What’s one thing that brands like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Microsoft have in common?
All of them have instant brand recognition—even by people who don’t use their products or services. These brands have done an incredible job of developing their brand awareness.
The good news is that you, too, can increase awareness of your brand with a few dynamic online tools. Use this guide to learn about the 11 brand awareness tools you can use to maximize your reach. Note: These tools were found during our online research while writing this article.
Link management and shortening
Website links are often an overlooked aspect of brand management, but in reality, they’re one of the best ways to increase brand awareness. So the links you use for landing pages, blogs, and other important content should all be recognizable and easy to use.
For example, what do you think would be a better short link for Google’s beginner guide to SEO?
- www.google.com/blog/840284/seo/
- www.google.com/blog/seoforbeginners
The bottom link is obviously the better choice—it’s easy to remember and better for branding purposes. The goal is to help your audience process and use your links without too much effort. This is called link management, and we’re going to detail a few tools that can help you better manage your own links.
1. Bitly
Bitly is a link management tool that helps companies create custom, branded links and QR Codes. Plus, Bitly’s interactive Dashboard provides real-time data insights into how your links are performing.
For example, if you’re using a Bitly link to post one of your blogs on social media, you can view your Dashboard to check its activity:
Bitly users can also create branded links to guide users to different website pages and content resources. For example, let’s say your website URL is thecoffeeshop.com.
Here are some Bitly links you can add to your main URL:
- /shop
- /blog
- /donate
You can simply insert any of these slugs after your main URL, like so:
- thecoffeeshop.com/shop
- thecoffeeshop.com/blog
- thecoffeeshop.com/donate
Bitly offers three main products that make it possible to create and track the progress of your branded links:
- Link Management: Use this product to create custom branded links, share them wherever you’d like, and track their progress.
- QR Codes: Create an unforgettable brand experience with unique QR Codes for all your products.
- Link-in-bio: Produce and track the success of any branded link you’re using on social media with a personalized microsite.
Bitly provides an all-in-one link management platform where you can develop easily-recognizable, custom links for your brand. Check out our pricing plans and try out Bitly for yourself.
2. Rebrandly
Rebrandly is another link management tool that you can use to create and manage custom branded links.
They also offer in-depth analytics, so you can track your links and see how they are performing. In addition, Rebrandly has a traffic retargeting feature that enables you to send your visitors to a mobile app or specific landing pages based on their device, location, and browser.
Social media management
Social media is an open forum where anyone can engage and communicate with their favorite brands. Whether you want to keep it professional, hire influencers, or take a more entertaining approach, you can use a social media management tool to keep your content and marketing efforts organized.
Social media management tools help to keep your content creation and publishing activities consistent. This way, you can showcase your brand’s true personality on a regular basis.
With that said, let’s cover some of the most popular tools that can help you build brand awareness using social media.
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media marketing and management tool with more than 18 million customers. They provide an all-in-one platform where users can:
- Publish and schedule content across all of their social media platforms.
- Use content templates to make content creation a breeze.
- Monitor social media activity and brand mentions through social listening tools.
- Advertise or promote their website and social media content.
What’s most impressive about Hootsuite is its long list of integrations, which include:
- All popular social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, etc.)
- Google My Business
- Mailchimp
- HubSpot
- Canva
Hootsuite is used by businesses across a variety of sectors, from government to healthcare.
4. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a worthy Hootsuite alternative. Serving over 25,000 worldwide customers, Sprout Social provides most of the same main features as Hootsuite.
However, this tool offers a few extra perks, such as:
- Analytics: Users can make smarter decisions with AI-powered data insights and recommendations to reach marketing benchmarks. You can also measure brand perception on specific social media platforms with their analytics tools.
- Listening: Sprout Social makes it easy to track social conversations surrounding your brand, so you can respond accordingly.
- Employee advocacy: Using Sprout Social, you can unlock the potential for your employees and influencers to become brand champions and amplify their voices on social media.
All of these additional features make Sprout Social worth a look if you want to take full advantage of the free marketing and brand awareness opportunities that social networks offer.
