Brand Awareness: Does Out of Sight, Out of Mind Apply to Marketing Content?
Can a company sell products and services if people don’t know it exists or what products it offers? Marketing common sense says, “No.” People need to know a company’s name and what it offers before they buy, making brand awareness the bare minimum for sales. Successful awareness strategies rely on ads, articles, blogs, and social posts that grab an audience’s attention long enough to learn about a company and its products and decide whether they trust the company enough to buy.
Consistent marketing content that tells a company’s story, educates, and solves its audience’s problems accelerates brand awareness. The more consumers read and engage with content, the higher the likelihood they will buy. This article examines content’s central role in brand awareness, consistency challenges for in-house marketing teams, and the potential cost of content inconsistency.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How Much Content Builds Brand Awareness?
The out-of-sight, out-of-mind adage might be true for relationships. Is it also true for an audience’s awareness of a brand? Despite the allure of digital marketing technology, good content is the heart of every campaign that captures market attention and avoids obscurity. Companies establish and grow their business through organic tactics, including social media platforms, to earn their marketing stripes and reach engagement and conversion milestones.
Consistently posting content is tied to higher awareness and even sales. A Hubspot study supports tried-and-true social strategies, stating that audiences seeing brand messaging on LinkedIn are six times more likely to convert. We can see the momentum in followers, post likes, comments, and website traffic. Have you asked how much momentum you lose when you skip content posts?
What Are the Biggest Challenges to Consistent Content?
Many marketing teams outline content strategies in calendars with deadlines to establish a cadence, such as one blog and several social posts a week to increase brand awareness among audiences.
Like most in-house teams with robust plans, you grapple with generating enough content to execute them because marketing plans have a way of drifting off course. Projects hit snags, product launches derail, and budgets get cut. Bandwidth, or lack thereof, dictates content cadence and can lead to gaps in content flow.
Decreasing content production or pushing projects back is a familiar challenge for in-house marketers. We think of it as “content downsizing,” which happens to marketing teams of all shapes and sizes and can negatively impact brand awareness.
What is the Cost of Inconsistent Content to Your to Brand Awareness?
Most marketers postpone or don’t start content projects for various reasons. When it comes to brand awareness, can those missed projects impact awareness? We call it the “elusive metric” and explore the other side of content marketing.
Consumers are more likely to recognize, remember, and have a favorable opinion of a company that posts content regularly. Timing is everything along the nuanced buyer’s journey, which increases the need to reach your audience as often as possible and the likelihood of engaging them when they’re ready to buy. Inconsistently publishing articles, blogs, and case studies allows a competitor to reach and engage your audience instead of you.
Consider the elusive metric the next time you push content projects out or scratch them until next year. Calculate the impact of missed opportunities to build trust and awareness of your brand, perhaps the cost of a sale.
You don’t have to push projects – talk to The Art of Marketing about supplementing your in-house team’s content creation.
Conclusion
While marketing campaigns and ideas may vary, one thing remains the same: the need for content. Marketers create strategies around formats, channels, and publishing frequency designed to increase the number of people aware of their brand. Successful strategies rely on abundant content, so consider supplementing your in-house team with freelance content and take advantage of every content opportunity.
Reference: HubSpot (March 18, 2024) 76 Social Selling Statistics You Need to Know in 2024
