How to increase brand awareness to boost sales with Gen Z

In 60 seconds…

• Brand awareness helps your brand be first in mind when potential customers are wanting to make conversions
• Pion can help you promote new positioning, boost awareness of your brand, and improve Gen Z’s perception of your brand
• Once converted, Gen Z has the potential to be consumers well into the future 

Brand awareness is key to boosting sales. It’s invaluable when it comes to your marketing efforts, and it shouldn’t be understated. 

Today, we’re here to discuss why this is, and how you can improve your brand awareness strategy to boost Gen Z sales.

If you’re struggling to improve perceptions of your brand, promote a new positioning, or amplify your brand, then this is the blog for you. We’ll be discussing how you can use digital marketing to enhance brand awareness, and how, with the help of our discount marketplace, Student Beans, you can supercharge your marketing strategies and increase brand recognition. Plus, full-funnel marketing campaign examples and key stats to get your teeth into. 

Why is boosting brand awareness important?

Think of your colleagues who describe themselves as an ‘iPhone kind of person’, or your friend who’s a self-confessed ‘M&S girlie’ (guilty as charged, sir). What they’re referring to here isn’t just a phone or a supermarket - they’re brands. And when they need an upgrade or want to buy a new pair of linen pants, it’s those brands they’ll head to first before making a purchase. 

That’s brand awareness. 

Brand awareness is defined as someone’s familiarity with your brand’s identity, product, or services, and it’s invaluable when it comes to boosting sales. Brand awareness helps your brand be first in mind when potential customers want to make purchases - it’s the key to boosting conversion rates. It’s the first touch point and develops into consideration, intent, purchase, and eventually… loyalty. 

How can brand awareness be increased to boost sales with Gen Z?

So, you’re worried that your audience is too niche. Is your Gen Z engagement not where you want it to be? 

There are a number of ways that you can build your brand awareness, from getting social to storytelling, but these all take time and resources. Time and resources that you may not have. 

Well, good news: these are all pain points that Pion can help you out with. 

By working with Pion, we can help you amplify and legitimize your brand through our discount marketplace Student Beans, a name that’s recognized by students across the world. 

We’ve been providing student discounts for over 18 years, and are a trusted platform amongst the community. Savvy spenders and student shoppers flock to our app/website to discover exclusive discounts made just for them, and you can get a piece of the pie.

In order to build brand awareness, you first need to get in front of your target audience: being on the Student Beans marketplace helps brands get in front of engaged students who are ready to make a purchase. In fact, when users are browsing Student Beans, they’re at their closest point to conversion in their purchasing journey. 

And it’s the perfect place for discovery, with shoppers discovering brands they may have never heard of before or thought to shop with. Not convinced? Our sessions have grown 15% year-on-year, meaning your audience is increasingly exposed to even wider audiences. 

Student Beans partners can capitalize on the trust we’ve built with our 4.5 million+ community of verified student users, and our research proves that they’re more likely to trust the legitimacy of a brand’s discount if it’s discovered through Student Beans.

So that’s the summary. But let’s get into some of the specifics. How exactly does this work, and how can we help you build brand awareness amongst Gen Z?

1. Verification 

Building brand awareness and capturing Gen Z’s attention go hand in hand. After all - if you’re creating these lovely discounts and deals, you want to make sure they’re going to your actual target audience, right? (None of that pesky offer leakage, thank you very much). 

And laser focus = boosted sales. Hurray!

Pion’s verification will help you stay in control by ensuring that only verified consumers can access your offers - you control who, how, where, and when your offers can be redeemed. 

And it doesn’t end with Gen Z! Broaden your horizons and expand customer reach by tapping into new markets and rewarding your best-performing consumer groups, whether that’s healthcare workers or military personnel. 

As well as utilizing the Student Beans marketplace, integrating Connect your website ensures that you’re capitalizing on organic search relating to discounts. Sweet, sweet organic traffic. (FYI, Beans iD button on cart allows you to integrate our web verification onto your website, meaning you can offer discounts and verify students whilst they shop). 

By working with Pion, you can improve your search results for your brand, as well as discount keywords, which will enable more and more consumers to discover you… 

And we have the stats to back us up: in the US, there are over 18,000 monthly searches for military discounts!

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2. Advertising

Existing on our app/website alone exposes you to key groups of verified consumers, but you can increase your exposure even more through our advertising opportunities. From email and influencers to app and web placements, here’s how we can help increase brand awareness through digital marketing… 

Branded content

Use the power of our well-established Student Beans name to reach more verified users with our branded content. From TikTok and Instagram to YouTube and blogs, tap into our social following.Not to show off, but check out our stats… 

• Over 400,000 followers on TikTok 
• Average of 50,000 views per video 
• 3-4% engagement rate 

Pion Creators

It’s a well-known fact that Gen Z  are more likely to engage with people who share their values.

Enter: our Pion Creators. 

We work with student creators who have strong, loyal followings. They know their social media platform of choice inside out.  But this doesn’t mean they’re macro influencers - in fact, 46% of Gen Z believe that having fewer than 20,000 followers makes you more trustworthy! 

Our teams put in the work to ensure that the right creators are chosen for every campaign - another way we can help you save time and resources! Plus, that Student Beans name helps with the trust and authenticity factor once again. 

On platform advertising 

Boost your offers with paid advertisements on our website and app  - our 4.5 million strong audience will thank you in sales!

Failing to change Gen Z’s perception of your brand?

If you’re failing to change Gen Z’s perception of your brand, don’t worry. Hope is not lost. Change is on the horizon. 

Remember Jack Wills? 10 years ago, it was preppy brand selling polo shirts and cable knit jumpers, and, to be honest, it was pretty uncool. Fast forward to now, and the brand has completely changed Gen Z’s perception of them: amending their marketing and working with some big Gen Z names, including Max Balegde and Kate Elisabeth, has made them a staple in any teens’ wardrobe. 

Snap back to reality, and we’re here to help you out. As we’ve already shared, at Pion, we can help you promote new positioning and improve Gen Z’s perception of your brand. 

But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding… And by pudding, we mean the best brand awareness campaigns. 

Case study: FatFace

British lifestyle brand FatFace sells women’s, men’s, and kid’s fashion, as well as footwear and accessories. And because they’re smart cookies, they recognized the value of Gen Z: a key demographic who once converted had the potential to be consumers for years to come.

However, the brand was facing a challenge: our research revealed that 86% of our student community didn’t believe that FatFace was targeted towards Gen Z. So Pion’s account management and media strategy teams got together to position and promote the brand as stylish, relevant and a perfect fit for the student market. 

With this in mind, the team used the Christmas campaign to change perceptions around FatFace’s clothing for this demographic. 

The solution

FatFace worked with 10 student Creators to produce content that focused on their favorite festive moments - which, naturally, was authentically relevant to Gen Z. It showed what matters to this generation and how FatFace can play a part in this. 

The results

• + 120% WoW revenue 
• + 114% WoW sales 
• 21K clicks 
• 2.7M impressions

Conclusion

It may sound too good to be true, but it’s not. We’re real, we can help, and we really can supercharge your sales. 

And if that wasn’t enough, our Insights and Ask a Gen Z offerings can help you understand your target audience even more, resulting in better marketing (and brand awareness). 

Want to learn more? Get in touch with the team now to learn more. Let’s talk. 

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