5. Buffer
Buffer is a social media toolkit designed for small businesses. It delivers many of the same social media management features as Sprout Social and Hootsuite, but on top of that, users can also:
- Create customized landing pages in minutes.
- Use the Buffer AI Assistant to generate social media content ideas and repurpose content easily.
If you’re enamored with AI, Buffer is a great tool to ideate and create social media content that resonates with your brand and audience.
Campaign management and SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) and brand management are two marketing activities that go hand-in-hand. SEO focuses on making your brand visible on search engines like Google and Bing—which, of course, increases brand awareness.
But you need the right tools to manage your SEO campaigns effectively and get results. So let’s explore the tools that can help you improve your company’s online exposure.
6. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a platform that provides website owners with real-time data about their sites’ performance. For example, you can use Google Analytics to view essential web metrics and activity, such as:
- Website traffic: This is the number of people who are visiting your website, usually on a monthly basis.
- Referral sources: These are the places people are visiting your website from, such as social media platforms, emails, and other websites.
- Average session time: This is how long an average user is spending on your website. The more time they spend on your website, the better.
Google Analytics gives you an in-depth look into your website’s performance, so you can adjust your SEO and marketing efforts. It’s also a great branding tool that helps you measure the success of your branded links and brand awareness campaigns.
7. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular keyword research tool. You can use Ahrefs to discover which search terms your target audience is using to find a product or service you offer.
Here are some things you can only do with Ahrefs:
- Compare historical data for organic keywords to see how they’ve performed over time.
- Assign certain search terms as brand name keywords to elevate brand awareness.
- Browse your competitors’ top-performing pages.
- Check backlink growth and decline over time.
Ahrefs is a powerful tool that can help you maximize your SEO, increase your brand awareness, and drive more traffic to your site.
8. Semrush
Semrush has more than 470,000 worldwide users and is a household name in the digital marketing industry.
Like Ahrefs, Semrush is a keyword research tool that provides insights you can use to build an SEO strategy. With Semrush, you can:
- Browse industry keywords and create content outlines to rank for them.
- Perform a site audit to check the health of your website.
- Use their keyword gap analysis feature to see how your website stacks up against your competitors.
Content creation
The best brands create memorable experiences through content, so content creation is a critical aspect of improving brand awareness. You can use blogs, videos, or even GIFs to interact with your audience, but if you don’t invest heavily into creating the type of content your audience wants to see, none of the other tools we mentioned will matter.
With that said, let’s go over the top content creation tools on the market.
9. Canva
Canva is a hugely popular graphic design tool. You can use Canva to create just about anything—from infographics to social media graphics. Here are a few reasons why you should start using Canva:
- Canva is easy for anyone to use. You don’t need any graphic design experience.
- They have a completely free option that’s full of useful features.
- You can design visual content for any platform—from PDFs to TikTok reels.
Canva is a great tool to keep your content fresh and eye-catching to increase your brand awareness.
10. Google Trends
Google Trends is a free tool that provides in-depth data about the most searched topics and keywords on Google. You can use Google Trends to not only learn what’s trending online but also catch growing trends before they explode.
But one of the best features of Google Trends is its historical data. Users can browse historical data on virtually any topic to confirm trends. So you can use this tool to plan and create viral content to boost your brand.
11. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool you can use to brainstorm trending content topics. With BuzzSumo, you can:
- See the most successful and viral content for different topics.
- Check social media mentions of specific topics to catch trends.
- View backlinks, shares, hashtags, and comments for the most popular online content.
BuzzSumo gives content creators numerous tools to brainstorm and plan viral content for their websites and social media profiles.
Drive brand awareness to new heights with Bitly
Increasing your brand awareness is key to maximizing your brand’s reach, and there are plenty of great tools out there that can help you get your brand in front of more potential customers. But custom short links are the backbone of any good marketing strategy.
You can use customized, branded links across your entire brand awareness strategy—from SEO to social media. Plus, Bitly makes it easy to track and manage all of your links in one place, so you can get deep insight into how your links are performing and tweak your efforts for optimal results.
If you’re ready to increase your brand awareness, get started with Bitly today!