Why Is Content Creation Important For Brand Visibility?

Everyone’s heard the riddle, “If a tree falls in a forest but no one hears it, did it happen?”. But the same can be asked about marketing a brand. If no one knows about it, does the brand even exist?

There are plenty of businesses that struggle to be seen and heard by the right audience in the crowded marketplace. So many competitors throughout the globe strive to get the attention they deserve. But is it just as random as a tree falling when a company is able to enhance its brand awareness and visibility?

Of course not. Building brand visibility is a result of a focused content marketing strategy leveraging the strengths of best practices that have been proven effective for nearly all industries. Regardless of your products or services, it’s possible to create and implement a brand awareness strategy to help you outshine the competition. 

The reason visibility marketing is worth your time is that it invites your potential customers to begin a journey. While there are many versions of the customer journey, in general, the path includes these steps:

1. Brand visibility
2. Brand awareness
3. Consideration
4. Decision
5. Retention
6. Loyalty

Before you can make a sale, your customer needs to know that your brand has what they need. When you create a campaign that focuses on a brand visibility strategy, you're kickstarting the process and setting your company up for more sales.

What Is Brand Visibility?

Brand visibility is a term that describes a brand’s exposure within various marketing channels. It's the first step in the customer journey, and this simple brand presence online creates the foundation on which a company can foster clear brand awareness by prospective customers.

Let’s break down brand visibility versus brand awareness. Brand awareness is a larger term that is used to describe not only the brand’s total coverage over potential outreach platforms but also the attitudes and feelings the brand elicits from those who are aware of it. Brand visibility is the first step in creating brand awareness. Your brand must first be seen on specific channels before anyone can form an opinion that will lead to the next decision phase of the customer journey.

Since visibility in marketing can differ from one platform to the next, think of this concept as a focused objective rather than a big-picture approach like brand awareness. For example, if your target audience is C-suite executives, you won’t have to worry about a lack of brand visibility on youth-oriented social media channels like TikTok or Snapchat. 

Plus, brand visibility isn’t something that is created in competition with other companies. You don’t need to calculate your share of voice or brand positioning in the marketplace compared with others when you work to improve branding through awareness marketing. Instead, you compete only with your previous visibility levels.

Visibility is simply about spreading the word about your company’s name, logo, products, services, values, partnerships, and the elements that make your brand unique. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s more about quantity than quality. You still must offer content that follows the E-E-A-T standards to rank high on Google search engine results pages. E-E-A-T stands for:

• Experience
• Expertise
• Authoritativeness
• Trustworthiness

So, as you create a marketing strategy focused on brand recognition, never overlook the importance of excellent content that is helpful and enjoyable for your target audience.

6 Benefits of Content Creation for Brand Visibility

The customer journey really is a journey. You can't expect your prospects to appear halfway through the process and navigate the sales pipeline smoothly. Foundational steps like visibility and awareness set your customers up for a faster, easier buying process (and, as an added bonus, they help you build strong brand loyalty for repeat purchases and long-term relationships).

A brand recognition strategy that leverages the power of content creation sets your company up for future success in six clear ways.

1. Creates a Competitive Advantage

Your current and future customers likely have a lot of questions about how your products and services can meet their needs, and content provides an opportunity to make your case for their business. When you have a robust content creation strategy, you stand out from the competition beyond your unique selling proposition. The best content can highlight your value and make a case for your competitive advantage.

This goes beyond simply being top-of-mind, which is also important for improving brand consistency. Content like a page of frequently asked questions or informative blog posts answers questions that your prospects have as they search within your industry. When you can provide answers that your competitors cannot, you come out ahead.

Try creating white papers or blogs that serve as comparisons between you and other competitors. For example, you could have a roundup of the best products of the year — highlighting yours, of course — or other listicles to highlight the features and quality you offer. 

2. Provides Value for Your Target Audience

When you create content with Google's E-E-A-T standards, your brand is supplying your target audience with information in an authoritative manner. You're the expert, and you're giving them what they need. In essence, you're building your case for why they should choose you over the competition.

Think of valuable content as an extension of the work your company is already doing. To let your high-quality efforts be known, make sure to include search engine optimization, or SEO. When you add in well-researched keywords, you are literally speaking the language of your customers. This helps you to build a foundation for brand awareness and support the rest of the customer journey.  

3. Establishes Your Expertise and Authority

As you build an online presence and brand visibility, you also are doing the work to demonstrate your brand’s authority. When your team is filled with experts within your industry, your content provides the structure that lets your potential and current customers know. 

