When it comes to marketing, a company’s focus will typically be on raising awareness: about themselves, their products, or their services. Companies align themselves with marketing professionals or marketing firms to aide in the process. More often than not, the overall increase of the public’s awareness of a company from a single marketing campaign is incremental; there is not one magic bullet that causes vast numbers of individuals to become instantly aware of your company.

Some companies believe in the concept that “any press is good press” and see this as an easy way to increase awareness about their company, even if the cause of the coverage is not ideal. Though this may increase short term awareness about a company overall, unless it is a huge Enron or Lehman Brothers size scandal, that awareness will fade when it is not supported. Could you name local business owner who was arrested for fraud two years ago? Probably not. You may be able come up with a few guesses, but even something that is splashed all over the news and tabloids for a short period of time passes through people’s consciousness with the help of the 24 hour news cycle.

On the positive side, consider the breast cancer awareness campaign that was highlight in this past weekend’s NFL games. There were coaches with pink hats and pink ribbons on their shirts, players withy pink cleats and pink chin straps, footballs with pink ribbons on the sides, all trying to raise awareness about the threat of breast cancer in our society. Breast cancer is a very serious issue, and one that has been around forever, but it’s an issue that society has only been talking about for a few decades.

The breast cancer example shows us that raising awareness is an ongoing process. There are no “tried and true” methods for informing everyone about a company, product, or service. Marketing is an on-going process that takes creativity, funding and consistency to make the public at large aware of your company when they are ready to buy. The rewards of increased awareness come with time, as do the bottom line benefits of marketing your company.