Awareness

In public relations, we talk a lot about an abstract concept called "awareness." Building awareness is often cited as one of the major objectives of many public relations campaigns, and is something that clients often seek our help doing.

However, there are some problems with "building awareness." In general, awareness is only a means to an end, not the end goal. In other words, the end goal is generally to build sales, or increase revenue. We want people to act, not just passively be cognizant of our existence.

Another problem with awareness is that it is not a very efficient effort. We spend a lot of time, effort and money telling people about a business, product or service, and a vast majority of those people have no interest in what we are saying. Sure, we think they should be interested, but the truth is that usually we are only marginally effective. Even when we precisely target our audiences, the payback (ROI) is slight.

Of course, there is some payback, especially when bundled with other promotions or discounts, but in general, building awareness is not a very efficient process. Awareness also diminishes over time, sometimes very quickly, and so our efforts have a limited impact over the long term.

So why do we still work on "building awareness?"

The underlying (and often unstated) goal of building awareness is that we assume some portion of people will buy our product, if only they knew we offered it. Building awareness is a necessary step in many promotions, so it is not worthless, but in general, viewing it as an end goal often leaves the true objectives unfulfilled.

In addition, the idea that "with enough awareness, some people will buy the product" is slightly misguided, under measured, and often unsubstantiated. Secondly, we assume that by building awareness, it will create a solid customer base, which will then continue to spread awareness and build the business as a whole. This idea works to some degree in some situations – such as new business launches – but still suffers some of the previously mentioned problems.

Instead of awareness, if we focus on building visibility, we will find that our efforts will be more lasting, have a greater effect (which is measurable and attributable to our efforts), and provide a greater impact for our time and money.

Visibility

Visibility differs from awareness in its approach to reaching consumers. Instead of telling a target audience that you exist and your product has whatever unique qualities, visibility works to make you more "findable" by those that are already looking for your service.

One easy way to check your visibility is to try searching for your product or service on any search engine. We recently tried this with a local hairdresser, who had a website but was concerned that it did not seem to actually increase her business. After searching for multiple variations of her services (hair dresser, hair stylist, wedding stylist, etc), we found that her site did not rank in the first few pages for any keywords we tried. We also looked on various online maps, and other listing services. We found plenty of competitors, but she was nowhere to be found.

For her, this means that she is practically invisible to anyone who would use the Internet to find her type of service. Despite deploying many traditional PR awareness techniques, and masterful local networking, she has seen her business (wedding stylist) steadily flat line over the years, which is due, in part, to her lack of presence on the Internet.

Visibility responds to the modern Internet era in which people are much more likely to use technology to search. In real terms, visibility combines some of the best PR, SEO, and online marketing efforts into making your company stand out and above the competition.

The benefit to visibility it that it automatically filters by target audience and lets all your efforts fall on those who already have an interest in your product or service. Your efforts precisely target people who want to be your customer (or somebody’s customer), and your focus is on understanding how different demographics use technology to find you, and making yourself visible to them.

In other words, visibility makes you visible to those who are looking for the products and services that you offer. This is in contrast to awareness, which hopes to make people aware of the products and services that you offer. The difference is small, but the implications are tremendous.

Another benefit to visibility is that it is measurable and can be directly attributed (without conjecture) to your efforts. For you and your clients, this is of huge value because it gives you direct evidence that you provide value.

An Example:

To illustrate the difference, let’s say that you have been approached by a new local catering company, and they want to increase the number of new clients. Between running an awareness campaign or a visibility campaign, which would be better? (Of course, in the real world, you would almost never do exclusively one or the other, and you would include many other strategies as well, but for the purposes of this example, we’ll stick to these two.)

Does building awareness of the service help your catering company? Yes, in some sense. You may get lucky with some direct messaging, and target businesses that are looking to host a big company party, or an engaged couple looking to plan the perfect wedding dinner. Or you might land a story in the biggest local newspaper, which is great publicity and may generate some leads, but will still be overlooked and forgotten by a vast majority of readers. Of course there will be some small successes, but you spend a lot of time and energy to only generate vague results.

You can send out fliers or emails, which are fairly cheap, and have a small return. You could try bundling efforts with other discounts or promotions. Or you could try different trade-shows (such as wedding expos), or networking with party planners, and you may have some lasting successes there as well. But in general, it is very difficult to find a target audience that will regularly use this type of service, and so awareness efforts are largely wasted. (In catering, as in many other industries, it is difficult to find a large number of regular repeat customers simply because people do not use the service very often.)

Instead, if you focus those same efforts on building visibility, your catering company may become one of the first things that people see whenever they are looking for catering services.

That means that people who want to buy your catering services can easily find you and know that you can supply what they need, and it opens you up to almost the entire population of people looking for catering services.

As people use search engines, online maps, public review sites, mobile devices, or any number of different methods for finding local services, your catering company will appear as one of the results.

Good visibility means that you potentially are visible to 100% of the people in each channel that are interested in your service. Of course, as with awareness, you will never convert every one of those "seekers" into customers. As with awareness, conversion rates vary, but visibility strategies give you the ability to provide comprehensive tracking and reporting.

Also, from a cost and effort standpoint, visibility can have a much greater impact, and longer effect, than traditional awareness tactics.

Building Visibility

Visibility and Search Engine Optimization services are becoming new and important tools in the Public Relations arsenal. We have recently provided some hints, tools and tips for using SEO tools to build local visibility, enhance your Twitter account, and create a starter SEO strategy.

Building visibility is not an overnight process, but it does have a lasting effect. By starting as early as possible, you can reap the maximum benefit. But it is never too late to start.

As a technology services and custom software company, we offer search visibility solutions as part of our consulting services, especially for clients launching new websites, and Smartphone apps, but we’ve worked with a very wide variety of clients on a range of projects. It is always fascinating to see the effect that visibility can have.

In the search visibility insights section of our blog, we will continue to provide tips and…search visibility insights. However, if you are looking for direct help, advice and guidance, our staff is always available to enhance your online visibility. We can help you get started, help you implement your strategy, or help design a comprehensive visibility solution. Please contact us and let us know how we can help.