Season 1: 'The Branding Series' / Episode # 5

Growing your brand awareness is a key driver of sales growth and revenue. Branding experts and top entrepreneurs reveal what it takes to get it right, why it's so important, and the key opportunities you're probably missing in your own brand marketing.

Guest Bios:

Neil Luo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-luo/)is the Global Head of Growth at Airwallex (https://www.airwallex.com ), a $1 BILLION fintech start up.

Dr Rob Newman (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-newman-007757/) is CEO of ASX 200 online mapping technology provider, Nearmap. (https://nearmap.com.au).

Pic Picot (https://twitter.com/pics_uk) is the founder international food brand, Pic’s Peanut Butter (https://www.picspeanutbutter.com/)

Victoria Coster (https://www.linkedin.com/in/creditfixsolutionscreditrepair/) is a Telstra Business Person of the Year finalist 2019, & founder of Credit Fix Solutions (https://creditfixsolutions.com.au)

Ben Carew (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencarew/) is director of SEO & Analytics at Webbuzz- The Growth Marketing Agency (https://webbuzz.com.au)

Rachel Bevans (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelbevans/) is branding expert & director of The Healthy Brand Company (https://www.thehealthybrandcompany.com/)

Jon Michail (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmichail-imageconsultant-personalbrandingcoach/)– brand expert and and image consultant, director at the Image Group (https://www.imagegroup.com.au/)       

What to listen out for:

1.41 The true branding story of Shoostov & Sons vodka from 1863

3.54 Rap stars, Instagram and cognac brand ambassadors

7.37 The two types of brand awareness

10.30 Online apps & tools to monitor your brand

13.10 The value of Facebook groups in growing brand awareness

14.55 NERD-O-METER segment with Neil Luo of Airwallex

17.23 Nearmap use their tech for the common good & get priceless free PR

18.29 How Nearmap grew brand awareness in North America by 'narrowcasting' in one vertical

20.48: Pic's Peanut Butter founder uses word of mouth via taxi drivers to spread brand awareness

24.49: Victoria Coster on how to use Linked In to grow brand awareness for a small business

26.45: The power of SEO for brand awareness for B2C offers

28.51: How to create an online 'brand wall' via remarketing

33.45: The branding opportunity of club or school sponsorships

35.20: The importance of Google analytics for measuring brand engagement

39.15: NERD UNDER PRESSURE segment featuring Rob Newman, Nearmap.

Resources & links:

1.Shustov & Sons vodka 1863 brand awareness campaign https://investory-video.com/shustov

2.Rappers, booze and Instagram influencer marketing https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2018/12/diageo-under-fire-for-deceptive-ciroc-vodka-influencer-advertising-on-instagram/

3.Nearmap used their mapping technology to help residents in the 2011 Brisbane floods https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/qld-floods/

4.'Mention' is a social media and online app that allows businesses to monitor their brand https://mention.com/en/

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Hi there and welcome to the Nerds of Business podcast. My name is Darren Moffatt. I'm a director at Webbuzz, the growth marketing agency. And I'm your host. Welcome to episode five of the branding series. It's great to have you with us. If you're one of the subscribers who's left a review or contacted me directly with feedback on the show, thanks for your support. I really appreciate it. It's great to know that the content we're producing is already helping people to crack the code to growth in their own venture. Since becoming featured on Apple podcasts, we've also attracted thousands of new listeners from across the globe. If you're new to this podcast, our mission is to solve the key challenges. All businesses must overcome one problem at a time, and we do it with the help of a rotating cast of top entrepreneurs and marketing experts.

Today's panel is expanded to take on perhaps the biggest topic of this series brand awareness. Now regular listeners will know. We often start episodes with a story. Sometimes we focus on one particular industry as an example of the problem we're trying to solve, or we go back in time to discover entrepreneurial lessons that only history can teach today. We're doing both at once. The country of Armenia is perhaps now most famous as the ancestral home of Kim Kardashian and her celebrity clan. But in the 19th century, it was the new frontier for entrepreneurs seeking fame and fortune. And no industry was Wilder than the liquor industry.

