In the world of online marketing, brand recall is a significant conversion factor. In the world of online marketing, brand recall is a significant conversion factor. With platforms like Facebook where 74% of users visit the site daily having a strong brand presence can make a significant impact on your sales. Easier it’s to recall a brand, higher the chances of repeat visits and purchases. Brand recall is even a crucial measure of customer loyalty. If you are the go-to point for your customers, either for information gathering or product purchase, your brand name will be the first to pop in your user’s mind.

However, leaving your brand’s imprint on the consumer’s mind can be a long and arduous task since you might be competing with already established brands that are leading the niche. Top that with the immense noise on marketing channels (brands post an average of 8 times on Facebook per day) and it is easier for a new business to get lost to the digital purgatory.

To make your way out of the crowd, here are some such digital marketing hacks that will help you leave a lasting impression in the hearts and minds of your audience and influence 100% brand recall. 

1) Tap into the emotional storytelling of visual content

Visuals come with the benefit of higher engagement and recall factor when compared to text. Since 90% of the information reaching our brain is visual, our brain processes visual content fast and even retains it. Think of a video versus a blog article; we all know that our audience is more likely to remember and recall a video than the lines of the article.

But what makes visual content so memorable is the emotional factor.

After all, memorability is rooted in emotions – if your visual content connects on an emotional level, it stays with us. Creating that genuine emotional connect can help you not just leave an imprint in consumers’ minds but also in their hearts.

Think of viral campaigns by John Lewis which celebrate the holiday spirit and strike emotional chords with beautiful stories. Take for example the story of the bear and the hare which tells the tale of a bear who had never experienced Christmas before. Even though the video came out in 2013, it still leaves us happily teary-eyed.

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Other emotions that work well in brand recall is humour and surprise.

Take cues from Geico’s Unskippable ad series where they freeze a part of their video within the first few seconds and create awkward but funny real-life unskippable scenarios. Do check out this Geico Hungry Dog ad that earned more than 618k views. Check out the complete Unskippable ad campaign here:

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2. Use repetition to make your message “The Message”

Here’s one fact about the human brain- When you see, hear or do something over and over, it gets cemented in our brains. So focus on a holistic marketing approach and distribute your message across multiple channels that your customers frequent.

Repetition can help you make your marketing message memorable and even credible.

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Try these tips for using repetition in your marketing:

• Ensure a uniform voice and consistency in your marketing posts across multiple platforms
• Use a consistent color palette and tone in your images and videos

3) Utilise the Burrito Principle to stay in your audience’s radar

Brand memorability can be significantly improved by using social media. But to ensure a 100% brand recall, you need to meet your audience at a time when they are more likely to pay attention to your content – as Darian Rodriguez puts it – the perfect time is when they are eating a burrito.

This principle focuses on reaching out to readers during their downtime to get the most engagement and improve recall. It mimics the effect of those TV adverts we tend to remember because they are repeated during the time we tend to switch on our TV the most.

• Schedule your posts

To make the best of Burrito principle, first identify the time when your users are most likely to engage with your content and then schedule your posts for that duration. For this, you can rely on a scheduling tool like Buffer that helps you manage multiple social profiles in one place.

• Don’t know when your audience is most active? Try remarketing techniques

Every platform offers you different ways to retarget your audience. For instance, when someone visits your website and takes action, a Facebook pixel is triggered (i.e. if you have added the Facebook pixel code to your website header) and reports this action. It then offers you the option to reach the same user again through the Custom audience feature. On Twitter, a similar technique can be employed through Tailored Audience. 

4) Build niche authority with regular content marketing

One common thread amongst successful brands is the thought leadership reflected in their content. Take cues from Netflix Originals or Moz Whiteboard Fridays (built a successful following after 2-3 years of consistent publishing) and you can see that they have become the go-to place for unique, engaging and useful content; factors that result in 100% brand recall.

To create a similar effect through content, focus on delivering useful and unique information to your audience. Ensure that your content genuinely helps your readers and doesn’t focus on brand advertising. Find guest posting opportunities. While unique content can help you build that niche authority, presenting existing ideas with a creative spin can also be useful. So you don’t always have to rely on gathering first-hand information but better delivery mechanisms.

5) Build a genuine connection by offering experience, not just a product

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The reason behind a purchase could vary – it could be a necessity that leads the consumer to buy the product or in some cases, it is the experience that comes along with it.

Take, for instance, the visual image that pops up in your mind while buying food from McDonald’s. The consumers in the 8-10 age group might think of it as their “happy meal” and associate joy with the product (plus think about their clown mascot). So McDonald’s delivers in terms of experience and position it as part of the customer’s life.

However, it can be difficult to build this experience with text alone. Plus, users today don’t have time to read through your website to understand your brand vision. One solution here is to use an overview video to communicate the experience of using your product or service. Here’s one homepage overview video from Bambinos, a child day care centre. Their video showcases the rich learning experience and environment that they deliver to the kids, which helps build credibility with the parents (their target audience).

So when you promise delight through a personalised experience and a genuine connect, brand recall goes higher. You can take a problem-solution approach (or a before and after story) to showcase how your product fits in the lives of the consumers.

Closing thoughts

Engagement is just the first step to building awareness. To make sure that your brand has a 100% recall, you must focus on consistency; consistency in branding, message delivery and tone. Visual content can be a great way to build memorability and benefit from it. Also, strive to build an authority in your niche. And don’t forget to meet your viewers/readers when they’re eating their burritos.

What tactic worked for your business? Do share with us in the comments below.

Vaibhav Kakkar is the Founder and CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing services and development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building system over services, and has helped scale up agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.