Awareness and preference

It's not just about brand awareness-it's about building preference for your brand. The ingredients for becoming preferred are believability, self-reinforcing and self-spreading. Nothing creates this like the beautiful, free, authentic word-of-mouth. In general, people believe other people over advertising.

Community buzz

Many online consumers today are creating Web site content through social media channels. They're blogging, v-logging and publishing their own personal Web sites. When the community-created content talks, it often talks about products and services.

Net promoters

Those who try your product or service, like it and talk about it to others are promoters. Those who don't talk about it either way are neutral and those who don't like it and talk about it are detractors. When you subtract the detractors from the promoters, you get a net promoter score. The goal of an awareness and preference campaign is to drive up that net promoter score, which correlates directly to profits.

Make them like you

When your prospects and customers genuinely like you, they self-select your products and keep talking about it for years. Make them like you, and buying from you becomes a natural form of self expression. This is the soft sell method of awareness and preference campaigns.