The year is 1863 in the region between Turkey and modern day. Russia known as the caucuses Nikolai's shall stops. New premium vodka business is struggling. No one has heard of the brand. So local bars won't stock it. He's on the brink of financial ruin. When he devises a cunning plan, he hires students to go into the pubs of Armenia and order a shortstop and sound vodka. When the bartender inevitably respond, they don't sell it. The students do what they're being paid to do. They complain and even start a fight. The patrons, the tactic is repeated across the region and the word soon spreads like wildfire that Shustov and Sons vodka is so good that it drives grown men to violence. It's morally questionable, but it works brand awareness, surges. And soon the company is overwhelmed with requests by bars and restaurants to stock the product by its 50th anniversary. It should stop from, was appointed by Russian czars as the official cognac and merchant, more than 40% of alcoholic beverages exported from Russia were Shustov.

Now you might think that such a marketing tactic would never happen today, but you'd be wrong. It happens all the time. It's just more subtle in the days before social media really took off. It was well known that alcoholic beverage companies would pay models and B grade celebrities to be seen purchasing their new spirit or mixer brand at the hottest bars across the country. They knew that other apparently less attractive and discerning clientele would soon be copying their behaviour in an effort to seem cool. It was brand awareness by stealth, but these days, even that strategy seems quaintly old fashioned who needs to go to all the trouble of organizing people in nightclubs. When you've got online influencer marketing,

Rap stars on Instagram are a prime example. Have you ever noticed that most rap stars seem to have a favourite whiskey or cognac? It's not just because they like the taste. It's big money for the rap stars and it's no coincidence that the liquor brands who sponsor them keep appearing in their Instagram feeds just like she'll stop vodka all those years ago. Today's alcohol conglomerates use brand awareness to drive sales. It's a classic demand generation strategy that has literally stood the test of time. So, what can you do to grow awareness in the market of your brand and how do you achieve the biggest impact for the least amount of effort?

So, the problem we're trying to solve, and the title of today's episode is how to grow brand awareness for maximum impact. With the least amount of effort. It's a big topic which deserves a blockbuster episode. So rather than a feature story, we've opted for more guests than usual in order to explore a wide variety of perspectives. We'll hear from a small business owner, a $1 billion tech unicorn, a publicly listed company, a food brand and several branding and marketing experts. It might just be the most value packed podcast episode on branding ever. But first here's just a quick reminder that if you're enjoying nerds of business, to please hit the subscribe button on your podcast player, it means you'll automatically receive each new episode every fortnight, and it makes it easier for us to stay in touch.

The concept of brand awareness is well known and broadly understood, but why is it so important? I spoke to John Michail from the image group for 30 years. He's been a leading brand and image consultant in Melbourne, Australia. And he's one of our two branding experts for this series. If there's not brand awareness, that means no one knows you. Yep. Um, that's the bottom line. So, uh, if you're not, if you're not known, um, how, how do you expect people to find you? You know, so with my clients, including, especially the personal brands, it's this, you know, you're only going to be on this planet one lifetime. Okay. You know, unless you're a Buddhist, but so, so basically you might as well get the opportunity to bring out your full expression. Yeah. Okay. And that's, and that's the bottom line he is. So that means you personally your business.

Uh, so it's essential that you do that and you're it right from the start. Okay. So, you know, going back to your question, the why, if you don't do it now, we'll find out about you. You can be the best on the planet, what you do. If the world doesn't know about it, good luck means nothing. So even if you're a small business, you still need to have some brand awareness in your local market or no one will find you, but it turns out that for larger businesses, there are actually a few different types of brand awareness.

