Understanding the stages of brand awareness can literally be the key to launching your business to the next level. Brand awareness is one of the most underutilized areas of branding. So many people will get a nice, shiny new brand and think that’s that. The thing is, new branding will only get you so far if you’re not constantly evolving your marketing to keep up with your buyers. 

Think of it like meme culture. The first time you see a meme, you might laugh and share it with your friends. The second time, you might laugh, but you’re no longer sharing it. The next time, the joke is old and you’ve moved on. 

Brand awareness is the exact reason you’ve made money in your brand previously, but now you feel you feel you’re at a plateau with your revenue. When the effort you’re putting in isn’t resulting in the amount of revenue, you would like to see brand awareness is one of the first things to look at. 

What is brand awareness? 

The dictionary definition of brand awareness is “the extent to which consumers are familiar with the distinctive qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services.” But to put it simply, it’s the ability to make your brand recognizable to new people using new methods. 

There are two ways that you can increase your brand awareness:

#1: Lead generation. This can be through referrals, word of mouth, engagement, etc. 

#2: Marketing. This is through different forms of media, different platforms, etc.

The Three Levels of Brand Awareness

There are three levels of brand awareness that every business owner faces. One particular level trips the majority of business owners up and catches them so they’re stuck there. Understanding the three levels in a more conscious way will help you break past this plateau! Of course, everyone starts from zero. So while there is technically a level dedicated to “no awareness,” we’re skipping right past that. Because if you’re a business owner, someone is aware of what you’re doing! 

Level One: Brand Recognition

At the beginning of business, it’s instinctual to experiment and try to find people to buy. So without even realizing it, brands can enter the first stage of brand awareness. Whether you’re outreaching to potential clients organically or through paid ads, you’re establishing brand recognition as soon as you have an offer and you’re actively selling it to the public. 

Brand recognition can start with simply creating a channel. During this stage, it’s likely that the business owner is getting very creative and trying many things. They might try out reels versus carousels, Instagram versus Pinterest. Even the messaging is up for experimentation during this stage! The beautiful thing about this stage is that the stakes are relatively low. If you post something that feels unaligned, very few eyes are scrutinizing the message too closely. 

So if you feel like you’re pretty early on in business, still experimenting widely with your marketing and your offers, you’re likely in this first stage of brand awareness.

Level Two: Brand Recall

This level is commonly known as warm leads, network and referrals. At this point, the business owner is established enough to be gaining some word-of-mouth traction. They’re no longer pushing out a ton of content that’s being received from a completely cold audience! But don’t get too excited because this is also where most business owners get stuck. 

We’ll often see an initial jump in income. For example, you might go from six figures to multiple six figures. And this growth can create a false sense of security because it’s common for a plateau to follow this growth. But the second phase is introducing your brand to a new set of people without changing your marketing too much. 

So in the first phase, there was a ton of experimentation with the marketing strategy. Now, it’s a bit more established. You might have a sense of “I know what works and what doesn’t.” While this might feel great, it can lead you to discount steps that actually need to occur to get to the next phase. For example, if you landed all of your initial clients on Instagram, you might think to yourself, “well, I don’t need a website because this is working for me.” 

But if your presence isn’t elevating and evolving, your prices and clientele can’t either. So what happens next is that your brand awareness actually decreases. As the investment increases, the buyer’s decision process becomes more intense. So what got you to six figures will not be the same thing that gets you to one million! The higher ticket clients you want to see will need the sales page you’re putting off at this stage. 

People could be finding you. They could even be following you and connecting with you. But if the intentional rebrand isn’t there to provide all of the necessary trust and excitement, they won’t move forward with your container as opposed to your competitors.  If they have any objections that aren’t addressed, they won’t make the decision to buy. 

Level Three: Top Of Mind

Brand awareness level three is what we should all strive for, especially after a rebrand. This is the level that allows potential clients to find your page and make a buying decision quickly. Essentially, it cuts your sales cycle and your marketing cycle in half. So high earning industry leaders are placing a lot of effort towards brand awareness as opposed to marketing and selling.

To get to this level, you need to get back into outreach. It’s easy to get comfortable in the referral zone. But you always want to be reaching a new audience! And in that effort, you also need to realize that the brand needs to evolve with the new audience. So the moment when people finally burst through this income plateau typically comes from a really intentional rebrand.

Why is Brand Awareness the Key to Breaking Out of An Income Plateau?

You cannot scale to a million if you are not putting effort and creativity towards your brand awareness and your brand efforts. 

Once the rebrand is prioritized, you know that once you get in front of a new audience, it’s only a matter of time. Your brand presence will do the heavy lifting for you! Don’t waste your time by pouring all of your energy into a social media strategy that makes you go viral if you don’t have a brand that will translate those views to sales. 

There needs to be a level of brand nurturing that you have to do so that your brand awareness can grow as you grow. Because if you’re growing and your brand awareness is plateauing, you will plateau as well. How can you expect to grow your brand if you can’t grow your brand’s awareness and your brand’s visibility?