So you have finally started up your brand and started getting leads. But now you want to take it to the next level and have decided to promote your brand. Everyone thinks about promoting their brand in their different ways. Some people take it lightly, some seriously. Some people think it’s hard, whereas some are experts in it.

It would help if you took some time and research your options. Talk with other business owners and mentors to see your best options. And before you take your first step, have a look at these ten things that you should keep in mind when starting to promote your brand.

Use The Power Of Social Media

While physical stores and physical marketing is the conventional way and often create more leads for the business, the world is moving increasingly towards social media, and the impact is much higher. An influencer with a million views can promote your brand much more efficiently and effectively than spending thousands on traditional marketing. An effective way of doing it is to send a product of your brand to influencers for free, and they will review it and show it to their followers.

Get Some Accessories Made

Hire a sound designer and get some accessories and wearables designed. Print out those T-Shirts, promotional hats, pens, and other useful accessories that people will wear or use so that they will remember your brand each time they wear it. This way of marketing is costly but extremely useful when applied to the right audience. Consider distributing these things in places where people gather, such as business networking events, expos, and conventions.

Get Yourself Up Online

Utilize the power of the Internet to promote your brand. Get an excellent beautiful, and interactive website developed for your brand. Open up an E-commerce store for your brand and get your brand identity on popular social media networks. The outreach of the Internet is worldwide, and millions of people could potentially know your brand and be your customers. And as far as shipping internationally is concerned, it is much more comfortable than ever before; you could be selling your product to someone sitting on the other side of the world.

Sell Emotions, Not Product

Promote your brand around a story. Target your audience’s emotions. Pick up something hard in their lives and try to implement your brand in solving their problems. Adopting this technique will lead them to believe your brand as their savior and will potentially become your future customers.

Cool, Engaging Guides And Infographics

One thing that gives confidence to people is the information provided to them in a meaningful and beautiful presentation. Consider designing an appealing guide about your product, what it does, what problem it solves. Or much better, design an Infographic centered around your brand, showcasing engaging information that your audience will enjoy. For instance, if it is a makeup brand, then an Infographic about different ways people do their makeup around the world will appeal to a significant number of people. Boost your engagement by posting in social media communities created around the idea of the niche of your brand. Make sure you research your design options and hire a professional designer who knows about the trending designs.

Paid Social Advertising

If you can’t get an influencer to work with you, or your social media page is not gaining much traction, then you might consider running paid ads on platforms like Facebook. The cost per click model is an effective and relatively affordable way of promoting to brand. Modern advertising techniques also allow you to pinpoint certain groups of people that might be interested in your brand. The pinpointing is possible by the options available for targeting audiences based on their localities, gender, or ages.

Do Giveaways

One of the best things to drive customers to you is to do giveaways. And giveaways do not always have to be expensive; you can give a small gift every time someone buys your product or host giveaways on social media channels. One such example is if you have a brand that sells meat, then tell your customers to make the best dish with your brand’s meat and post pictures on your facebook video downloader group. The one with the most likes gets free meat or other rewards. Another advantage of this is that people will share the word and invite others to participate in the contest.

Make Your Brand Strong

One of the most critical mistakes people make is that they create tens of logos or other identities for their brand. Don’t do that. It would be best if you had a strong brand, one that can compete and can stay in people’s heads. Use one valid name, one logo, one slogan, and let it frustrate people. They should become tired looking at your colors to the degree that whenever they see similar colors, they think about your brand.

Don’t Forget To Start A Podcast

Not everyone can afford advertising on radios and televisions. So an alternative is to start your podcast. Please talk about your brand, what it sells, market it on your private show. Promote your podcast through various channels such as Social Media. Invite other industry experts to your podcast and interview them about your niche. The podcast will be serving two purposes; as a medium of education for your audience and will also market your brand.

Networking

Attend networking events often. You need to get out there and let other industry experts and businesses know about your brand. It will help you develop brand awareness and will be a way for your brand to gain potential clients and customers who may be interested in your services and products. However, it would be best if you did not go there with the sole intention of selling and seeking out customers. Instead, it would help if you were focusing more on getting to know other people, learning from their experiences, and connecting with them.

Conclusion

These were only ten points, but there are hundreds of other things that go into promoting and marketing a brand. Every brand should allocate a budget specifically for marketing purposes and brand awareness campaigns. These ensure the proper launching and survival of the business. Lastly, one must always be patient with the brand; success takes time. Rome did not become a superpower in one day, be patient, and appreciate your brand and do not lose trust in your ideas. And as Art Williams famously said, “Just do it and do it and do it.” Do not overthink and experiment with different techniques.

In a crowded, competitive landscape, businesses need to fight tooth and nail for potential customers to take notice. Companies are bombarding consumers with marketing messages on a daily basis, so putting steps in place to make yours stands out has to be your top priority. Here are a few of the most effective ways for your organizations to get noticed and rise above the sea of marketing messages.