I mean, brand awareness is quite simply how many people are, are aware of you or how many people have heard of you is what you would normally ask in a research survey. Um, we ha we split it into top-of-mind awareness versus, um, prompted awareness. So, and that the difference between those two is, um, if I said to what banks have you heard of, you would say Westpac Commonwealth and said, yep. That's top of mind. Yep. And then the next question would be, which of these banks have you heard Westpac, but I'm ING and said, well, and you go, yes, yes, yes, no. So that's the difference between the two

That's Rachel Bevans from the Healthy Brand Company. She's one of our other major branding experts for the series. And she's consulted to some of the biggest brands in the world, including MasterCard, NewsCorp and Glenfiddich, scotch. According to Rachel, there are some key things business owners need to think about before investing in a brand campaign. And it all starts with how you measure brand awareness. Yes. So,

I mean, the one question you need to ask is have you heard of, yeah. So that is the question. Um, if you can afford to do a survey, there are different ways of doing that. So, you can, um, use, you can actually do your own. So, you can actually go to research or quantitative research company and get them to do that for you just amongst the general population or whoever your audience, whoever your audience is within that small area. So, they can do that, and they might choose an online method, or they may choose an offline method depending. Um, you can, um, do, uh, you can, then you can do that yourself or with a, with a research agency, or you can do that. Uh, you can tap into an omnibus, which is, uh, an existing survey. That's nerdy.

Omnibus. Yeah. Okay. Explain that for us.

It's an existing survey. So, um, various companies, uh, used to, um, news poll used to do them. I'm not sure if they're doing them anymore, but, um, uh, all the companies have changed these, I don't remember who to, um, so they run a numb, basically a survey every, every certain, every sort of week or so. And then you can put your questions into that. So that's then, um, you can, you can really lower your costs by doing

Basically, piggyback on something that's already going out there. So that's what an omnibus has. Got it. Yep.

Yep. Or you, in some categories, there is already some sort of a syndicated survey, which is, uh, where they're, um, gathering the information across the whole of the industry. And you can find out what the awareness is of your, your own company and you can versus a benchmark, or if you buy the whole lot of the results, you'll find out yours versus your competitors.

And what about, um, are you familiar with, uh, apps, like mention, uh, have you heard of mentioned, so there are some apps out there that help businesses kind of monitor, um, then people sort of, you know, mentioning their brand or talking about their brand. Um, do you have any thoughts on those, those apps or

I'm not familiar with, um, mentioned in particular, um, but brand, so brand awareness. I mean, you can actually look at, um, you can do social media listening and those sorts of things, but that's more, I would say that's then more engagement than it is actually brand awareness, per se.

And, um, in terms of, you know, growing brand awareness, what are the essentials that are required to be in place before a business can really start to grow brand awareness?

Yeah. So, I think you need to decide, again, it goes back to, um, who are your, who are your customers? I think when you're a larger brand, you want your brand awareness to be as big as possible because there's, it's, you basically, your customers come from the people who are aware of your brand and who will try it, essentially try it once and then they can come and dip in and increase you're then starting to talk to them. You can increase them if you want, or leave them at that level of purchase, depending on whatever's relevant for that category. But that brand awareness is really key metric for definitely for the big brands, for the, um, for the small to medium brands. It is important to be aware, uh, per for people to be aware of it within your target audience. Yes. So, it's not just general population having more narrow casting. Yeah. So you go, who have, who within that target audience is actually aware of that brand.

If you look at the share market, certainly in recent times, nothing beats the tech sector for accelerated growth. And one of the hottest emerging tech start-ups right now is Airwallex is a FinTech platform that is disrupting the stodgy old world of foreign exchange and international payments. And they've recently achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation. They've only been going for five years and to get an insight into how tech companies grow brand awareness. I spoke with the head of global growth at Airwallex, Neil Luo. Yeah. So, I think, I think with new markets, um, a lot of it, a lot of it I think is around driving the right ecosystems, right? So, I think it's very hard for a start-up to go into a new market and kind of spend a lot on brand. So, it's around kind of, you know, what is that ecosystem in that local markets, um, who are the ones that are gonna be early adopters and who are the ones going to be really strong advocates for you?

