The brand is a huge part of the company. It’s the essence that makes certain aspects immediately recognizable. It can be quality. It can be reliability. It can be professionalism. It can tell a story that you don’t need thousands of words of copy or a social media campaign to tell. It doesn’t come from nowhere, however. It’s something that’s cultivated through working and producing quality products and services. But not just through that. There are a lot of ways to get your brand spreading even quicker.
Be different
It’s hard to build a unique brand when there’s little unique about your business. This might seem like a difficult premise to some business. However, a unique selling point is far from something new. There should always something different that your business can offer over your competitors. You need to find those priorities, the differentiators that give you an advantage over your competition. There are a few different ways you could do that. A killer app for an ecommerce business could make its brand about accessibility. A focus on customer service above all else could help your brand be recognized as a people’s brand. Find what’s unique about your business and emphasize it. If you can’t find that uniqueness, now’s the time to create it.
The website
In modern business, you really cannot afford to ignore the internet any longer. If you’re launching a company or already have one, you need an internet presence to go with it. At the bare minimum, this means a website. But that doesn’t mean the website should meet the bare minimum standards. Don’t just make it a threadbare site that people visit to find out contact details or information about what you offer. Use it to make them customers. You can do this by using tactics such as SEO to draw more visitors to the site itself. Then collect data on the most popular pages. With conversation rate optimization tactics, you can make more customers out of your visitors.
Blogging
The front page of any business website should be simple. It should speak to little more than what the customers want to hear. A tagline and links to more pages is usually enough for the most successful of corporate sites. The details should lie underneath the surface. The best way to keep them in place is by hosting a blog alongside your site. Blogs are not only great for SEO purposes. If you develop content that’s informative and relevant, it can be great for your brand, too. It can be testimony to your position as an expert in the industry. It also gives you the opportunity to publically build a community. Nothing is as good for a brand as the people surrounding it.
Social media
Following on that idea is the use of the multiple different social media networks you can use. If you’re committing to having an online presence, then being present on social media has tremendous potential value. It can connect you to thousands, even millions, of people. It’s a great way for disseminating the content you develop on your blog. It also lets you get directly in touch with the markets you’re hoping to win over as customers. Building a brand through social media is about the delivery and curation of top quality content. It can also help you understand how other companies do their branding online. Follow the social media accounts of your competitors or others in similar industries. Learn from them.
Networking
Not all social media exploits are about spreading awareness of your brand to customers. It’s just as important that other businesses know about it as well. Not only will aggressive networking make your place clear in the industry. It can also open up all kinds of opportunities that you can capitalize on down the line. Collaborative marketing and guest posts can be a great way to tap into other audiences and plant your flag in new ground. There’s also the very real chance that you can get into a referral based relationship with those you network with. The most important thing is opening more opportunities to spread your branding, of course. Never underestimate the power of networking for building awareness.
Selling your expertise
Having a great personal brand can help you build a great company brand. You don’t always necessarily have to operate under the guise of your business name. Think about how you present and brand yourself as a person, as well. Be willing to put yourself in the public light if it can reflect well back on your business. A whole new generation of online entrepreneur is always looking for the opportunities to talk long and loud about their expertise. They’re also able to create another revenue stream out of it. Webinars are growing tremendously popular for those who can reliably promote themselves as an expert in their field. Always look for opportunities for real life speaking and writing opportunities as well.
Live events
You don’t have to always go looking for the opportunity to present your content, however. You can just as easily create that opportunity, yourself. Companies can hold live events for all kinds of purposes. Networking or presenting a new range of products or services are some of the most common reasons. In these events, you can not only control the message you send out but the format that you give them in. Speeches and presentations are perhaps the most common. But companies are expanding into more formats, too. View The POET Companies for more details on the kind of entertainment displays that could help display your brand in a different way. Be open to going out of the box if you really want people to have your brand stuck hard in their memory.
Trade shows
You don’t have to host the entire show yourself, however. Similar to online networking, trade shows give you the perfect opportunity make your mark as a member of the industry. You’ll be right there alongside others within it. The benefit of doing it at a trade show in particular, however, is that you get to do it in public. You can present your latest products with an audience who are willing to see you. Not just for your brand but for the simple fact that they’re interested in the industry. As with online networking, it also gives you some great opportunity to engage in fact finding. Find out how your rivals are presenting their brands, while you’re there.
Giveaways
At trade shows, events and exhibitions, there are always freebies. These are usually things like lanyards or pens with the company name on them. These kinds of giveaways, and any kinds of giveaways, can be tremendously valuable. For one, you’re giving away stuff with your name on it. So long as it has use to whomever receives it, you’re ensuring your brand has their attention for some amount of time. Giveaways online in the form of a competition can also be great for you. They’re one of the kinds of online campaigns that other accounts and organizations are most willing to share. They create a great sense of goodwill, too. You just need to capitalize on them. Market them to the moon and back. Then make a big fuss over the winner when it’s over.
Explore new media
We already touched on the idea of how different media can help you make different impacts at your own events. The same is true for how you publish content online. Not only is there the written form. Video marketing has proved highly successful for a lot of different companies. One of the more recent methods becoming more popular and more effective are infographics. This has the benefit of being to carry just as much information in an article but with a much better chance at keeping the reader’s attention. Kissmetrics Is just one example of a business that has made hugely successful use of infographics. Even if you don’t know how to create great visual design, sites like Piktochart make it easier to create your own infographics.
Third parties
When talking about networking, we explored the idea of using other audiences to expand your own. You can do it through partnerships with other businesses or you can use another kind of marketing altogether. Influencer marketing is specifically designed to find the people who have the kind of audience you need. Influencers can be bloggers, social media personalities, podcasters or anyone who has a following. If they’re relevant to you, they can make a great partner. You can strike a deal with them involving ads, sponsored content or all different methods of delivering the same thing. Your brand to an audience you want.
There are a lot of different ways you can make sure that your business’s brand is spreading far and wide. Developing a reputation for expertise and demonstrating that quality repeatedly will help. Use the methods that are most likely to build your brand to the people that matter for your business.
