While sales may help in the short term, you will need more to build your brand.

You will need happy customers and clients who want more of your products and services.

And you will need to leverage multiple channels of marketing and communication tactics, ranging from a responsive website to email marketing and digital marketing to social media and PR.

But before we talk about new revenue, we need to lay the foundation for your company.

People tend to do business with people they like. But before they like you, they must know you exist.

It’s called “brand awareness” in marketing speak. That’s where your future success begins. You’ll need to know who your target audiences are and what they want so you can ultimately give it to them. All this important stuff will reside in your written marketing plan. (The stuff in your head isn’t real until you write it out and take action.)

3 Brand Awareness Secrets That Drive Businesses

However, there are three little-known secrets that you should use to boost your brand awareness results. (They sure work for CMA.)

Here are the three “secrets” that are more of a mindset that allows you to build success:

1. Referrals or Word of Mouth Works

You can jumpstart “word of mouth” by engaging your existing customers and prospects. And once they believe in your brand, they will sell it for you.

So how do you motivate your customers, and others, to sell your brand?

It all starts with a compelling story. A good story can influence, unite and inspire others to act.

Let’s face it: People will always buy your story before they buy your stuff.

Whether you are selling a product or service, there tends to be a fundamental marketing challenge because everything is flat. For example, you sell LED lighting fixtures, electrical supplies, medical services or memberships at a trade group. So do others? How do your prospects make up their minds about your brand before they purchase?

That’s why you should wrap your product or service in a “story”, which adds layers of interest. As opposed to selling your products’ features, tell the story through the founder of the company. Tell the story through the customers who benefit and appreciate the product.

In addition, storytelling separates your brand from the competition—and that is huge because if every brand is the same, then you will only be able to compete on price…and that’s a race no one wants to win.

So, what’s the easiest way to increase your sales during the brand awareness stage? Be different. And telling your story through various digital marketing channels will reinforce what makes your brand unique again and again.

When COVID-19 shut down Sourland Mountain Spirits, the company asked us to help them tell an unusual story that would get them noticed.

To use all its alcohol-making ingredients, which were sitting idle, Sourland Mountain Spirits decided to be part of the solution by transforming its factory into one that produces hand sanitizer. (According to the CDC, hand sanitizer that contains more than 70% alcohol kills viruses on contact.)

As a result of 25 media placements that promoted its story, Sourland Mountain Spirits started receiving larger orders from regional health care systems, such as Penn Health (Princeton), RWJ (Hamilton) and Capital Health (Trenton), which wanted to protect their frontline and first responders. Top media titles included MyCentralJersey.com, PlanetPrinceton.com, NJ 101.5, Trentonian, New Jersey Business and 94.5 PST.

Not many companies can say they set all-time sales records in the spring of 2020.

2. Life Is A Feedback Loop

Since business is another word for “relationships”, you can apply that logic to your brand awareness campaign. In other words, the more you help your customers, the more they will help you.

Now that we live in a digital world, this concept is more powerful than ever. Remember,

people no longer seek, they search. So how do you get them to find your brand?

Be helpful. That’s how to draw people closer to you and your brand.

If you make your brand more helpful, you will make your brand more likeable. And your prospects will not only remember your brand, but they will also go out of their way to engage it.

The formula is simple: Reputation + Relationships = Revenue.

You know exactly why you want a relationship with your prospects, but do they know why they want a relationship with you?

And that is why “reputation” is so important.

To build reputation, you should consider promoting your thought leadership, which helps your prospects. In a digital world, helping is the new selling.

When the United States launched the Paycheck Protection Program to incentivize small business to keep their employees on the payroll amid the COVID-19 crisis, CMA positioned First Bank’s CEO as a proxy voice for all community banks in the nation.

CMA became First Bank’s virtual news service, securing the bank a series of interviews in under two week that led to more than 35 media placements, which garnered more than half a billion impressions. Top placements included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNBC, CBS news and MSN News.

3. Third-Party Assets and Third-Party Links Change Minds

We know that your company is outstanding, and you take pride in your customer service.

But you can’t really say it. And that’s because there are some things in life, as well as business, that you can’t say.

So, let’s start here: Your company isn’t “good” until your customers say it’s good. And when they do, you must make them part of your marketing campaign because their opinion, which doesn’t come with a paycheck from your company, carries a lot more credibility than anyone from your staff.

When it comes to monetizing your customers’ kind words, case studies and testimonials are great examples. Online reviews influence 67.7% of purchasing decisions and 78% of people trust them as a much as a recommendation from a friend or family member.

When Amerlux wanted to build its brand awareness among nine different audiences, CMA’s yearlong, 90-piece content and media relations campaign effectively cast the client in its best light. The 1,944 media placements, some of which highlighted case studies and testimonials, reached 139 million targeted individuals thanks to the referral traffic from the third-party links. Traffic increased 83% to the “Locate Your Sales Rep” page and 348 individuals provided their email addresses as part of an ensuing lead-generation campaign.

A brand awareness campaign does more than create a space in the mind of your prospects. It lays the groundwork for future success.