So, we actually find, you know, Facebook groups, um, you know, kind of these kind of communities are actually very, very powerful, um, to drive brand awareness for you. Um, the challenges that a lot of these Facebook groups can be kind of, I guess, on lower price, um, uh, more price sensitive. So there, there could be this kind of, you know, um, lower tiered branding that can come with it. But I think from a viral, uh, user generation perspective, these kinds of ecosystems or groups that can refer other people, word of mouth is very, very helpful. Um, and usually that's kind of, you know, smaller business segments to kind of get sole traders, your freelances, et cetera. You find that kind of permeates pretty fast, if you can find the right people. Um, and then I think on the larger businesses, I think it's still kind of your trusted financial advisors, like your accountants, mortgage brokers, find it funny enough.

We're actually very, very good as well in driving that because they are essentially indirect Salesforce. So as long as you have the right incentives for them, um, they can really help drive adoption as well. Great. And so does that mean that in your, um, your growth team, you've actually got team members on Facebook hunting down small sort of local, you know, groups and signing up getting inside the group and then starting to talk about the brand, step us through how that works. Yeah, so we, we kind of, you know, try to look at kind of, you know, business groups on Facebook. Um, so we kind of find these communities, for example, Melbourne start-up, Sydney start-up. Um, and then we have a community person that can go in there and ideally post pretty regularly, uh, content, uh, as well as, you know, promotions we might be having.

Neil was also a really good sport. He featured in our regular segment, the Nerdometer, check this out. So, Neil, um, it's a tradition on native business that, uh, we put all of our guests through what we call

The Nerdometer.

So, this is a bit of fun. Okay. And this is where we simply ask you, I mean, uh, as a rating out of 10, how nerdy are you? I say I'm probably up there maybe 11, I'd say, oh my God, I am pretty nerdy. You've, you've broken the Nerdo meter. I mean, that is that's the first time we've had someone go past eight. Uh, so congratulations. I, I should, uh, there you go. You've got some polls here. That's that, that really is a standout moment for me as the first guest to break the nerd. I made a while we're looking at tech companies, there's also a lot. We can all learn from scale ups, like mapping platform, Nearmap. Nearmap, provide aerial mapping services in the cloud for businesses. And they're listed on the Australian stock exchange. You might remember the CEO, Rob Newman from episode two on brand positioning. In this episode, Rob shares some insights into how their brand awareness strategy in the Australian market differed from that of their North American expansion. So, during the scale up phase of the business, as you move into new geo markets and you more deeply penetrate the existing markets that you have, what initiatives have been the most effective for growing brand awareness?

Yeah. So, look, I mean, I think that's really interesting, and I probably asked you the question from an Australian perspective and then answer the question from a North American perspective because they actually do very, very different lessons. Right. And it does refer to something we were talking about before, um, in Australia, it's a smaller market, it's more concentrated market, uh, that works you in very particularly B to B was very much in our favour. And, um, we not by plan, but by accident became actually broad. There was a hybrid awareness of new map without us really marketing to the customers that end up buying our products. Um, so there were, you know, we were at the time when, um, you know, mapping, as I said before, was just becoming useful in our mobile phones that, um, there was no other solutions or no other real solutions out there.

And, um, there were events in the market that kind of gave us very high visibility. One of those being the Brisbane floods, where we were able to capture the Brisbane flood at the peak of the Brisbane flood gave that content to the ABC news and basically was plastered all over news media. So, when a small well-defined market word of mouth being kind of that voice that's out there providing certainty in providing information that nobody else could provide that really separated pot. And then from that, we found that our customers were business customers. So, in a small market, you can, um, leverage your brand quite well, even using some BDC or meet in broad media techniques. North America, as I mentioned is quite a bit, quite a bit different. Um, it's a large market, it's the most sophisticated market. And what we've found there is that a focus initially on larger enterprise customer segments, um, has worked quite well for us because what we found is even though it was selling my partners, the ultimate customer in this case, the insurance industry, um, said, hey, we can buy it from this particular data provider.

We buy from another data provider or another data provider or a start-up. But actually, if we look at the source data behind all of them, it was Nearmap, right? And so, by focusing on an industry and being very clear about what value we provide to that industry, we got very broad awareness. Um, within a, you know, there's probably 50 to a hundred major insurance carriers in North America, marketing to a hundred people or a hundred companies, somewhat easy to market to 20 million companies in North America. So having that focus and saying, here's what we provide, here's how we're providing. Here's how we solve a problem in there that got us brand awareness. So now we have very, very high brand awareness within a series of verticals in North America. The challenge for us now is how do we leverage that into broader brand awareness, across smaller companies and other industries?