It's all about getting the customer to remember your brand. High-quality, valuable content makes that happen. White papers, videos, instructional blogs, and thoughtful pieces can position you as the experts you are. People who are researching brands will appreciate the insights about your industry. 

Another powerful way that content enhances your authority is when you share feedback from your customers that shows your expertise. When you post reviews, testimonials, and case studies on your website and social media channels, you can create word-of-mouth advertising. This builds your business while giving real-world examples of the good work you do.

4. Fosters Audience Engagement

Building a business is all about building relationships, and content creation lets you do just that by engaging your audience. When you add content to your brand awareness campaign, you increase the frequency and maximize the effectiveness of touch points with your target audience —  and often have a lot of fun while doing it. 

Consider the marketing “rule of seven,” in which a customer requires seven separate touch points before they're ready to buy a product or service. If they're engaging with your content, you're moving them along the customer journey. And if they're interacting with it, you're expediting the process even more.

For example, you can create interactive content like:

• Quizzes
• Games
• Interactive infographics
• Polls
• Calculators
• Virtual tours
• Live chats
• Webinars
• Interactive ebooks 

When you create content that is engaging with your target audience, they naturally spend more time interacting with your brand. This makes your brand more visible — and more memorable.

5. Kick-Starts Your Social Media Community

Better social media brand awareness requires a thoughtful and strategic social media marketing plan, and this plan needs content to get started. No matter how many followers you have already on your social media channels, you can make a dramatic leap in numbers when you create content focused on brand visibility. 

When you've created interesting blogs, fun infographics, educational scripts for Reels, and other content, you build a stockpile of great content to post with frequency on your social media platforms. Your prospective customers will see your brand all the time and come to expect the high quality you offer in your content — and in your products and services, too.

6. Improves Your Rankings and Reach

Finally, a content marketing campaign focused on better brand knowledge will make a difference with search engines, too. You earn higher organic SEO rankings when you create content that is educational, useful, and compelling. When you create content that includes keywords used by your target audience to search for your products and services, you make it easier for Google to scan the internet and find your brand — so prospects can find you. 

Essential Strategies To Increase the Visibility of Your Brand

Brand visibility campaigns are worth the effort, and there are plenty of ways to begin the process. As you consider the strategies below, look for opportunities that naturally seem easier for your individual business. You can create traction with your brand visibility, then build on with additional content creation strategies as you start to see your success.

Leverage Social Listening and Engage With Your Audience

You need to deeply understand what kind of content your audience resonates with. One way to accomplish this is through a practice known as social listening.

Don’t just read comments, but look for patterns and truly analyze feedback, mentions, and trending topics to learn the motivations and interests of your audience. Check out your followers and see what other groups they’re in. Learn where your products and services overlap with other brands.

And don’t be afraid to ask the audience you’ve already built about what interests them. You may be surprised at the kind of content they’d like.

Create Valuable Content Everyone Wants To Share

When you provide your followers with the kind of valuable content they want, you increase the likelihood that they will want to share it with their friends. While so much information is hidden behind paywalls these days, you can provide a service that your customers will appreciate.

When your followers share your link, they're also showing their network that they trust what you have to say. When the content is well-written, engaging, useful, and relevant, you can build trust and support word-of-mouth advertising, too.

Repurpose Your Content to All Formats and Platforms

As you build your brand visibility, you don't have to start from scratch, making new content for every platform. Repurposing content is one way to stretch your budget and make sure as many people see the work as possible.

As you create a content marketing editorial calendar, brainstorm the different platforms where the content could be appropriate. For example, a blog you post on your website could also be an element of an email newsletter. You can share it on your company's Facebook or LinkedIn page. Perhaps, you could use the topic as structure to create a Reel or other video content. 

Also, keep in mind that you can always refresh older content. If a page isn't ranking well, that doesn't mean the information isn't useful. You can update and optimize the blog to improve its standing in SERPs, or you could take a webinar and break up clips to use on social media or build out a series of blog posts using the recorded content. Be creative!

Use Employee Advocacy To Amplify Your Content’s Reach

Never miss an opportunity to be more visible. Ask your company’s best champions — your employees — to share content with their personal and professional networks. If your company has invested in the well-being of your employees, they’ll be happy to spread the word about the good work you all are doing. 

