Startup Stash
Jul 31
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Ever wondered how popular brands such as Coca-Cola, Apple, and Microsoft became household names?
Why can’t iPhone enthusiasts stop talking about the next iPhone release?
If you thought it was because of their brilliant design decisions, how well they meet consumer needs, smart marketing campaigns, or technology prowess, you are certainly mistaken.
While the latter must have played a significant part in the brand's success, they certainly were not the sole premise for it. Taking a closer look at a shared characteristic they all have, independent of their market segment, is they all have gained market domination, showing up so many times, that you simply can't ignore them. Omnipresence is the game they all play, and have undoubtedly excelled in.
I recently finished reading a book by Grant Cardone, “The 10X Rule”, I know, It's a classic you can't blame me. One of the chapters implies that brand obscurity is an illness an individual or organization should distance themselves from. His whole argument states that no amount of customer satisfaction or technological prowess can parallel market awareness. Why? It simply paves way for huge quantities of success on all organizational fronts.
This article aims to show the impetus of brand awareness for startup success, hopefully within a 3-minute read.
Startups are definitely perishable endeavors, they only operate for short timeframes until the value is extracted from them. This makes omnipresence key in its strategic plan to not only stay afloat but achieve stratospheric levels of success.
How ? you may ask.
A tad obvious, though its results are nothing short of translucent. Omnipresence iteratively plays a huge role in getting a brand's message engraved in its target audience's minds. This is important as most buying decisions are a result of subconscious decisions made through previous encounters with a brand.
We are led to believe that consumers are rational and goal-oriented people, though this article begs to differ. As human beings are extremely sentient, most of our actions are driven by emotions, popular brands know this and leverage it to compel you to buy, by increasing their market awareness.
In the grand scheme of things, contrary to popular belief, you need huge pools of general customers than ever thought. This means as opposed to funneling consumers from a smaller base, omnipresence allows you to get a bigger pool of customers who will then help you make product decisions based on both qualitative and quantitative data, increasing customer acquisition a notch higher.
We long have been of the school of thought that, we need to prioritize customer retention over acquisition, and it's true. Though what most of these brands know is that customer satisfaction is secondary to acquisition. Matter of fact, no profitable quantities of customer success happen with shaky acquisition strategies.
Being everywhere all the time ensures that you have a bigger feedback pool, which will in turn give you room to satisfy your audience better and more effectively, and well I don't advocate shipping irrelevant products to large pools of consumers, I understand products typically don't fail for lack of a solution to consumer needs, it is mostly because of product obscurity.
As aforementioned, dominant brands leverage omnipresence to not only build a consumer pool and increase conversions, they also use it to build brand loyalty. Remember when Coca-Cola printed random names on their beverage bottles which consumers later posted online? That was free marketing, it boosted their omnipresence agenda to lofty heights, a marketing stunt their budget certainly couldn't handle. A true testament to their consumer's loyalty.
So how do you achieve omnipresence?
Physical omnipresence is capital intensive, certainly for startups. You want to leverage a hybrid model where online and physical strategies are used to increase brand awareness, online definitely superseding the latter.
Methods such as SEO (Search engine optimization), SEM (Search engine marketing), social media marketing, registering your business on several online directories, product reviews, and blogs about your product can go a long way to promoting brand awareness. An alternative to gain granular success on all fronts is hiring a digital marketing expert or agency, you'll thank me later.
In conclusion, brand obscurity is an illness most startups are unwaveringly suffering from, and probably have excuses for. It could be consumer satisfaction, development timeframes, or founder preferences. This only heightens customer dissatisfaction and counterintuitively limits consumer feedback. Get yourself out there. The earlier the better.
If you've liked this article kindly consider subscribing and following me for more content like this, while not forgetting to clap at least once to get this piece to a bigger audience.
Until next time, happy reading!
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