Wow, great answer. So, some summarizing smaller markets in Australia, perhaps what has worked best for Nearmap was leveraging the opportunity of events and using the technology, uh, in, um, almost in an altruistic way to demonstrate to the market what this thing can do. And in America going narrow rather than broadcasting going narrow casting and picking off a vertical at a time, uh, getting some deep domain in each of those verticals, uh, building up some, some, some loyalty and some buzz within, within that industry. And then moving on once you've got a little bit of critical mass underway. Yeah.

Yep.

Now consumer brands rely heavily on brand awareness to drive sales and grow penetration into different local markets. I spoke with Pic Picot from Pic's peanut butter. They're an international food brands stocked in 13 countries around the world, listen to what pick has to stay on the role of word of mouth in growing his brand awareness.

So, when I go through immigration and you get a card and it says occupation, and, and when I'm in a taxi, I'm talking to the driver and we talk about it and cause peanut, peanut butter makers is peanut being a peanut butter. Micah is something that you went on the, you know,

Ah, what do you do? Ah, I I'm in it. You know, I mean, that's a great, we have people in it, but actually not talking about what they do, but you know, you go, you go to a fancy thing and you got the, you know, the thing on your tip with your name and what you do, you know, consultant or legal consultant visor or whatever, and this sort of stuff that says nothing but peanut butter, Micah. Um, well, people can understand that, and you're not worry that they going to be confused or baffled when you start talking about peanut butter making. And to my mind, you know, if I, if I get one taxi driver really interested in, you know, and I give him a taste and he likes the stuff he's going to turn and talk, whenever anyone mentions peanut butter, he's going to say, Oh, I hit this peanut butter guy in my taxi, you know? And, and it's so, and, and, and I would rather have one person completely involved with the black brand and have a hundred thousand people think, oh, see an ad and say, oh, I must try that someday because that personal talk for other people and her enthusiasm will spread.

So, you're really talking about word of mouth there and, and, and, and taking a very hands on, you know, word of mouth.

And that's what word of mouth is because, you know, it's, it's your mouth and it's, you know, he, isn't stuck and I'd say, and I think, you know, that's, that's really, all we have to offer as humans is, you know, people, people to people's stuff.

Now, pic has touched on a related, but separate concept here called brand engagement at this point, I think it's important to go back to our technical expert, Rachel Bevins and find out how this is different from brand awareness and why it's actually quite important as well.

Yeah. So, engagement is really people who are actioning with participating in your brand. So they could be, it could be as simple as it depends on what your measures are engaged of engagement, but there's simple liking posts or there's commenting, which is another level of engagement. It's a greater level of engagement, or, you know, talking about your brand in the media. Um, so that's, and that's where you can get the social media listening or the, the, um, and the general media listening to understand how many people are talking about your brand and the sort of the positives versus the negatives.

What's more important brand awareness or brand engagement like what's in terms of delivering revenue to the business, which one's the most important lever to pull?

So, I think you, I mean, you ultimately want positive brand engagement. Yep. Um, but brand awareness is what will drive your growth at a high level. So, if we've got, um, if you're looking at things like brand equity, the brand awareness is actually incredibly important for as many people to hear your, about your brand. Um, you, you then want to get to, um, relevant awareness. So, people who not only are aware of your brand, but they know what it stands for, so that it actually means something to them. And then you can start with your various levels engagement, whether they've, um, they're just sort of talking in, getting involved in your online community, whether they're purchasing from you when they're coming along to an event or an experience that you might have, um, whether they actually opened in whether they're actually opening emails, those sorts of levels can get various levels of engagement and also, um, levels of purchase all the way up to brand loyalty.

