With a strong awareness strategy, your brand will always be top of mind with your target market. And you’ll get to introduce your products to a whole new audience.

No matter how well your e-commerce business is doing right now, it won’t survive without steady traffic from your target market. This is where having an awareness campaign comes in.

An awareness campaign is designed to show your ads to as many people as possible.

The thing is, many e-commerce brands tend to overlook this stage in their marketing. Often, it’s because they think they have moved past it. After all, they’ve already established their brand and are regularly generating sales.

But having a solid awareness strategy still offers many benefits for your business.

To start with, it can help keep your e-commerce brand at the forefront of your target audience’s minds. It’ll also bring in a steady stream of new clients, and expose your brand to more people every day.

In this article, you’ll learn more about how to launch an effective awareness campaign for your e-commerce brand, as well as key tips on how to use the right formats for your content.

Using Video Content

At the awareness stage of your marketing, most of your content needs to be focused on storytelling, education, or discovery. This will allow your ads to grab people’s attention quickly and make your brand or product pop up on their devices.

The goal here is to build your brand’s recognition and create an affinity with target buyers. And video content is the easiest way to achieve this.

With video content, you can pack a lot of info into a short window. This is super important these days, with people’s shorter attention spans and increasing demand for engaging content.

Video content is also the most effective way to achieve top-of-mind awareness and introduce new users to your brand.

When compared with static imagery, videos are much more effective, as most social media and video platforms auto-play video ads. This increases the chance of grabbing your potential customer’s attention.

A recent study of over 173 video brand campaigns even showed that 74% of the brands had a significant lift in ad recall, a 65% increase in brand awareness, and a 72% impact on purchase intent.

Another reason to use videos is simple: it gives you the ability to seamlessly create audiences from those who engaged with your ads. This then allows you to create new audiences, expand your targeting options for consideration, and improve retargeting campaigns.

Since static imagery content cannot be retargeted by an impression, video assets are the best choice for your awareness campaign.

Aside from generating on-platform statistics, they can also help direct people to your other online assets, like blogs, product pages, and sales pages.

Optimising Your Awareness Campaign

To get the best results out of your brand awareness campaign when you’re using video content, it’s crucial to adopt the right formats for your videos.

Let’s look at some examples.

If your ad is intended for the Facebook newsfeed, the video should have a 1:1 dimension. Meanwhile, a 9:16 ratio is ideal for full-screen vertical videos on platforms like Instagram Stories and TikTok, and a 16:9 ratio for YouTube. These dimensions will make your ads look more native to the platforms.

Viewers who see your ads will immediately associate them with other organic content on that specific site. This helps to enhance users’ experience with your brand.

To be clear, the overall conversion rate from this won’t be high. But it will bring in new visitors and introduce them to your brand and products.

Leveraging Lead Generation

Another factor that you should consider in your awareness campaign is lead generation strategies. This is especially helpful in incentivising potential customers to try your brand.

The reality is that some customers will still need some convincing before they buy your product. Using the right lead generation strategy can give them that extra push, all while building the customer’s awareness and purchase intent.

Now, a lead generation strategy isn’t just a generic “sale” you run across your entire site. While it’s meant to incentivise, it should be a specific offer that’s targeted to a specific consumer. For example, if your e-commerce brand sells men’s and women’s swimwear, it won’t make sense to target men with an offer of “buy one bikini, get one free.”

That said, one benefit of using more advanced lead generation strategies is that they help to segment your audience. This will allow you to run retargeting strategies that convert one-time buyers into repeat customers.

To make this work, your offers need to correspond to a specific action from the customer. They can, for instance, ‘unlock’ the offer by receiving an SMS with a special code or an email with a specific link.

Maybe your offer is a straight-up discount. Or it’s an early-access members-only offer. Perhaps even a one-time-only discounted bundle. Whatever the case, it’s important to constantly test your offers to appeal to a broad range of consumers.

Know that there are a variety of ways to create these offers. The most effective way, however, is through custom sales pages that put special attention on your products.

If you’re a Shopify store owner, Page Fly and Shogun are recommended because of their simplicity. Of course, other landing page builders like Clickfunnels or Lead Pages also work well.

But keep in mind that how you build these sales pages isn’t nearly as important as why you should.

Having evergreen lead generation strategies for your brand will also add fuel to the fire. It’ll ensure you are constantly building your customer database, remaining top of mind, and, most importantly, driving sales.

Prioritise Your Customer’s Awareness

Many established e-commerce businesses tend to skip the awareness stage of their marketing strategy. But this is actually an important piece of your overall success.

An awareness campaign helps to introduce your brand to new customers and strengthen your value to existing ones.

Remember, your main goal at this stage in your marketing is to educate your audience.

You want them to instantly recognize and hopefully relate to your brand. And the best way to do this is through video content. Optimise your videos depending on which platforms you use.

Also, take advantage of various lead generation strategies to incentivise more people to check out your brand. There are many options for you to explore when it comes to creating awareness in your customers.

And the great thing is that you don’t have to do it alone.

With the help of an expert digital marketing agency like GMS Media Group, you can launch an effective awareness campaign that will encourage and educate your target audience.

If you want to learn more, feel free to schedule a free consult with one of our GMS experts.