The short answer: brand awareness for an online brand is measured by how many people look for you by name. Over twelve months as brand marketing manager for Utopia Beds Ltd, a Yorkshire bed maker, I used below-the-line marketing — social media, sampling, promotions, customer care, reviews and direct channels — to turn three bed brands into names people search for. Together they earned 1,163 clicks from searches for the brand names, 11,205 direct visits and 9,127 visits from social media.

I’m Mark Chambers, and LimeOnline is my marketing and brand identity consultancy, based in Brescia and working since 1997. This engagement is still active. This case study focuses on the work that rarely makes headlines: the targeted, measurable activity that makes a brand familiar before it makes a sale.

Leggi in italiano: Caso studio di brand awareness: tre marchi di letti britannici.

What is below-the-line marketing, and how does it build brand awareness?

Below-the-line (BTL) marketing is any activity aimed at a defined audience through a channel you control or can target precisely: social media, email, direct messaging, sampling, promotions, customer care, reviews and point-of-sale material. Above-the-line marketing, by contrast, means broad media such as television, radio and print.

For a small manufacturer, BTL is where brand awareness is actually built. You cannot outspend national bed retailers on TV. You can, however, reach the right buyer on Instagram, put a fabric sample in their hand, answer their question on the same day and give them a reason to come back by name.

Brand awareness is not how many people saw you. It is how many people remember you well enough to look for you.

The starting point: three bed brands almost nobody was looking for

Utopia Beds Ltd makes beds and mattresses in West Yorkshire and sells them under three brands. In 2025 the picture was this:

• Harmony Beds — affordable handmade divan and ottoman beds — had a Trustpilot rating near 2 stars, had lost its social media pages and was getting about 20 website visitors a day.
• Carter & Lewis — handmade orthopaedic and natural-fibre mattresses — was a new e-commerce project with no store and no audience.
• Belsogno Beds — Italian-design luxury beds — was a brand that did not yet exist.

Two brands to create and one to rescue. In every case, the first job was to give people a reason to remember the name.

How do you measure brand awareness for an online brand?

I measure brand awareness with three numbers that cannot be bought directly: searches for the brand name, direct visits (people typing the web address or returning from a bookmark) and visits from social media. Here is where the three brands stood after twelve months.

Brand	Clicks from brand-name searches	Direct visits	Visits from social media
Harmony Beds	558	5,941	4,443
Carter & Lewis	557	3,780	1,545
Belsogno Beds	48	1,484	3,139
Total	1,163	11,205	9,127

Sources: Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4, October 2025 – November 2026.

Two details stand out. Carter & Lewis ranks at position 1.3 with a 41% click-through rate for “carter and lewis mattress”, and 72% of its search clicks come from people typing the brand name. For a brand that did not have a website a year earlier, that is the clearest proof of awareness I know. Belsogno Beds, meanwhile, ranks at 1.7 for its own name with a 58% click-through rate.

Brand identity first: one name, one look, one promise per brand

Awareness is wasted if people cannot tell your brands apart. Before any campaign, I gave each brand a distinct role, identity and promise:

• Harmony Beds: a new logo and identity, repositioned as the affordable, factory-direct handmade bed brand.
• Carter & Lewis: a restructured brand built around Yorkshire mattress craftsmanship.
• Belsogno Beds: a new name, logo and identity — Italian design, made in Yorkshire.

I also produced 3D renders and new bed designs, which gave every social post, ad and product page the same consistent, premium visual language — without the cost of a photo shoot for every fabric and size.

Social media marketing: from lost pages to 9,127 visits

Social media did the heavy lifting for awareness, with a different job on each brand:

• Harmony Beds rebuilt its social presence from nothing. Instagram campaigns alone sent 2,883 visits, with Facebook and TikTok adding over 1,000 more.
• Belsogno Beds was launched largely through Meta: carousel ads with interest-based targeting, with separate campaigns for TV beds and mattresses. Social media brought almost half of all its website visits.
• Carter & Lewis used Facebook campaigns and a first test of TikTok video ads, alongside Google Ads for high-intent searches.

