates SEO benefits through backlinks.

How to get your brand featured:

Pitch to podcasts, write guest blogs, or speak on industry panels and webinars.
Tailor your pitch to each platform, highlight your unique perspective or story, not just your product.
Focus on niche or mid-sized publications where you're more likely to be featured.
After you're featured, repurpose the content across your own channels. Turn the interview into a blog post, clip it for social, or include it in your media kit.

12. Team Up with Like-Minded Brands

Partnering with another brand can double your reach and your impact. Be it a co-branded product, joint giveaway, or shared content series, collaborations let you tap into a whole new audience that already trusts your partner.

How to partner with brands:

Look for brands with overlapping values or audiences, not direct competitors.
Start small: a shared Instagram Live, a bundled offer, or a cross-promotional post.
Focus on creating something genuinely valuable for both audiences.
The best brand collabs feel natural. Pay attention to who your audience already follows or engages with, that’s your ideal match.

What is Brand Awareness?

At its core, brand awareness is about how easily people recognize and recall your brand, especially in different situations or contexts. It’s not just “they’ve seen your logo before.” Real brand awareness means your name rings a bell, your tone feels familiar, and people instantly associate you with a specific vibe, value, or solution.

In marketing terms, it’s a key part of brand knowledge: it reflects how firmly your brand lives in someone’s memory and how quickly it comes to mind when they need something you offer.

Think of Nike. You don’t just recognize the swoosh, you feel something. You think action, energy, motivation, and Just Do It. That’s brand awareness in motion.

Why is Brand Awareness Important?

People don’t buy what they don’t recognize. That one idea sits at the heart of how most businesses grow. Psychologists call it the “mere exposure effect.” The more we encounter something, the more comfortable we feel with it. And over time, that builds a few things for a brand:

Trust: People are more likely to buy from a brand they’ve heard of before.
Search: People often search for what they already know. Brand names show up in their queries.
Referrals: Word of mouth only works if people remember your name.
Customer loyalty: Familiar brands feel safer, and that comfort keeps people coming back.

Launching a new product as an unknown brand is much harder. Studies consistently show that acquiring a new customer costs 5-25 times more than retaining an existing one. You have to earn attention, explain what you do, and prove why you deserve a chance. A known brand doesn’t need to work as hard to build that bridge. Recognition shortens the distance between interest and action.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

Unlike traditional metrics such as conversion rates or revenue, brand awareness requires looking at behavioural indicators rather than direct measurements. There's:

Unaided awareness: when people think of your brand without prompting.
Aided awareness: when they recognize your brand from a list.
Top-of-mind awareness: when your brand is the first one they think of in your category.

The key is building a comprehensive measurement framework that captures both the breadth and depth of your brand's mental footprint. This means tracking everything from passive recognition signals to active engagement behaviours, then connecting these data points to understand your overall awareness trajectory.

6 Major KPIs for Brand Awareness

Direct Traffic: If people are typing your website URL directly into their browser, that’s a strong signal they already know who you are. They’ve either heard about you, remembered you, or seen your name enough times to go straight to the source rather than through a Google search.
Branded Search Volume: When people search for your brand name or branded terms (like “[your brand] reviews” or “[your brand] pricing”), it shows recognition and curiosity.
Social Media Mentions and Tags: Unprompted shoutouts, comments, and user-generated conten mean your audience is seeing and engaging with your brand, maybe even talking about it and bringing others into the conversation.
Press Coverage or Backlinks: Getting mentioned in blogs, articles, podcasts, or industry news means others see your brand as noteworthy or credible. Quality backlinks also improve your SEO and reinforce your brand’s authority in your niche.
Survey Responses (“Where Did you Hear About Us?”): Don’t underestimate the power of simply asking. Add this question to checkout forms, email signups, or client onboarding flows. You’ll start to see patterns in how people are finding (and remembering) you and which channels are doing the heavy lifting.
Share of Voice Compared to Competitors: Track how often your brand is mentioned in comparison to your competitors. This can include online mentions, search engine presence, media coverage, and social buzz. It gives you a bigger-picture view of your brand’s presence within the industry.

Brand Recognition vs Brand Awareness

Before we get to brand awareness, there is actually another level that we have to take into consideration: brand recognition.

