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What is Top-of-Mind Awareness?
Every need of the consumers is being fulfilled by the producers. They even provide the consumers with a wide range of products and help them to choose the best from this. This has led to an increase in the competitors in the market. There are different producers who sell identical products in the market. In such a situation, how can a particular producer stay in a consumer’s mind and attain their loyalty? How do the consumers distinguish them from other competitors? All these questions have a single answer. To make the customers aware of a particular product, the producers ought to create traffic to their product by increasing their brand value and building customer awareness among them. This awareness can be classified into 3 levels:
- Top-of-mind awareness
- Spontaneous awareness
- Aided awareness
In the following sections, we will be discussing the details of the first level, i.e., top-of-mind awareness.
Meaning of Top-of-mind awareness
In today’s era when we hear Apple, we think of the smartphone rather than the fruit! Likewise, when we hear the word music the word Spotify pops into our mind. In simple words, this is what Top of mind awareness is.
Top-of-mind awareness refers to the ranking of the product in the consumer’s mind. When a consumer hears about the industry the particular brand should come to their mind. The product is always on the “top of their mind”. When it comes to marketing the products with top-of-mind awareness has the most loyal and most secure customers. This is because these customers always remain the first option for the majority of the total consumers.
In the competitive market, it is important for the producers to conduct top-of-mind awareness among the consumers to understand their rank in their minds and improve strategies to always be on their priority list.
Importance of Top of Mind Awareness
It is very important for a firm to maintain their top of mind awareness among consumers to sustain itself in the market. The consumers are the life of the product. If the product does not stay in their minds, it does not stay in the market. The following are the importance of top-of-mind awareness:
Effective marketing
The company with the top of mind will always be the first option for the customers and that is the most effective way of marketing. These loyal batches of customers make sure not only they sustain with the market they also make sure that more customers are attracted to the product.
Brand recognition
A brand with top-of-mind awareness will be easily recognized by the whole lot in the market. Their name will always reside in the customer’s mind and will have an outstanding impact on the brand marketing of the product.
Higher market share
Through top-of-mind awareness, the brand can obtain supremacy over the other products and with this supremacy it can expand its market share. They can spread their product to different lines as they already have a strong customer base.
High ranking
Just like the name suggest the brand is always at the top of the mind. This means they are always on the best ranking and will continue to be the same. A brand with a higher ranking tends to reap more profits as it can sustain itself in the market for a longer time.
Better market position
Through high market share and loyal customers, they will always exercise power over their fellow competitors and enjoy the high privileges in the market. They will be always in a win-win situation rather than a risky market position.
How to Build a Brand with Top-of-Mind Awareness
Through the following ideas, a brand can create top-of-mind awareness among consumers. They are mainly:
Brand awareness
The customers should be well informed regarding the brand not only with its use of them but also with their specialties of them over other brands. Only if they are correctly conveyed then the customers will have a liking for the brand and prioritize it over the other brands.
Brand visibility
In the current scenario, there are different platforms through which brand visibility can be conducted. Mainly the emergence of e-commerce has helped brands to increase their visibilities beyond physical boundaries. The brand should pop in their feed and eventually when they see the product the brand name will pop into their mind.
Customer relationship development
The customers should bond with the brand. Only then the brand can have a place in their daily routine. The brand should give customers the best experience by satisfying their needs correctly and making sure that the customer is fully satisfied and will always turn back to them if they need the service again.
Brand recall
The customers should be followed up after offering them services. When they are continuously in touch with the brand the chances of them forgetting this exceptional service are much lesser.
There are other ways like effective market campaigns, social media marketing, personal marketing, etc where the customer is treated like a king and everything is done to please the king. It is very important for the firm to understand the customer’s needs and satisfy that with exceptional quality.
How to measure Top of Mind Awareness
It is important to analyze if the correct outcome is achieved for all the efforts done to achieve the top of mind awareness. This can be measured in the following ways:
Identify the loyal customers
If the number of customers is high compared to other firms then we can surely say that we are on top of their minds. A loyal customer base is the main factor that affects top-of-mind awareness and it is important to understand how many customers we have to measure the top-of-mind awareness rate.
Brand traffic
It is important for the brand to understand the brand traffic that the firm is attracting. If there is high traffic this means the that we are preferred in the market.
Searching rate
As the company needs to stay in the market for a foreseen future it is important for the marketing team to closely analyze the market and make sure that we are always demanded by the consumers. The higher search rate of the brand implies we are way ahead of others in the market.
Referrals
We should be keen on all the activities taking place in the market in connection with our brand. We should collect as many as possible outcomes of the brand in the market and make sure that we are referred by our loyal customer base to others.
Brand recall
Our brand should always be the one that pops into their mind when they think about the product. Brand recall is the most common measure that is used to identify top-of-mind awareness among consumers.
Top of mind awareness vs Spontaneous Awareness
Top-of-mind awareness and spontaneous awareness are the outcomes of brand awareness in the market. Although both of them create an impact in the market regarding the brand in the same ratio they do differ in certain aspects
| ASPECT | TOMP | SPONTANEOUS |
| Meaning | The brand comes into the mind of the person when they hear the product name. | The brand comes to the mind of the person along with all other brands in that category. |
| Respondents | The respondents reply in high rate to the brand in top-of-mind awareness | The respondents are medium likely to reply to the brand as there are other brands alongside the main brand |
| Brand loyalty | There is high loyalty for top-of-mind awareness. | The loyalty percentage is lesser in spontaneous awareness |
Although TOMP and spontaneous differ in certain aspects both of them target on making the brand name to be recalled by the consumer on hearing about the industry.
Conclusion
It is important for a firm to understand the market and reside in the minds of the people to achieve success. The top-of-mind awareness makes sure that the brand name is always on their mind and it is that name that pops into their mind when they hear about the product. Top-of-mind awareness helps you to achieve long-term success and higher market share in society. In short, we can say that only if you pop into the minds of the customers you can crack the barriers in the market.