The principle was the same across all three: show the product in context, target by interest and life stage, and send people to a page that answers their next question. I’ve written more about this in my guide to social media strategy for English and Italian audiences.

Sampling and promotions: putting the product in people’s hands

A bed is a considered purchase that is hard to judge on a screen. Sampling closes that gap. Harmony Beds offers free fabric samples, and sample orders became a core below-the-line activity: a low-risk first contact that brings a potential buyer’s address, their colour preference and a reason to follow up.

Promotions were used sparingly and with a clear purpose: launch offers for a new store, welcome codes for first orders and seasonal moments. On Black Friday 2025, Carter & Lewis took five orders in a single day.

Customer care and reviews: the most underrated awareness channel

A near-2-star Trustpilot rating is a brand awareness problem, not just a service one. Every prospect who searches for you sees it. So I treated customer care as marketing: clear answers, one record of every request and the review profile treated as part of the buyer’s journey, not an afterthought. Trustpilot profiles now send visitors to both Harmony Beds and Carter & Lewis.

In a market where buyers check reviews before they check prices, customer care is your most visible advert.

Direct channels: email, WhatsApp and an order system without a CRM

Below-the-line marketing only works if the follow-up works. On the UK side there was no CRM and no order tracker: orders, sample requests and customer messages from three stores were chased by hand in a crowded WhatsApp group.

Instead of buying a CRM, I built an automated system with Claude.ai and Google Sheets. It synchronises orders and sample orders from WooCommerce (Harmony Beds) and Shopify (Carter & Lewis and Belsogno Beds), collects customer care requests entered by hand, and sends reminders by email and to the official WhatsApp group. Every sample request now has an owner and a follow-up date — which is exactly what turns a sample into a customer.

Bilingual below-the-line marketing: carrying Belsogno between Italy and the UK

Belsogno Beds launched first in Italy on belsognobeds.it. For the Italian market I produced TikTok scripts, social media captions, a 12-month editorial calendar of 48 articles and personalised quotes for Italian customers. When production and operational problems closed the Italian store, the brand moved to the UK on belsognobeds.co.uk — and the Italian content came with it.

Italy is still Belsogno’s largest country for search clicks, ahead of the UK. That is the advantage of building awareness in both languages from the start: nothing has to be rebuilt when the market changes.

What held the results back?

Awareness creates demand; operations decide how much of it becomes revenue. Three factors outside marketing limited the results: no control of logistics and production, no CRM or order tracker on the UK side (now partly solved by the system above) and quality control and lead times in the UK. The lesson I bring to every client is simple: align operations and marketing before you scale the spend.

Five lessons for manufacturers building brand awareness

• Measure awareness by name searches and direct visits, not impressions.
• Give each brand one job before you advertise any of them.
• Use sampling as a first sale, and track every sample like an order.
• Treat reviews and customer care as marketing channels, because buyers do.
• Build in both languages from day one if Italy and the UK are both in your plans.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between above-the-line and below-the-line marketing?

Above-the-line marketing reaches a broad audience through mass media such as TV, radio and print. Below-the-line marketing targets a defined audience through channels such as social media, email, sampling, promotions, customer care and reviews, and is usually easier to measure.

How long does it take to build brand awareness for a new brand?

For Carter & Lewis, a brand with no website in September 2025, brand-name searches made up 72% of its Google clicks within its first year online.

Is social media enough to build brand awareness?

Not on its own. Social media creates familiarity, but sampling, customer care and fast follow-up turn that familiarity into trust and repeat searches for the brand name.

Want people to start searching for your brand by name?

If you make beds, mattresses or any physical product and want to build awareness in the UK, Italy or both, I’ll give you an honest view of where your brand stands and what I’d do first. One senior contact, in English or Italian, from the first conversation to the results.

→ Book a free 30-minute consultation