This is a subtle way to get around the reality that many people prefer listening to the opinions of their colleagues, friends, and even strangers on the internet rather than official messaging from a brand. Your employees can write reviews and share your blogs, which will help raise your brand visibility online. 

Collaborate With Influencers

When you engage in social listening, you can discover influencers who your target audience follows. If your brand’s values and niche overlap with someone online with a large following, consider collaborating with them on a content marketing campaign. Influencer marketing is just one kind of paid advertising in content marketing. It can be extremely effective to expand your reach and visibility.

However, be aware that going into a contract with an influencer will require your brand to relinquish some control over the message. After all, few people online will read from a script and risk the authenticity of their personal brand. Research your partnerships carefully so you can feel good about the campaign.

Consider a Brand Referral Program

A brand referral program is a segment of affiliate marketing, through which a brand will pay individuals to refer their products and services to their network. In essence, you would be paying a small percentage of each sale generated through the awareness advertising done on your brand’s behalf. 

The more people you have increasing your brand visibility, the faster it will grow. However, keep in mind that referral programs also involve giving up some control over the message and values of your brand. The risk could be worth it in the return on your investment.

Implement SEO Best Practices

Don’t forget about search engine optimization beyond E-E-A-T standards as you create your brand visibility campaigns. For the best search volume results, you’ll need to spend time doing keyword research to make sure you know what phases to weave into the content. For each topic you cover with the content you create, add both long-tail and short-tail keywords, which your prospective customers use to look for your brand’s offering. 

Partner with Brands That Share Your Values

Just as you can partner with influencers, your employees, and others through brand referral programs, you can also collaborate with complementary brands. This can be a win-win as both brands can be introduced to different audiences, and you both can expand brand visibility.

For example, let’s say you run a photography business and want to book more weddings. You could work with a florist or a catering company on a content creation campaign that supports a greater reach for both brands.

Include Paid Advertising Campaigns

Organic content marketing strategies are effective for brand visibility, especially when you follow a keyword research report, but you’ll reach a bigger audience faster if you also integrate paid advertising. 

With a paid advertising component of a content creation campaign, you're getting in front of prospects, even if they aren't actively searching for your products and services. You can choose who you want to target, narrowing down your focus to geographic location, certain behaviors, and even what device they're using.

Plus, if you find that your competition is outranking your current content, a paid campaign can push you to the top of the page — so your content gets seen first.

Create Business Directory Profiles

If you really want to stand out, leverage popular business profiles like Google Maps, Facebook Business, and LinkedIn. Robust profiles on these sites provide a free and powerful brand visibility strategy to add keywords, boost your online presence, and help prospects discover your brand. 

Some of these profiles will allow you to post video content, infographics, white papers, SME reviews, and other resources for customers. When your brand has an excellent directory profile, you’ll be just one more step ahead of competing brands that don’t. 

How To Measure the Visibility of Your Brand

Even before you begin a content creation campaign for brand visibility, identify the metrics you wish to use to establish a baseline and check your results. There are many key performance indicators you can use, but you don’t need to monitor them all. Pick one or two KPIs that can present a quantitative report as to the level of visibility.

Since visibility should be tracked only for the platform on which your campaign is focused, let’s consider the metric options of each type of channel you may have in your plan.

On Organic and Paid Search

If your visibility work is primarily focused on improving your SEO, you can use a website traffic analysis tool to see how your visitors have discovered your brand. Google Analytics, which is free, is perhaps the most popular option. You can analyze your page and site traffic, your search engine results page (SERP) ratings, the number of ranking keywords, and how many of your pages are in the top few results. While you’re at it, add Google Search Console to track your total impressions, too. 

On Organic and Paid Social Media

The good news about social media platforms is that those businesses are designed to help businesses connect with followers — and each platform has the backend tools to help. For paid social media marketing and advertising, you’ll be able to track interactions through your Meta Ads Manager or whichever platform you choose.

Organic social media visibility metrics are also built-in. You can track the number of likes, followers, and shares on your posts. If you incorporate a call-to-action, such as signing up for your email address, you can track those specific metrics, too.

On Review Sites

You can also track the results of the visibility work done on review sites. For example, you can check your business performance and insights through Google My Business. You’ll see the number of people searching for your business, how many viewed your profile, website clicks through the site, and more. 

To maximize your visibility on these sites, schedule time in your week to reply to every comment or review that’s posted. Even if the review is not positive, you can use it as an opportunity to showcase the customer appreciation and service your brand offers. If you include keywords in your response, you can improve your SEO, too.