8 Proven Ways to Grow Brand Awareness -- Fast

Have you noticed that certain brands seem to have just popped up out of nowhere and become overnight successes?

I always wondered how that was possible.

Is it just a matter of having one genius idea that no one else ever thought about? Or is it that these hugely successful companies are started by billionaires who have the money and contacts to create something that the rest of us could only dream of?

As it turns out, the answer to both of those questions is, "No." All we really need is a bit of creativity.

The SlideShare below takes a look at some "overnight" success stories, to see what some brands did to scale their growth in such a short amount of time -- as well as what we can learn from them.

How to Build Brand Awareness: 8 Examples

1) Uniqlo

Uniqlo is a Japanese company that ensures it provides casual clothes for all kinds of people.

Growth

Idea: Partner with Other Brands

Uniqlo sponsors free admission to New York's Museum of Modern Art every Friday from 4 PM - 8 PM. That gets its name in front of a brand new audience that it may never otherwise have reached before, and generates positive word of mouth from people who get to enjoy the museum compliments of the clothing company.

Lesson

Partnering with another brand will help you inherit its image and reputation, as well as creating brand evangelists outside of your customer base.

2) Dropbox

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily with others.

Growth

Idea: Refer a Friend

Dropbox made it really easy for users to refer Dropbox to their friends by having sharing options for email, social, as well as a link to share via any other method the user preferred. Users did this to get more space, which Dropbox offered for every referred sign up. This helped Dropbox increase its signups by 60%. 

Lesson

Consider how your product can help promote itself. The Dropbox product created a heap of referral signups because people wanted to get more space. What would your users want in return for referrals?

3) Evernote

Evernote is a tool for note-taking and collaboration.

Growth

Idea: Launch as a Closed Beta

Evernote initially launched as a closed beta, which lasted for four months. During this time, people had to sign up and send invitations to their networks in order to actually use the service. This created a lot of buzz around Evernote.

By the end of the four months of the closed beta, Evernote had attracted 125,000 sign-ups.

Lesson

Exclusivity creates buzz. Plus, mandatory sharing to access a really valuable product will spread the word without costing you a penny.

4) Buffer

Buffer is a social media publishing tool.

Growth:

Idea: Guest Blogging

By writing 150 guest posts, Buffer grew from zero to 100,000+ users in nine months.

It had to start on smaller sites and work its way up to the most popular in its industry -- but Buffer got its name everywhere by creating really valuable content, even though it wasn’t on its own site. In the end, content marketing accounted for over 70% of its daily signups.

Lesson

Be everywhere in your niche. Providing valuable content on other sites outside of your own will build an engaged audience. Once they know, like, and trust you, you can then market your product or service to them.

5) KISSMetrics

KISSMetrics is a web analytics solution that helps increase customer acquisition and retention rates.

Growth:

Idea: Create Infographics

Creating 47 infographics earned KISSmetrics 2,512,596 visitors, 41,142 backlinks, and 3,741 unique referring domains. The brand credits infographics as one of the main reasons it grew its blog from zero to 350,000 readers a month, in 24 months.

“If you can make complex data easy to understand in a visual format, you can get millions of visitors to your website.” – Neil Patel, KISSmetrics

Lesson

Experiment with the right formats for your audience. Infographics worked well for KISSmetrics, but something else may work for your brand.

6) Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a pop-up survey service used by websites to help improve user experience.

Growth

Idea: Conversion Optimization

In its earlier days, unless a customer upgraded to a paid account, every website built on the Qualaroo platform contained featured text reading, "Powered by Qualaroo [?]". The question mark was clickable, and lead to a signup page for a free trial of the product.

Lesson

Use your freemium product in clever ways to get your brand name in front of people, and leverage it for marketing real estate.

7) Yelp

Yelp is a user review and recommendations site for restaurants, shopping, nightlife, entertainment, and more.

Growth:

Idea: Make it Social

Yelp added a human element to the reviewer experience by building a profile behind each one -- which made reviews more trustworthy, and reviewers feel like they were becoming part of a community. Plus, it was an opportunity for them to use Yelp as a reputation-building site. Members could interact with each other by becoming friends, chatting online, or meeting at offline events. Yelp has since accumulated over 142 million reviews.

Lesson

Make your user experience human and personal. Build communities that enable your customers to communicate with each other, allowing them to learn from their experiences and interact over a shared interest.

8) Upworthy

Upworthy is a website with curated, viral content.

Growth:

Idea: Test Headlines

At Upworthy, the curators need to come up with 25 headlines for every piece of content. They then select their favorite four, and the managing editor selects two, which are rigorously tested. Upworthy saw nine million monthly unique visitors in just nine months.

Lesson:

Coming up with an attention-grabbing headline for your content can help maximize the reach of your content and your brand.

As you can see, there are various ways to grow brand awareness in a timely way. Remember that new trends are always emerging, which is why continuing education for you and your team is critical to success. There are various ways to train your team, including our free Inbound Course and Certification program.