What’s Brand Awareness? Why You Need It

Building brand awareness isn't just about uploading content regularly — it’s also about creating posts that leave a lasting impression and keep your audience coming back. It's the difference between someone scrolling past your content and stopping to interact. The more familiar people are with your brand, the more likely they'll trust, follow, and support you.

Read on to learn about the importance of brand awareness, how some of the world’s biggest companies build it, and what you can do to increase yours.

What’s Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is how well people recognize and recall your brand — whether it’s your name, logo, colors, or content style. 

There are different levels of brand awareness:

• Brand recognition is when people see your name, logo, or content and realize they’ve been exposed to it before.
• Brand recall is when someone remembers your brand without any visual cues. 
• Top-of-mind awareness is the highest level of brand awareness, where your brand is the first one people think of in your industry or content category.

Creating a strong brand identity is the first step in connecting with your audience and potential customers. It influences whether they interact with your content, trust your recommendations, or remember you when making purchases.

How Brand Awareness Works

The more often people see and engage with your content, the stronger their awareness becomes. This happens through consistent design choices, frequent exposure, and positive interactions. 

Say you’re a do-it-yourself (DIY) creator who shares short, energetic how-to videos. To show your expertise, you could start a series showing your progress for a long-term DIY project, such as renovating a house. Over time, when viewers think of DIY, your content will come to mind first.

Why You Should Build Brand Awareness

When people are familiar with your brand, they’re more likely to engage with your content and remember you when they need what you offer. Here's why you should prioritize building brand awareness.

It Attracts a Loyal Audience

Strong brands have dedicated viewers who regularly engage with their content. When people recognize your name and content style, they feel more connected to you. Over time, this familiarity turns into loyalty, making them more likely to follow, interact, and share. It can even convince them to buy your products (if you sell any).

It Makes You Stand Out

With so many creators competing for attention, you must be unique and create content that sets you apart. A distinct voice, consistent visuals, and a recognizable style make it easier for people to pick your content out of a sea of competitors. The more you reinforce your identity, the more memorable you become — so when someone needs content in your niche, they’ll think of you first.

It Builds Trust and Credibility

When your brand has a good reputation, it tells viewers that you're professional and reliable. Whether you're sharing advice, promoting products, or collaborating with brands, a positive image makes your audience more likely to believe in what you say and take action based on your recommendations.

How To Measure Brand Awareness

Brand awareness might seem like an abstract concept, but you can track it using key performance indicators (KPIs). These metrics help you understand how well people recognize and engage with your brand so you know what’s working and where you need to improve. 

Here are some of the most effective ways to measure brand awareness.

Social Media Impressions

Impressions are the number of times your content appears on someone’s screen, whether they interact with it or not. Stronger impressions mean more visibility for your brand.

For example, if your Instagram post reaches 50,000 impressions, it means the platform displayed your content that many times. More impressions reinforce your brand in people’s minds, even if they don’t engage immediately.

Search Volume and Rankings

This metric tracks how often people search for your name, brand, or related topics on search engines like Google or YouTube. If people search for your name or content, it’s a sign they know your brand. 

You can use third-party analytics tools to check how often your name appears in search engines or how well your website ranks for key terms. For example, if you’re a fitness creator and “[your name] workouts” starts appearing in search suggestions, people are actively looking for your content.

Brand Mentions

Brand mentions refers to how often people talk about you online. It could be through social media tags, blog posts, or forums. Even untagged mentions count — someone might post about your content on X (formerly Twitter) or LinkedIn without directly linking to you. Tracking these mentions helps you gauge how much buzz your brand generates and whether it’s positive or negative.

Surveys and Feedback

One of the quickest ways to measure brand awareness is by asking your audience directly. Polls, surveys, or casual Q&A sessions on social media can help you understand how people perceive your brand.

For example, you could ask followers, “How did you first hear about me?” or “What do you associate with my content?” Their responses will give you a clear picture of how well your branding works and where to improve.

