How Can Brands Become More Salient in the Year 2020

Was it the clown that excited you when you visited McDonald’s for the first time or was it the food?

There’s nothing more that grasps the attention of the person visiting McDonald’s then the clown itself.

Every brand has certain elements that ensure the brand stands a head and shoulder above from the rest. They establish certain cues that grasp the attention of the common people. These cues can easily store in the memory of the person so whenever a person encounters the brand, they can easily remind themselves about it and choose it from the list of others. The idea of letting these cues sink into the mind of the average person is what brand salience is all about.

What else do you think McDonald’s has that makes people want to purchase from their outlets? Besides the clown, if it isn’t the big yellow M! Here’s another cue that easily captures the attention of a common visitor and can be easily stored in the memory of the person. The more cues a brand has, the much better it stores in the memory and hence, the more strong is the salience factor of the brand.

We all know what McDonald’s is great for! It’s their Big Macs no doubt.

But despite the fact of how unhealthy consuming excessive junk food can be, when you see the big M and the clown sitting at the front door with an inviting smile, you just can’t resist yourself. You will soon find yourself parking your car, grabbing your wallet and buying that juicy quarter pounder cheeseburger with extra fries and drink! It is how McDonald creates the perfect brand salience around.

So what is Brand Salience?

In simple words,

“The degree at which your brand gets noticed by consumers when they are making an important purchasing decision is what we call brand salience.“

Not all brands are the same…

Some brands have higher salience as they introduce many powerful elements that can easily grasp the attention and store in the people’s memory. Other brands have weak brand saliences because they don’t have enough enticing factors to grasp the attention that can easily store in the minds of people.

These are brands that are still

These powerful elements stick to the memory sets of the visiting customers creating an everlasting impression on their minds, so they don’t easily forget your brand.

Brand salience is significant because if you don’t have a strong salience, there’s a high chance that your business just might get slashed out from the list during those micro-moments when a user is making a purchasing decision. As far as the question, how brands can achieve brand salience is concerned, here are a few ways how I believe brands can achieve them in order to progress forward.

1) Highlight Brand Assets in a Way That Audience Can Pick You Out

No business can truly sell itself in the market unless it is equipped with the right hooks that can engage the audiences. So first things first, you need to identify what are the unique selling points of your business that can help you promote yourself. The next thing you have to do is interlink those USPs with pain points of your target market so that you can sell your brand more efficiently out there.

Emotional storytelling can also be of great help when you’re creating brand salience. These emotional short stories create a memorable impact ensuring that your brand can be spotlighted among the rest.

Do you know that the Harvard Business Review reports that customers who have an emotional connection with a brand offer a 3x higher lifetime value compared to those who are not connected?

Just go back to your childhood and think about watching that Kellogg’s coco pop commercial.

It wasn’t just the commercial alone, but the box and the packaging and the cheerful mascot! Everything about the coco-pops created an emotional bond that always made us choose coco pops.

Similarly, we are now living in an age of social media where everything takes place on Facebook & Instagram. So it is best that brands focus on highlighting assets that make them easily instantly noticeable.

2) Keep the Narrative Bold & Be As Original As Possible

There are two things you need to pay attention to when you are creating a strong brand message.

The first thing you need to address is keeping your narrative bold when you are marketing your product. Being hesitant about expressing your brand message will only lead you to be unheard of.

And you certainly don’t want that to happen to yourself now, do you?

One of the publications at Investpro indicates that 22% of the consumers believe that originality in content is one of the major attributes. Being original about your content is what motivates the audience to explore your business services/products and compels them to purchase stuff from you.

Right now, the COVID 19 outbreak is on the rise and people are searching for assurances that everything is going to be fine. Digital marketing strategies during the COVID 19 are enabling marketers around the world to establish that perfect element of trust among their desired target markets.

The human mind can correlate to cues which people can see, hear or feel. As a brand marketing executive, you’re supposed to find a way to identify that external cue so that your brand can get heard.

Believe it or not, but brands that are genuine in their messaging and bold in saying what they want to say are truly the ones that are successful. Take Apple, for example, a simple THINK DIFFERENT changed the entire ball game for the people and smartphones spread around the world like wildfire.

3) Find New Ways to Approach Potential Buyers

Back in the 90s, there were only a handful of resources to connect with our audience type. If you wanted to sell your product/service, you had options like running a commercial on the local news channels, or radio frequencies, or getting an advertisement up on a billboard on the highway!

Flyers and professionally designed brochures were just other spokes of the same wheel.

However, now, things have dramatically changed. We have social media to compliment us with a variety of different channels. And as times have changed, people are more interconnected with each other through their smartphones rather than the national television or radio channels or billboards.

In fact, a study suggested that people pay more attention to their social media accounts rather than pay attention to a billboard that they encounter when they are commuting from one spot to another.

If you’re a brand executive, then there’s no harm in exploring new methods of communicating with your target audience. Be creative in your efforts, leverage the power of paid organic marketing using Google Ad services. Spread the word out on different social media channels using Facebook Advertising. In fact, you can also use video storyboarding, email marketing and other such facets too.

All that hard work that you’re going to put into creating a strong message must not be left unheard!

So that’s it, folks! Here are a few interesting ways I believe you can create your brand more salient. Did you enjoy reading the article? If you have other ideas that you want to share, then please do comment.