So, if you're a small business owner, hopefully you've already taken a lot of ideas from the insights our guests have shared. But now we're about to hear some great tips directly from a leading small businessperson. Victoria Coster is the founder of credit fix solutions. You might recall her from episode one over the last five years, she's grown the brand awareness for her business in both consumer and B to B markets using a mix of networking and online marketing. She's a good friend and a client of our agency, Webbuzz she's been so successful. She was a top six finalists for the Telstra business awards in 2019.

Well, B2B first, first of all, we'll just do B to B, B to B. It would be the networking people, undervalue networking, and how we did that. If anybody's looking that for it for a B2B type business or service use LinkedIn. So, every day when I started, I had maybe 10 people on my LinkedIn. I've now got over 15,000 and they are all relevant contacts, finance professionals who potentially need a credit repair company. And how you start is you log into LinkedIn, you have a nice photo, you have a nice little intro, go and search for people. You know, the free version allows you to add up to 50, to a hundred people a day. And it's what I get my BDMs to do. Now. I'm like, this is how I started. You go to LinkedIn, you add people, but then you want to be able to send a private message to them that catches their attention.

That gets them wanting to meet you. Now, whether that's just the fact you're buying coffee, who cares. Right. But that getting their attention. And we had a perfect little message that we'd send out to people I connected with. And out of every 10 messages I would send, I would get four or five yeses for meetings. And then you keep doing that and you just keep, and it's just, you know, cut and paste, just repeat, repeat, rinse, and repeat. Um, you know, even when you're sick of it, you keep going with it and, and, and slowly that's how you, you build it. That's B2B. Um, the best things we did for a B to B to C was, uh, making sure that we were number one on our, on, on page one of Google for the website. Um, making sure that ad words were done correctly. If you're not on page one consumers, aren't going to page two. We all know that, um, do ads work? Yes and no. We did do Google ads for some time. Yes. They worked. But just as effective, if you've got an organic page, one listing, which

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, inbound SEO for a consumer play is highly, highly valuable.

Oh yeah. Yeah. We couldn't have done it without you. I suggest the best thing anyone does is contact Darren.

Oh, well it was a bit of mutual backscratching going on here. Yeah.

Mmm.

So, you can see that SEO has played a key role in growing Victoria's brand awareness. Digital is such an important channel for brand awareness that I wanted to expand on this. So, I gave my business partner, Ben kuru, a call. Ben is also a director at web buzz, the growth marketing agency. I've listened to what he's got to say on the opportunities that remarketing and community sponsorships in particular offer for small business.

Hello? Hi mate. Hey, it's me. How's it going? Yeah. Good, good, good. Hey, I'm doing a, another episode for the nerds of business podcast. And, um, as you might recall, this one is on brand awareness and, uh, there's a couple of things, questions that I think it'd be good to ask you to get on the show. So, in particular, what you always talk about, you know, how, you know, you often bring up the fact that the digital strategies that small business should use to build brand awareness a little bit different from the sort of the big corporations. Do you want to step us through that? What are some of the things that smaller businesses can, can do online for brand awareness? Well, you know, some of the easy stuff, um, which often gets, even though it's a technique that's been around for 7 years now, just like remarketing, which are those ads that follow you around when you've been buying something on an eCommerce store and suddenly you see that particular product following you around stuff is really easy to set up.

I mean, you know, any small business can pretty much, you know, put some code into the back of their website from Facebook or LinkedIn or Google. And every time that particular platform identifies anonymously, they use it. That was on your site because you've got the code in there from each of those platforms, you will be able to deliver on those platforms to them, to coach them back to your website, to complete an action, whatever that might be, might be buying a product, or just simply making an inquiry. And so, what's the value in that, just for the, for the listeners. I mean, you know, well, it's hard these days to get web traffic, you know, it's really hard that web traffic is getting harder and harder to come by. There's more competition than ever before. And so, what the idea behind it generally is just to maximize the traffic that get in.

Now, if you get all, you get all these visitors and generally speaking, they come for one specific reason, maybe they're clicked on Google or that found you from a different article or on social media, generally speaking, they don't come back unless they're impressed enough to make an inquiry or do whatever on your side. So, this way, you're saying essentially, they're being identified on these platforms because you've got remarketing in place. So, they can go, you can get a second bite of the cherry as it were, and you can coax them back. Coax would visit a back to the thought that otherwise would not have come back.

