Making your business known is an important piece in ensuring you can drive sales and make an impact to your target audience. You might be asking; how do I get my business out there or how can I make myself known? That’s a very important question. Of course, marketing and branding are key in making your business stand out above the competition but what does that specifically mean and how do you specifically do that? I can help. Presence is important. When creating your strategy, it is important that people can find you and that when they find you, they understand what it is that you offer, the positioning of your product or service, the value, the price and the benefit of your offerings to the masses. In this blog, I will share with you just a few high-level ways to make your business known.
First, you want to establish your target audience, your product, how to position it in the marketplace with its competitive advantage and its pricing. These are important elements that audiences look for when making buying decisions. You can get a lot of feedback on whether your thinking in these areas is congruent to what your audience needs through market research. Feedback sessions, interviews, polls, focus groups and other ways to connect and ask relevant questions will lead to success for your business down the road.
As we have discussed many times, having a brand strategy is very important in ensuring that your brand is valuable, promotable and recognizable. A brand strategy consists of so many elements. From a logo, colors and typography to your mission, vision, tagline, business purpose and voice, these elements give your product or service an identity. Once you have created a brand identity, it’s very important to use the same elements over and over again in your marketing and in your story telling opportunities. The more you use these elements, the more you are promoting your presence that then creates brand equity. Think of the Nike Swoosh or the Gold Arches for McDonald’s as examples. People see these and immediately know what the brand is that they are representing. Your brand can have that same impact too if it is used consistently.
PR is an awesome way for your presence to be made known. People are reading articles and watching the media constantly. Use that to your advantage. I know it may feel daunting, but you can create an evergreen pitch, which is pitch that shows your level of expertise but that is not seasonal and can be used over and over again. There are channels like HARO for example or Guest blogging sites like Entreprenuer.com that are great sources who are always looking for content. Remember in your pitches to keep the details short and to the point but very relevant to the times with a specific angle that is different yet engaging. Do your research. Remember to share facts, statistics or relevant data applicable to the target audience of that publication or media outlet to ensure it will resonate with their audiences. Do your research about the outlet you are pitching to but remember to share your simple sentence structure or the main identifier that tells an audience who you are and value you bring to the table in a few sentences.
Invest in Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization in the process by which search engines can find and rank your content to give it a place in their search results. I will caveat that this can be a long and tedious process but it is an important one. There are some small steps you can take to get there. Be sure your site is running at optimal speeds and yes, I believe you should have a website. Also be sure that all your images and headlines are tagged appropriately and that you have a list of keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business that you are using over and over again in content. If you have had PR opportunities, link your publications and stories in your content. The more relevant links you have in your content by credible sources, the higher the ranking Google and other search engines will assign you. These are just a few key ways to increase presence related to search but there are a ton more.
Be consistent. Write blogs on an ongoing or regular basis and create content. Use social media as a means to create consistency. You can do this by creating a content calendar and ensuring from week to week, you are producing content that is in line with your themes on that calendar. Make your content interactive by using resources like reel, IGTV and stories for example in Instagram and cross promote it in other social channels. Consistency in your marketing strategy is key in ensuring that people and audiences can perceive you as relevant.
These are just a few tips to get you started. Need a little more help in maintaining your presence? We are happy to help. Email us at [email protected] and let’s create something amazing together. We cannot wait to hear from you.