Brand Awareness

Tool bank offers a great service that many non-profit organizations could benefit from tremendously. As a firm you can offer the greatest service or product in the world but if consumers are unaware of it, you will not build any brand awareness. As an entrepreneur it is key to build brand awareness so that your service is known by many. With tool bank, the main income that will be received is from donors. For a company to receive donations they have to build their brand awareness. Individuals or businesses cannot donate money if they are unaware your organization exists. Especially since Tool Bank is new to the Houston area, it is essential that this organization is promoted to local Houstonians. There are many marketing strategies that should be considered when building your organizations brand awareness. Also, when your organization begins to build awareness, it is vital to maintain the quality of your service and product since word of mouth is a key method for individuals to recommend your organization. So, it significant to recognize how important brand awareness is to your organization receiving donations.        
        An important strategy an organization should first identify when developing effective communication with their consumers is their target market. With a non-profit organization that offers items for other non-profit organizations to use, there isn’t a specific age that is identified for your target market. The target market would be a range, such as millennials to baby boomers. Individuals of all ages are willing to lend a hand to help such organizations. You could also focus on schools, churches, and community events. Since this is a large group, there are many different ways Tool Bank could decide to reach their market. Today’s society is incredibly technological savvy and communicating through websites, and social media is vital. When designing your message and communication channel is essential to know how to reach your target market in the most efficient way. You should use websites and social media pages as leverage for your organization. Majority of individuals and businesses in the U.S. have internet access and they use it daily. So it is important to use this as a channel to reach your consumers.
        Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be crucial tools for increasing brand awareness because they function as forums where consumers post about their lives, including their purchases or services they enjoyed. When a customer likes your product or service and tells other individuals about it, they are doing free work for your organization to increase your brand awareness. After researching Tool Bank, it is clear they need desperate help in these areas. Tool Bank needs to utilize their Facebook and twitter page as a marketing strategy to build business. The Houston Community Tool Bank Facebook page only has 1,006 likes, compared to the Houston Food Bank that has over 25,000 likes. The twitter page is even lower with 206 followers compared to 18,000 followers that the Houston food bank has. This demonstrates the lack of awareness Tool bank in Houston has through social media. Social media is a vital way to promote your organization and Tool Bank is not utilizing it as they should be. If Tool Bank makes it a point to exploit their social media pages to build awareness in Houston it will have a direct effect with more donations. There are many simple and low cost ways to promote awareness for your Facebook page that can be accessed through your account settings. Facebook even offers a way to create a fundraising page that could be a great way for an organization to form donations. The Tool Bank website on the other hand was incredibly informative and provided easy ways for individuals to donate. But there can always be ways to improve such as, making sure your website is high on web search results. There are different techniques an organization can use to implement this. They can also use their social media page to promote their website and vice versa.
        It is understood there are many different ways an organization can promote awareness such as traditional ads or sponsoring public events, which we will discuss later with much more detail. But Tool Bank of Houston should truly focus on updating and utilizing their social media pages and website. This will be the easiest, most affordable, and quickest way to build brand awareness. Once they have mastered this concept, they can move onto other marketing strategies, but this is the area they lack the most in. With so many individuals having access to the internet they need to utilize this concept. Tool bank especially needs to utilize this being that they are a non-profit organization and their budget for promotion and ads, is not excessive.  So why not use these free sites as a way to promote Tool Bank to Houston. You might be surprised the impact your social media pages will have on brand awareness and donations. The four donation strategies we are going to discuss will only be successful if your organization builds awareness.