And so, you know, if you've got remarking setup against multiple-on-multiple platforms, like say Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, for instance, and someone comes to your site just once, then you can kind of set up like a brand war, right? Like, so, so it, you know, everywhere they go, they start seeing your brand. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the cool thing. I mean, a lot of people are on Instagram. A lot of people are on Facebook, plenty are on LinkedIn if you pay to be. Um, and, and of course, anyone reading a newspaper article on Google, or maybe they're on an obscure blog, it doesn't really matter. But as long as on Google, if that, um, if you go Google remarketing, you know, essentially there'll be found all over the internet and there'll be a banner ad saying, hey, you remember us come back, come back and whatever get enabled or, or just complete this action or yeah. Get a grab bag of goodies and become a lead for us.

Yeah, brilliant. So, it really is about maximizing the value of any website, traffic, and then really hyping up online that perception of, of, of the brand. So really, you know, creating a really big perception of the brand, even though it might only be those ads might be playing to a tiny audience. Yeah,

That's right. The protection is interesting because of course you can be on the New York times or the Sydney morning Herald or wherever they, if as long as they run Google ads, then they're running Google ads and you can, um, you can be found those web visitors that came from your sites, um, can be found on, on those large slot’s thoughts. And, um, yeah, it gives the impression that the brand will, your kind of everywhere and you can even sequence that stuff out so that people on Facebook see a different ad for the ones that get found on, on Google, Google ads or LinkedIn, you know? And so again, you can change it up so that the bottom line is they're seeing your brand kind of everywhere. Um, it gives you, this, gives them the sense that you you're big, um, and that credibility as well, if you can even sort of send those ads, the content, um, you know, and yeah,

I think the classic marketing tenet that someone has to see your message seven times before they're really aware of the brand and sort of, you know, starting to think about buying from that business. So, it just accelerates that process online because they're seeing you everywhere.

Exactly, exactly. And not only that, it's extremely, um, once you've got it set up, the beauty of it is it's actually quite cheap. Um, some platforms are more expensive than others. LinkedIn, the cost per click is quite substantial depending. Um, but Google ads, you know what I mean? You can, you can do remarketing on Google. You can sometimes get a click to 60 cents or even less in some cases, and it’s incredibly good value to have, you know, your brand thing saying all over the web, um, for, and then if anyone bothers to click on this, then they're going to cost you 60 cents. So yeah, it's very, very cost effective.

We know when it comes to other things that small businesses can do, uh, for their brand awareness strategy, what are your thoughts on things like sponsorships of, you know, say local clubs or organizations, you know, do you think that's a, that's a good play these days for small businesses, local businesses?

Um, well, yeah, I mean, you know, um, I'd say it depends on the business. Like, so there's a lot of, you know, mortgage brokers and people who need to connect with community restate agent, um, naturally businesses who are naturally focused to a local, a local marketing strategy, like the businesses like to embed themselves in the local community. Um, so that can be extremely effective. Um, I think you would have to follow that up. Like you can't, it's not a set and forget thing. You couldn't just sort of go to your local kind of rugby club and, you know, buy a sponsorship and then just simply hope that business walks in the door. You'd have to follow that up with relationships. I would imagine that that's effective, but I have the businesses who don’t follow up or don't bother the measure, or don't really have a plan or strategy in place to follow through on something like that. Otherwise, you know, you really are just burning money,

Right. I mean, there's gotta be a way, you know, you've got to have defined outcomes. Like what is the sponsorship going to deliver? You're a way to measure those results. Um, and in particular, when it comes to online presence, so for instance, with your sponsorship, you're paying for banner ads or some exposure to, you know, on some website or, or what have you. Um, you've really got to think about a call to action or some sort of promotional author, you know, that not, doesn't just get the brand out there, but ideally gets their audience that you, that group of people, uh, engaging with the brand as well. Yeah,

