Starting out in the business world but don’t know where to start? You may have a power-packed team, a revolutionary product, and an established business logo, but without brand visibility, your business can easily drown in a sea of your competitors.
The current market is incredibly competitive, and to get ahead of the competition, you’ll need to have exceptional and unique marketing strategies to back up your product or service. Today’s digital age made it easier to search for, and purchase products anytime, anywhere. While digitization is convenient, it made the market tougher to survive in.
Consumers are bombarded with so much information and content daily, which are out of sight, out of mind in a fraction of a second. Stand out from the crowd with our five marketing strategies that will bring awareness to your brand, both digitally and physically!
Story Stages
1. Find your community and target audience.
As a marketer, your first step is to find out where your audience lies. Having a generic, general audience may sound inclusive, but with so many options out there similar to yours, consumers don’t typically stick to just one brand for essential items if they know there’s an alternative that is just as good.
Beat the algorithm, and figure out your specific target audience. You can determine your consumer demographics by their age, location, social standing, and more through checking your competitors’ market. Do you see an opportunity for you to enter an untapped audience demographic, or are you looking to share the same target audience?
2. Create a content calendar for your social media pages.
Next is to create and curate your social media posts depending on your target audience. Your goal is to connect with your audience through a social media presence with your brand, without looking awkward or out of date. A content calendar should help you streamline your posts, and give you a macro view of your social media plans.
3. Make use of practical promotional products.
Promotional products have a 73% chance of bringing in brand visibility to your business when you provide useful or practical items. Consumers are more likely to remember a brand from the items they use everyday: umbrellas, notepads, pens, and more. These are the usual items that are stamped with the logo of a business for easy advertising.
Beyond the usual promotional products, your business will need to stand out with unique and unconventional promotions that can beat your competitors’ promotions. Any company can print out notepads and give them out, but your promotions should be equally useful, yet eye-catching.
Going sustainable is always a good idea, as sustainability is an increasingly important aspect of the business sector. Instead of plastic pens, opt for ones made from recycled paper. Use digital codes in place of physical ads for discounts. Instead of plastic water bottles, opt for aluminum bottled water. Learn more about the impacts of sustainable materials for your business.
4. Go for SEO Marketing.
A few years ago, SEO was not noted for its importance in marketing as search engine optimization was overlooked in favour of social media posts with current trends and hashtags. What many marketers fail to realize is that those keywords are very much part of SEO, and using them inappropriately can do the opposite of what they intend to do.
SEO Marketing is more important now than ever, as people take to search engines like Google to search for the items they need. Social media algorithms also make use of SEO to match business posts with their target audience, so keeping in line with your community trends is a must for any brand – big or small!
5. Partner with local businesses or influencers to capture your audience.
With the right KOLs, your brand can earn as much as $6.50 return on investment per dollar spent on the partnership. Find effective partnerships that will benefit both you and your partner, and will bring your brand into the spotlight. Collaborate with local artists, or find influencers that have the same target audience as you for effective KOL marketing.
Bring Business to your Business
Marketing your brand doesn’t require any high-tech models or algorithms. Something as simple as a water bottle can already increase your brand awareness effectively, and bring you more business in the long run as consumers remember your brand the most.
As a small startup, you may feel the need to skimp on marketing strategies, but there are times that this would cost you more business expenses as you go along. Take time to budget out your marketing, and think of branding as an investment instead of an expense.