Press the Flesh

Nothing beats old-fashioned personal contact to leave a lasting impression. Finding ways to connect with as many potential customers as possible on a direct level is a critical part of success. If you attend trade shows and conferences, you can benefit from reaching more of your potential customers in a shorter space of time, all in one location. Planning is crucial, so ensure that your marketing materials are perfect, invest in some branded promotional products to give away to visitors, and you’ll be on your way to lifting your corporate profile.

Partner with Other Brands

There is nothing wrong with “piggy-backing” off another brand or partnering with them for your benefit. If you can find another brand that has a better presence in your community, find out what you can provide in exchange for their spotlight. Having a mutually beneficial relationship can contribute to growth by association and provide instant credibility.

Alternatively, you can even consider partnering up with another brand to share the financial burden of event sponsorship. If thousands of people see your branding at a huge event, you can benefit from excellent recognition in your community. Even better, if it has live streaming, your business can also benefit from global coverage.

Incentive for Referrals

If your issue is not only building your brand but also your customer base, then offer incentives for referrals. Big companies have hit the jackpot when offering discounts and extras to loyal customers who refer their friends as well.

Dropbox and PayPal, for example, were able to significantly increase their user base by providing monetary benefits as well as extra storage space. While the incentive you offer might be small, it could be enough to get your customers to help you grow.

Humanize Your Brand

When you start a new business, no one knows who you are. If consumers are unsure what you represent and whether they can trust you, how can you expect them to utilize your products and services? You need to add a human touch to your brand. Potential customers will appreciate getting to know the people behind your brand, and you can gradually build up trust. Once you’ve established that connection, the customers will come.

Be Consistent with Branding

When your business is in its infancy, it’s all too easy to make the mistake of establishing several different branding campaigns and hitting the market all at once. The problem with that is, if you’re not using consistent imagery, fonts, and most importantly logos, you aren’t helping yourself to develop that brand recognition you so desperately desire.

Customers can’t familiarize themselves with a brand that doesn’t remain true to its image. Therefore, it’s crucial to get your branding perfect, then hit the market with one plan of attack. Over time, your brand may become as easily recognizable as Nike’s swoosh.  

Building brand recognition doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. Take note of these five tips, work hard, hire a professional graphic designer and reap the rewards. While the journey may be long and arduous, it’s all worth it when a color, font, or logo can result in your customers knowing who you are.

 

Brand awareness is a powerful tool to capture the hearts of consumers. It is the level of consumer awareness of a business. It determines the potential of a customer’s ability to recognise a brand image and to connect it with a specific product or service of the business. The efforts put in by a business to build brand awareness help succour the consumers to become familiar with its products and services. With continuous exposure of your brand in different exciting ways that leave a remarkable impact on the consumers you will earn their trust.

Internet and smartphone have made things quite easy for businesses these days. They just need to do smart work. Proper brand awareness not only boosts the sales of the business but also adds to its credibility. If you are looking to a guide that will help you with the brand awareness of your company then keep reading for some clever tips.

  1. Social Media

Blindly, social media is one of the best ways to get your business brand recognition. However, depending on the product or service that your business is offering and the target audience you should pick the social media platforms. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram are the most used. Social media platforms let you connect with millions of people – GLOBALLY!! The better you use the tools of the platform and create your content wisely the more people you will be able to cover. Remember to be active in your account and keep your followers engaged. There should be interaction on the account. Organising contests, giveaways, discount coupons etc. are some of the ways to promote your brand.

  1. Blogging

Content blogging also helps in building brand awareness and is also a part of SEO. Company that manages to create powerful content also creates a trail of dedicated customers. Content should be relevant to the product and services that your business is offering – make sure the website of your company is linked. Search engines love content that is appropriate to the linked website.

  1. Search Ads

A recent study found that paid search ads help in boosting consumer awareness. They seem to serve dual purpose – first of increasing sales and second building brand awareness for your businesses products and services. Moreover you have analytical tools that will help you track the response especially if your ads have been placed with Google.

  1. Influencer Marketing

This may be somewhat connected to social media because the influencer that will work on your brands products use social media to promote them. While your business may be new to social media an influencer already has a huge fan following. These influencers have followers who trust them and what they recommend. However, pick an influencer wisely you cannot just pick one randomly. For instance you cannot have an influencer who deals in beauty products to review an electronic product that your company is dealing with. You need to check whether the target audience that he/she has is what you are also looking for.

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  1. Press Release

Another way to get instant brand recognition is through a press release. Press is a powerful media and announcing events or product releases can make it go viral through internet and television in no time. Remember to follow the rules of how you draft your content for the press. They follow a different format, you can look up details on the internet. This instantly drives huge traffic and you get a lot of conversions if the press release is done properly.

  1. Promotional Merchandise

Corporate giveaways are a great way to promote your brand. Although you might consider keeping it quite budgeted but remember cheap giveaways will have a negative impact. You can have limited giveaways but keep the quality high. They don’t have to be biggies even small things such as a key-ring or a pen with your company’s name engraved on it would be something to cherish. Of course if your budget permits you can go ahead with something bigger and better.

