If your business thrives on developing and selling a product, then ultimately your main focus and goal has to be increasing sales and income, attracting new customers and in most cases, encouraging repeat purchases.

Sounds simple on paper but to achieve this you need to use a clever combination of business and marketing skills, which all assist in strengthening your brand awareness. Brand awareness refers to just how ‘aware’ your customers and potential customers are of your business and product offer.

As an example, within two weeks after the official launch of the Apple iphone, surveys proved that 90% of US consumers were aware about the iphone as a result of advertising and news reports. This is exceptionally strong brand awareness, driven of course by an exceptional organisation and no doubt an exceptionally high marketing budget.

Ultimately, achieving strong brand awareness means that your brand is well known and easily recognisable; another great example is the Crocs phenomenon. Brand awareness is essential to differentiating your product from other similar products or competitors.

Targeting the right audience is crucial to your success. Of similar importance is understanding that you need a plan with speci?c actions in place that will increase awareness of your brand amongst your consumers.

The components of a plan to strengthen brand awareness are:

• identify and understand your target customers, build personas to understand their mindset and get inside their heads
• ensure you have a solid brand identity (company name, logo and strap-lines, etc.)
• add value through service (events, promotions, competitions, etc.)
• advertising, simply don’t stop! Where budget permits, get the brand out there as much as possible but ensure you advertise in the right places
• after sales follow up and good customer relation management (made simple these days through effective ecommerce and email marketing).