The 3 key elements of a successful brand recall strategy

The 3 key elements of a successful brand recall strategy

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Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the American economy, with more than 32.2 million small businesses competing for market share. The digital world has leveled the playing field for startups to compete with household names for brand recognition. But how can a newer brand achieve name recall with consumers when there are so many other companies to choose from? All brands want to be synonymous with their industries, but it takes a carefully plotted strategy and keeping up with the latest proven technologies to stay one step ahead of the curve. 

Here, we explore the concept of brand recall, how this next-step in awareness is best achieved, what three essential components you’ll need for a successful brand recall strategy, and where to find partners to help you move from being “a” brand to “the” brand that first comes to mind as shoppers consider who can best meet their needs.

Defining Brand Recall

Brand recall is one of two forms of awareness. Aided brand awareness occurs when a shopper is browsing the aisles in the store and recognizes your company when they see the label. 

Unaided brand awareness goes one step further, with consumers thinking of your brand as soon as a need arises, without prompting. A greater degree of brand recall is a clear sign of marketing success.

It’s a powerful position to be in when your brand becomes synonymous with the solution for a particular pain point. Brand recall customers typically become frequent buyers, staunch loyalists, and informal brand ambassadors.

How is brand recall achieved?

  • A Visual Presence: Colors, songs, logos, mascots—there is a reason these ingredients are part of every sports franchise. The same rings true for the most memorable brands today. Neuroscience tells us that visuals light up the emotional response centers in the brain, which in turn leads to more vivid memory processing. Visual learning, pattern recognition, and decision-making are all closely intertwined.
  • A Meaningful Ideology: Shoppers gravitate to brands with unique selling propositions and meaningful messages that match their core values. They want to know your mission statement and what you stand for before they turn over their hard-earned dollars. Establishing your brand’s ideology and offerings can bridge the gap between unaware audiences and what you stand for, thus reinforcing your brand’s importance.
  • Direct Engagement: Your marketing efforts should focus on ways to transform passive audiences into engaged prospects. For instance, a person is more likely to remember your brand name if they are writing with a branded pen that has your logo on it every day, as opposed to someone who simply walks past a branded sign. High attendance at your brand-sponsored events, newsletter subscriptions, social shares, and loyalty program app downloads are all signs that you’re actively engaging consumers and positioning yourself for better brand recall. 
  • A Consistent Effort: Awareness is not something you can set and forget. Establishing reliable, long-term communication channels to facilitate continued awareness is crucial in becoming someone’s go-to brand. The most successful brands are omnichannel sellers that take their business from social media and online marketplaces to mobile devices and brick-and-mortars. While your brand may evolve in purpose and imagery over time, you want to keep your marketing generally consistent across channels over time to form a cohesive picture in consumers’ minds.

3 Key Elements of a Brand Recall Strategy

A brand recall strategy is a plan of action designed to enhance advanced levels of awareness in consumers. Many specific tactics can be added to the plan, but overarching strategic components will include content creation, data collection, and partnership opportunities.

Content

It’s no secret that consumers flock to the internet in search of content that is tailored to their personal interests. Increasingly, they’re searching for local content. You’ll need to invest in regular publishing of professionally-generated content that contains both industry- and location-based keywords designed to attract the right crowd. There are plenty of places to peddle content these days—your homepage, blog, email newsletters, social media sites, third-party niche sites, and video platforms. 

Performance Tracking

Powerful data collection will form the cornerstone of your branding strategy, as this information offers a window into the minds of your prospects. Who are you targeting? What are their pain points? What do your buyers have in common? CRM software can help you track a person’s engagement with your enterprise across all channels so you can move from short-lived single-serving interactions to sustainable relationship building. In physical stores, you can install beacons or in-store sensors to understand how shoppers are experiencing your brand.

Collaboration

Data analytics, keyword research, social listening, and customer relationship management will likely lead you to discover potential partnerships for your brand. You may find organizations that share the same goals as you, though they may not be direct competitors. Sports teams, charities, community groups, service providers, retailers, or tech providers can all make valuable partners. With newfound partners, you can get your brand out in front of new crowds, launch mutually-beneficial campaigns, and take advantage of your partners’ existing marketing infrastructures.

Brand Recall Technology

The utilization of modern technology is not to be overlooked when creating a brand recall strategy. The average adult spends approximately 3 hours and 43 minutes on mobile devices each day. For brands looking to acquire and hang onto market share, there is no more valuable medium than the smartphone. 

Over 230 million Americans own a smartphone, and 79% of these users have made a purchase through a mobile website or app within the last six months. Not only are shoppers buying with mobile, but they’re increasingly using mobile to enhance the in-store experience and assist with purchases.

Technology like beacons, QR codes, video, virtual reality, and mobile apps represent the new frontier of marketing. What better way to stay fresh in the mind of shoppers than to make your appeal while shoppers are in-store and ready to buy? Unaided brand recall is not enough in this environment, as nearly a third of shoppers will change their mind on a purchase based on information from a mobile device in-store.

Shopkick is one of America’s top mobile shopping rewards platforms. The app has a highly engaged, highly loyal user base who shop on a regular basis. Here’s how the rewards platform works: Shopkickers begin their purchase journey by browsing engaging in-app content from several brands and retailers, whether they’re at home or on-the-go. This content includes curated lookbooks, informative video ads, and more. For partners, this content helps build pre-shop awareness and consideration and cements your brand in shoppers’ minds. Users can check the Shopkick app to see which brands or retailers offer “kicks,” or rewards points, which incentivize shoppers to visit a store or browse online. In-store, Shopkick utilizes an engaging gamification strategy that drives shoppers to products at-shelf and encourages physical product interaction in exchange for kicks. This allows brands to boost product awareness when it truly matters most—in-aisle, with the product in hand. By offering users an additional kick incentive for making a purchase, Shopkick closes the loop and drives sales. Eventually, Shopkick users redeem their kicks for free gift cards, which builds a positive affinity and loyalty for the brands and retailers that awarded them, aiding in the ability for consumers to recall those brands. 

Brand recall is easy if you’re McDonald’s with its iconic golden arches or if you’re Nike with its memorable “Just do it” slogan. The process of brand building and recall takes decades to achieve, even for the nation’s most popular, well-established companies. Given the number of company mergers and collapses over the years, it’s clear an enterprise can’t rely upon name recognition alone to thrive in the modern environment. A robust brand recall strategy will give you the foundation for success, but you must harness the latest technology to go that extra mile, remaining fresh, relevant, and ever-present in the lives of consumers. 
Interested in joining the mobile shopping revolution? Learn how our partners use our platform to boost recall, drive sales, and cultivate brand affinity. Contact Shopkick to find out how easy it is to create your first measurable campaign.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Dima Volovik

EVP of Product and Engineering

Dima Volovik is the EVP of Product and Engineering at Trax Retail — Shopkick.

Dima Volovik is the accomplished product and engineering leader who led teams to deliver innovative and commercially successful e-commerce products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions for Amazon, Comcast, Fandango, and Universal Music. Before joining Trax, Dima was the Director at Amazon, where he led product development and Engineering for Amazon Appstore and Amazon Prime Video, CTO at Fandango, and Paciolan, head of technology at Golf Channel/Golf Now, and Global VP of Direct to Consumer Technology at Universal Music Group. Dima’s expertise includes developing consumer products, marketplaces, and enterprise solutions.

Dima grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he received his MS in Electrical Engineering from Azerbaijan Oil Academy, and he currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with his family.