  1. Videos are Powerful

Ever since internet has become cheap people freely watch videos. Videos are also an important part of SEO. Company that makes video a part of their branding camping also boosts their site’s SEO. Besides just using video on your website you should also consider YouTube or Facebook that video viewing in billions. People look for realistic content remember to make the video short, sweet and memorable.

  1. Collaborate with Other Budding Companies

You will not only promote your brand but also save money through this campaign. For instance, if you have a flower shop you can offer discounts to customers of a bridal store. You can have similar tie-ups with related businesses.

These are the power tips for you that will help you in your company’s brand recognition.

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The key to a successful online business is to have in-depth knowledge about what your customers want and how much they are willing to pay for it.

In order to increase your chance of success, you need to have some research about what the market wants and needs, so that you know all about your potential customers. Searching for prospective customers is not as difficult as it was in the past because today the internet helps us with most of our research. You can visit online forums and discussions to see what people are looking for and what problems they are trying to solve. For a successful entrepreneur, having detailed knowledge about their competitors is crucial in order to stay ahead of the competition in the market.

Experience

Once you have all the insights regarding the market and the customers, you need to build an attractive website which has an easy-to-use interface so that customers can easily navigate the site and find your offers. Your website is your main display and it must be customer friendly, and it should contain all the products and services that you offer. In addition to this, you should update your website on a daily basis in order to provide the latest information about your company.

Visitors

After developing the website, you need to generate traffic to your webpage so that more customers can visit and buy your products online. Pay-Per-Click is the easiest way to get traffic to your newly developed site. Using Pay-Per-Click will allow you to test various keywords and prices because these ads will show up immediately on the search pages. These keywords will help you improve your ranking on different search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Record-keeping

Traffic generation is not your sole task, as you still have to maintain the records of your customers as well. In order to run your online business successfully, you need to have all the records regarding visitors and purchasing customers so that you can assist them when they visit your website again. You should store all the relevant information on multiple devices in order to have secure backups of all the data.

Reputation management

It is worth mentioning that online business are all about reputation, and the slightest mistake can ruin your brand’s reputation forever. So you need to be careful about all the details, including the minor ones, as you cannot compromise your brand’s reputation. It is important for your brand to come off as a premium entity in the market as well as in the minds of the customers. It is now an established fact that people use the internet to find information, so you should take advantage of this factor and provide free information to other websites and search engines so that customers can easily find you.

In addition to this, a tip from well known entrepreneur Oliver Isaacs, is that you can create valuable content in the form of videos and articles regarding your company profile and offers, so that people know about your company mission and the products that you are offering to the market. Furthermore, you need to actively participate in industry forums and other social networking sites where your target market exists in order to create more brand awareness.

Conclusion

Finally, you need to be persistent and stay on top of the latest trends in order to gain an edge over your competitors. You can achieve this by constantly adapting to changes in the market and consumer preferences. The online market is constantly shifting and evolving, so you need to be fast and flexible when it comes to change. It will definitely take time to find your footing in the online market, so you need to survive the first few years and then, once you have gained a little control, you will start to grow. These online markets are full of opportunities for small business owners.

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If you want to build your brand and get more people to click through to your website, then it’s important that your website is optimised for search engines. You may have heard about SEO before – but the truth is that you don’t need to know the ins and outs of the technique to make positive changes to your website and get more people to click through and buy from you. Below, we’ve rounded up four quick-wins for any SEO beginners.

  1. Write content

One of the most important things that you can do as a small business owner is write quality content. The benefits of content marketing for small businesses are endless, and one of the biggest benefits is SEO. If you write good quality posts that answer questions and provide your customers with value, you’ll be rewarded by featuring on search engine results pages (SERPs), and you’ll be able to convert readers into customers by adding them to your newsletter and giving them discount coupons and regular product reminders.

  1. Install a plugin

The chances are that your website is powered by the self-hosted version of WordPress, and if it is, then you’re in luck. Plugins like Yoast SEO can help make your site more accessible to search engines like Google and Bing, and ensure that you rank higher for terms related to your industry and niche. With the Yoast plugin, you can choose a keyword that you’d like to rank for, and then optimise your content for it through writing content and improving your page’s meta description and title. It’s a sure-fire way to optimise your site – and it’s free!

  1. Get links

Links are one of the biggest SEO ranking signals, so the more you have, the more likely search engines are to see your website as an authority figure in your niche. See where you can get links for your business – it could be in directories, on your supplier’s and customer’s websites, or by guest blogging on other people’s sites. There are a whole host of ways that you can get links for your website, and every extra link will help your site in the long-term.

  1. Read content

The basics of SEO don’t take long to learn, and having that knowledge can really help you in the long-term. The more you know about how to rank for competitive terms, and the more onsite work you do to optimise your content and get people to click through to your site, the more likely you are to find success online. Nobody said that SEO was easy or that you’d be able to rank at number one overnight, but by making changes to your website on a regular basis, you’ll be able to increase your chances of ranking highly in the future.

If you’re still looking for help with your SEO campaign, check out the SEO for small businesses page on the Muffin Marketing website, where you’ll find valuable tips and affordable packages.