Brand Awareness: Keep Your Business In The Forefront Of Your Customer’s Minds

Keeping your business at the forefront of your customer’s mind is a daily struggle for every business owner. Brand awareness is a challenge that small businesses are trying to overcome every day. Let alone someone liking you and then trusting you enough to purchase from you. And then the worst part is one purchase isn’t enough; you need to remain in the forefront of their mind so that they can continually make purchases from you and become our best friend: The Repeat Customer.

Unless you are a massive conglomerate like Amazon, Walmart, or Target, chances are you are always worried about your customers forgetting about you. You might know for a fact that they loved your product or service and may have even promised that they will come back and stay at your campground again. Still, the chances that they never return is there. This is a scary thought when you consider that you need to have a 20-40% repeat purchase rate to be considered successful (depending on your line of work). As a campground owner having these repeat customers are what keeps cash flow alive and your campground thriving.

This article will cover a few topics on just how you can remain at the forefront of your customer’s minds. The know, like, and trust factors are the most important factors for repeat purchases. It’s as simple as if your customer doesn’t know-like-trust you, then they won’t buy from you. These factors take you from a non-existent audience to one that spans several thousand or even larger. Let’s dive into each of these factors further to see just how you can conquer one of every business owner’s biggest fears: the fear of being forgotten.

Brand Awareness: The Know Factor

Your target audience needs to know who you are. If they don’t know who you are, then they can’t buy from you. No matter how good your content is, how amazing your campground is, or how low your rates are if they don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. Now there are several ways you can increase your brand awareness. And if done correctly, your brand will forever be imprinted in your customer’s mind. Just think about it for a second. Even if we NEVER shop at our favorite store for the rest of our lives, we will still remember them. That is the level of brand recognition and brand familiarity you should strive to achieve with your customers.

Doing this, while not simple, can be done with careful calculation and attention to detail.

Building Brand Awareness Using The Know Factor:

• Define a target audience – Get specific on who you are selling/talking to and focus solely on talking to that person. Be precise in your language.
• Offer up a freebie in exchange for an email address – With that email address, add them to an email list and provide value every week.
• Social Media – Share your campground on social media and ask your followers to do the same. Social media’s power cannot be underrated, and by not consistently posting, you are missing out on massive amounts of traffic and brand recognition.
• Explore podcasts, videos, and books – Think outside the box and reach out to your customers in ways you might not have previously thought of. Of course, be sure to remain consistent with your target audience and where they would be searching for your campground. (Facebook, Instagram, Email Marketing, and RV Meets)
• Ask other nearby Campground Owners to Shout You Out – As a type of cross-promotional advertisement, you can reach out to other nearby campgrounds and offer a shoutout in return for a shoutout of your campground. This can be done via social media, business cards, or other unique ways you can think of.

Get out there and get known. Be proud of your brand and everything that it entails. Don’t think of any situation as too small to spread information about your campground. And most importantly, be consistent. None of these ideas will work if you put them into practice for a week and then give up on them because they didn’t give you immediate returns. They all need time and effort to help your brand become a fixture in your customer’s mind.

Quick Tip

As a last note on becoming known, word of mouth is a powerful and often under-utilized tool. Don’t shy away from talking about your business to friends, family, and other people you talk to daily. Telling just one “right” person might start a cascading effect as they visit your campground, post on social media, and then their following of 10,000 now want to stop by and give your campground a try. As daunting as this task seems, getting out there and doing it can be a fun and extremely rewarding way of growing your business.

Brand Awareness: Likeability Factor

Likeability is something that will take you far in any business. This is one of those “it” factors that people talk about. People will buy from you, and they like you; they might even be willing to pay more to buy from you instead of some other brand offering the same service. People do business with people/brands they like. Relationship building in business is many times brushed aside. We are always looking for our next customer when in reality our best customer is someone who has already bought from us.

From the time you reach out to someone, you need to be nurturing that relationship. Providing value, showing them that you care, and always look for things that you and your customer may have in common. These are the building blocks to any successful relationship, and it is no different when talking to your customers.

Building that likeability factor is something that happens immediately. From the first email, call, in-person meeting, or even the first time they look at your website, people are already judging you. Luckily, you can use a few tricks to build your likeability factor both online and in person. Remember, these tricks still need to align perfectly with the target audience we talked about in the “Know factor.” Each of these factors put together increases your brand awareness to a point where you simply can’t be ignored.

Using The Likeability Factor to Build Brand Awareness

• Don’t be someone you are not – Be real, be you. Don’t try to change yourself because you “think” it’s what your customers want to see. First, it can be mentally exhausting trying to be someone else, and second, it simply won’t work. Be passionate about who you are and what you do, be proud of your campground and make sure that is the message that comes across in your writing.
• Friendly – As simple as this sounds, many business owners aren’t that nice. Regardless of how your days are going, the amount of stress you have, or anything else you need to be nice. Show how kind you are, how much you care about your customers, and people will love you for it.
• Social Media – As important as social media is to build your know factor, it plays an equally important part in the likeability factor. Don’t be that company that pushes sale after sale after sale on their social media pages. Instead, offer value, showoff your product, and only try to sell your product about 5-10% of the time. Show off who you are, let your customer put a face to the brand.
• Talk To Your Customers – Reach out to your customers and encourage them to talk to you. This might be through social media comments, Google + hangouts, or even in-person meetings when they initially enter your campground and when they are leaving. These meetings allow you to get to know your customers personally and even share some insight into your business.