Website Traffic and Direct Visits

Checking your website analytics can help you see how many people are actively searching for you instead of discovering your brand through third parties.

Website traffic is the number of people visiting your site, and direct visits specifically track users who type your URL into their browser instead of clicking on a link. If people visit your website without clicking on an ad or external link, it means they already know your brand. 

‍

How To Increase Brand Awareness With Social Media

Social media is one of the most effective ways to expand your brand’s reach and connect with new target audiences. Here are a few ways to build your online presence.

Create High-Quality, Engaging Content

The best way to get people to recognize your brand is by creating content they actually want to watch, share, and interact with. 

Tips:

• Focus on video content — It often gets more engagement than static posts like images and infographics.
• Create a visual identity — Keep your visual identity and content style consistent with the same fonts, colors, and branding elements.
• Make content for all viewers — Use Captions’ AI Video Editor to add subtitles to your videos so they’re accessible and easy to follow, especially for people who are hard of hearing or prefer watching videos without sound
• Connect with your audience — Encourage people to interact with polls, questions, challenges, or trends.

Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Your profile is often the first thing people see when they discover your brand, so create a strong visual identity by using the same colors, fonts, and logos across your channels. Consistent profiles make you look professional and help people recognize you on any platform.

Tips:

• Improve your visuals — Use a high-resolution profile picture (preferably a logo or headshot).
• Explain your brand — Write a short but impactful bio that tells people who you are and what you do.
• Keep your branding consistent — Update your profiles across platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.
• Use AI tools — Create a social media plan automatically with Captions’ Social Studio.
• Connect to your other projects — Add links to your website, products, broadcast channels, and other content.

Use Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags make your content discoverable to people who aren’t following you yet. Using the right hashtags increases your reach and helps connect you with people who are looking for content in your niche.

Tips:

• Use relevant phrases — Research trending and niche-specific hashtags in your industry.
• Expand your reach — Mix viral and niche hashtags for better visibility. Exclusively using popular hashtags might cause your content to get lost in a crowd of similar videos.
• Keep your hashtags relevant — Don’t overuse generic terms that won’t attract the right target audience. You can add relevant hashtags using the AI Hashtag Generator.
• Monitor your posts — Track which hashtags have the most engagement and adjust accordingly for better reach.

Successful Brand Awareness Examples

Below are examples of marketing campaigns that have made brands instantly recognizable.

GoPro With User-Generated Content

GoPro is famous for action-packed, high-quality footage. Much of the company's brand awareness comes from user-generated content (UGC). Instead of relying solely on traditional advertising, GoPro encourages customers to share their own experiences using the company's cameras. Extreme sports athletes, travelers, and adventure lovers upload their GoPro-captured moments, showing the product in real-life situations.

GoPro regularly features the best user-submitted videos on its social media platforms and even runs the annual GoPro Awards, rewarding creators for their content. This strategy strengthens community engagement and turns everyday users into brand ambassadors. By making its audience part of the brand story, GoPro has built an instantly recognizable identity that thrives on authenticity.

Duolingo With Humor and Meme Marketing

Duolingo takes a playful and unconventional approach to brand awareness — humor and meme marketing. Instead of sticking to standard promotional content, the language-learning app leans into modern internet culture, using its iconic green owl mascot as the face of its social media presence.

On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, Duolingo’s social team creates trending, often self-deprecating, videos. They tend to poke fun at the app’s aggressive reminders or dramatize the struggles of learning a new language. This lighthearted and relatable content often leads to viral engagement.

Boost Your Brand Awareness With Captions

The more recognizable and memorable your brand becomes, the easier it is to connect with the right people. You can use brand awareness strategies like UGC, meme marketing, and influencer partnerships to increase visibility and make lasting connections with your audience.

To create these videos, you'll need a tool like Captions. Our AI features handle editing while you focus on creating brand content. The Video Quality Enhancer helps you create professional-looking content that stands out, while you can add subtitles to make your videos more accessible to a broader target audience.

Reach more people with Captions and strengthen your brand presence today.