That's it, that's it? I mean, it's just like, like goals are incredibly important, you know. I mean, there's, there's not that they're not kidding, you know, and, and even just the basis of digital marketing, um, if you could call the way Google have credited Google analytics, for example, or any of their other marketing tools, Google analytics is almost not 100%, but almost useless without setting up goals is what's the first thing you do is like, because otherwise you don't have a plan. It's like, if you can go and read all like, you know, whatever 300 visitors last month or something from Google search, but if there's no goal set up and then that's just, it's just, I'm not a useful metric almost because then otherwise you could say, I've got, I've had three, 300 Google search visitors last month and you know, six conversions on my April will then that's useful information, you know? And so why did they convert? And then you can, you can take it from there.

So, the problem we set out to solve in this episode was how to grow brand awareness for maximum impact, with the least amount of effort. Our branding experts, Rachel, from the healthy brand company and John Michael from the image group revealed the technical perspectives on brand awareness and why that's so important for the growth of any business. And we've also heard some fascinating, real-life stories from our guests at Pic's peanut butter credit, fixed solutions, Airwallex and NEARMAP, I hope their wisdom and insight have given you ideas to crack the code to growth in your own business. In fact, there's so much value in this episode, it's kind of hard to summarize, but here are five key action steps. I think everyone can take away from this episode. Firstly, get your analytics and data sorted out in advance. It's important. You can see what's working with your brand awareness and what's not.

If you can't measure it, you're already behind the eight ball. Secondly, use Facebook groups and social media to grow brand awareness organically in relevant online communities. We heard from Neil Luo that this has been highly effective for air Wallacks. Thirdly, use every opportunity for word of mouth. You might recall how Pic Picot focused on taxi drivers. This is really smart because taxi drivers come into contact with hundreds of people every day, which gives him a wider distribution for his message to end consumers fourthly, think about how your product or service can be deployed to help the community you serve in an altruistic way. NEARMAP use this strategy very well. It's a brilliant PR move that can pay huge dividends for your business and finally consider digital channels and networking events to get the brand out there in a cost-effective manner has been Caruso. Remarketing is an easy way to convert your website, traffic into potential customers who now have full brand awareness of your offer. As we heard in the Shustov & Sons story at the top of the episode, companies have a long history of using brand awareness campaigns to generate demand. And even if they have become more sophisticated over time, the principles being used today are still remarkably similar. The key to achieving the most impact for your business is tailoring a custom approach that will deliver more cut-through with the most important people of all: your future customers.

We're coming to the end. But before we go, it's time for our regular segment nerd under pressure where I guess has to share one killer hack or tip, they recommend for you. Our listeners let's find out who our nerd under pressure is today. Okay. Rob a, uh, another example of our recurring segment, cold

Under pressure

On the topic of brand awareness, it's obviously crucial for any business or brand, regardless of whether it's B to B or B to C what's one killer hack you could give to business owners for brand awareness.

Okay. So, I think it was a good question. I was almost expecting you to give me a little bit of thinking time there, Darren, but [inaudible] time by talking to you. Um, you know, grand awareness is a, is a very broad topic. And I guess if there's a killer hack, um, it's consistency in your message, right? So, know who you are to your customer, right? So not who you are. And in fact, our COO and I have had really good conversations about this. We have a very clear DNA at nearmap of who we are and what we stand for, but in fact, that works for our employees, but you actually have to translate it into the customer's language. And we talked a little bit about this before that in those early days, your brand awareness will be very focused, but actually you've got to broaden that brand awareness as you grow, and, but always put it in the language of your customer.

So, thanks for listening to the fifth episode of nerds of business. If you've enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps us climb up the ranks and become more visible to other people, just like you. We want to help as many entrepreneurs and businesses as we can. If you've got a question or some feedback, we'd love to hear from you, of course you can engage with us at webbuzz.com.au/nerds . So, feel free to reach out and say hello. I want to thank all of our guests and the team at web buzz for helping me put this show together and a special thanks to Armondo for introducing me to the Shustov & Sons story over a very, very long lunch. We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode, which is on brand equity until then I'm your host, Darren Moffatt. And I look forward to nerding out with you next time. Bye for now.