Going The Extra Mile: Get Maximum Results

• Social Proof – If you already have a following of people who like you, don’t be afraid to show that off. People like following the crowd and taking the safe play. Especially when it comes to traveling and places, they will be at for an extended period of time. If you have raving customer reviews and awesome testimonies, put them out there. Let customers know that you have wowed other people, and you can do the same for them.
• Share other Peoples Achievements – Shout out other campgrounds without them expecting to do the same. It goes a long way for your customers when they know you are willing to show them other amazing spots that they can camp at. And who knows, the other campground owner may also notice and offer to do the same.

Baby Steps Rule

Take these small steps, and you will begin to notice amazing results. People will begin to leave amazing reviews, come back for repeat purchases, and spread your campground around via social media and word of mouth without you even asking for it. Like the “Know factor,” this only works if you consistently put work into each of these areas. The great part about this is once you get it down, it becomes second nature. Visit your website and take a look at yourself and see how you are coming across. Are you coming across as salesy, pushy, and cold, or do you have a welcoming homepage/campground, offer value when possible, and care for your customers?

Brand Awareness: The Trust Factor

On your journey to eventually selling your product or service or, in this case, asking your customer to book a stay at your campground, you need to be trusted. Being liked and known are rarely enough to make the final sale. While they are critically important to your success, you need all three factors to make the final sale. Being trusted is a privilege few companies receive, but once you are trusted, your customers will remain loyal and continue to use your service as long as you do not betray that trust.

Gaining that initial level of trust is something most business owners struggle with when they are first starting. No matter how good your product is, how much they like and know you, they will not buy from you if they don’t trust you. Getting people to trust you is not easy. People are wary of a new company, and they might have concerns such as what if the company fails will I lose my money, how can I trust them to give me great customer service, and should I really be the Guinea pig for this brand-new company? It is up to you to show them all the value you can offer to their lives and build that trust.

Building Brand Awareness Using The Trust Factor:

• Free Stuff – Giving away free items is easy and inexpensive (if the right item is chosen) to build trust. Little things help build a relationship. A free pen, a free tee-shirt, a free night’s stay, a free ticket to an attraction you offer. All of these are great ways to build trust between you and your customers.
• Consistency is Key – Be consistently good and consistently build the trust level between you and your customers and your brand awareness will increase. Your customer base should start to form expectations when they visit you. You need to always be consistent with these things. They could range from a quick check-in process, great customer service, free amenities, and perhaps even a few complimentary water bottles for when you arrive at your campsite.
• Don’t Break Promises – Like with any relationship, when promises are broken, the trust is lost. If you promise to have something or give something away for free, do not disappoint. Whatever you promise, do your best to meet it every time. And if you ever fall short or flat out miss your promise, you need to apologize immediately. Then offer a solution on how you will make it up.
• Testimonials – Any good product or service is bound to have some raving testimonials. And guess what? If you don’t have any, it’s no big deal. Just ask. People are far more likely to leave a review if you ask.

Going The Extra Step: These Next Few Rules Will Deliver Great Results

• Guarantee Your Work – Offer a guarantee that you know you can feasible back up 100% of the time. Don’t offer something impossible for you to fulfill or something your customers know is just BS. Free trials or money-back guarantees are some of the best cases of guaranteeing your work.
• Simplicity Rules – Don’t overcomplicate things. Use the language that your target audience uses. Don’t try to sound technical or make yourself look “smart,” just talk you were talking to a friend (Don’t overcomplicate it).
• Be You – A similar theme for all of these factors is be yourself. If you are a trustworthy person in your day-to-day life, you should translate that into your business. If you aren’t, then frankly, you should be in business. Don’t take other people’s ideas and steal them, and most importantly, don’t try to be someone you’re not. Just be you.

Trust Is Important

The trust factor is an important part of any business concept. If your customers don’t trust you, then they won’t shop from you. Take the time to think about how you are gaining your customer’s trust. There are plenty of unique ways to do this, and depending on your style of business, they can be easy and fairly inexpensive to deploy. Once a customer trust, they are likely to become lifelong customers and spread your business through word of mouth and social media. That’s when all the hard work really pays off.

Getting to the Promise Land

Achieving all three of these factors achieves ur overall goal of brand awareness and brand recognition. Taking the advice in this article will help your business grow into a bigger, more recognizable, and better-respected brand. When you create new content (value) for your customers, always remember these three factors: Know, Like, and Trust.

rvResortScout specializes in campground web marketing. If you are looking for some tools and tips on how to improve their website’s content, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We have helped plenty of campgrounds improve their content and increase their ranking on the web. If this sounds like something you are interested in, we invite you to schedule a quick “Discovery Call” to go over exactly what we can do for you. The call will take no longer than 15-20 minutes of your time, and it can be the first step you take to increase your website’s conversion rate. Let’s work together to keep your campground at the forefront of customers’ minds.