Building a brand without advertising is a dream for every entrepreneur. If you are starting up, I'm pretty sure you want to build a brand that is friendly, well-known and stands for something beyond profits.
In most of cases, companies build a brand through advertising. They just pour money into different channels and show their logo to maximum number of people. But it is not possible to build a brand just through advertising.
There is too much noise with advertisements and people are tired of ads. You might already know about brands that have become household names without advertising. Digital Brands like Google, Linkedin, Twitter etc. have never spend money in advertising to build their brand. They always focus on brand engagement. The secret of building a big online brand, especially in the age of internet is to have a very low barrier of entry to a product experience.
With free products and services online, a brand can attract potential customers at zero cost. This creates brand engagement not just brand impressions and brand engagement is more important than brand impressions.
Only a few entrepreneurs understand the process of branding. The rest end up wasting money in branding activities like advertising, TV ads, banners just to create impressions.
You can add all the bells in your ad, but they never truly create that kind of impact on consumers. Just imagine, if I just show you my brands's logo everyday on every possible channel, it would make you trust me. Sometimes driving up too many brand impressions effects opposite and customers get irritated.
User engagement is very important part of online marketing or branding. A good user experience matters the most for your brand.
"Brand Engagement is the process of forming an rational attachment between a person and a brand."