What is Brand Recognition?

Brand recognition is the moment someone sees your logo, hears your name, or notices your colors and thinks, “I’ve seen this before.” That’s recognition. It’s about being familiar in a visual or sensory way. They might not know what you do, but they know you exist. Think of it as the entry point. It’s the first signal that your brand is starting to land in someone’s mind.

When Does Brand Awareness Start?

Once someone knows who you are, the next step is knowing what you stand for. Maybe they associate you with trust, creativity, or helpful content. That understanding usually comes from repeated interactions, like your blog, social posts, or how you respond to customers, not just your logo.

And What is Brand Perception?

Brand perception is how people feel about your brand once they’ve had some experience with it. It’s shaped by what you say, but even more by what you do. It’s the reputation you earn. Maybe they see you as helpful, or inconsistent, or overpriced. That impression, whether it's positive or negative, sticks. Unlike awareness, which is about knowing you, perception is about forming an opinion of you. And once that opinion is set, it can be hard to change.

Brand Awareness Tips

Be consistent in how and where you show up. People need a few points of contact before they remember you. If your tone, visuals, or message keeps changing, it slows that down. You don’t have to be on every platform, but wherever you are, be clear and be steady.
Listen closely to how your audience speaks. Look at the words they use when they leave reviews, ask questions, or talk in forums. When your content reflects their language, it feels familiar. That familiarity helps build trust without needing to explain everything from scratch.
Talk about how this all started and why it still matters to you. Your story doesn’t have to be dramatic or inspiring. It just needs to be honest. People remember stories that feel real. And when you keep showing up with that same sense of purpose, it gives people a reason to pay attention.
Share ideas that help people, even if you never hear from them. Some of your most useful content might not get likes or comments. Share it anyway. When you give people something they can use or learn from, that value sticks with them. Over time, that’s what builds recognition and trust.
Be patient and keep going, even when it feels quiet. Brand awareness is a slow process. It doesn’t always give you instant feedback. But the brands that stay with people are the ones that keep showing up, offering something useful, and staying true to the reason they started.

Increase your Brand Awareness with Podcastle

Creating content consistently is one of the best ways to stay visible. But between planning, recording, editing, and sharing, it can take up more time than you expect. That’s where Podcastle helps.

It’s a simple, all-in-one platform that takes care of the time-consuming parts:

Improve your audio and video quality automatically. Let AI sharpen the sound and clean up your recordings instantly.
Resize your videos for every social platform. Format once, share everywhere. No need to remake content from scratch.
Use AI voiceovers when you don’t want to record. Choose from over 1,000 natural-sounding voices and bring your script to life in minutes.

FAQ

How long does it take to build brand awareness?

There’s no fixed timeline for building brand awareness, but with consistent effort, most brands begin to see traction within three to six months.

However, developing lasting recall and customer loyalty takes much longer, think in terms of years rather than weeks because true brand awareness grows through ongoing engagement, repetition, and meaningful connections over time.

Which targeting option is best for achieving brand awareness?

The best targeting option for achieving brand awareness is a strategic mix of demographics, interests, behaviours, and lookalike audiences, all optimized under a “Brand Awareness” or “Reach” campaign objective.

Demographic targeting helps you reach people based on age, location, or profession, while interest and behavior targeting connects you with users who engage with relevant topics or show certain online habits.

Lookalike audiences are especially powerful for expanding your reach to new people who closely resemble your existing customers.

By combining these targeting options with the right campaign objective, you ensure your ads are shown to people who are not just likely to see them but likely to remember them.

How do commercials or advertisements contribute to brand awareness?

Commercials and advertisements contribute to brand awareness by creating repeated exposure across different channels. The more often people see or hear your brand, whether it’s on TV, YouTube, social media, or podcasts, the more familiar it becomes. Even if they don’t take action right away, that consistent visibility builds recognition and trust over time.

Well-crafted ads also shape how people feel about your brand. They convey your personality, values, and tone, helping to establish an emotional connection. A memorable jingle, a clever message, or striking visuals can make your brand stick in someone’s mind, so when they’re finally ready to buy, you’re the first name they think of.