One of the biggest hurdles new businesses face is how to introduce their brand to the world. It’s one thing to create a product or provide a service and gather a team to work for you, but it’s an entirely different story getting your product/service noticed by the general public. Many businesses usually fail at this stage too, as their marketing campaign misses its mark, and they don’t get the exposure they need to get off the ground.
But, don’t worry, you’re not alone, we’re here to help. If you’re having trouble getting the exposure you need, here are some easy tips to get your brand noticed by your future customers.
Recognize Your Customer Base
To grow as a business, you have to get noticed by the right people. The first agenda on any new business is to establish what market niche it is targeting and who their product/service is for. Without knowing who to market for, a company will spread itself thin trying to appeal to a wide diapason of niches and customers, and will most likely get a poor response in return.
To avoid such a mishap, be sure you know who you’re targeting at all times. Ask yourself a question: “Who am I making this product for, and how will I reach them?”. Once you’ve got an answer to that question, it’s smooth sailing from there.
Use Social Media to Your Advantage
A social media platform is one of the most powerful tools at any brand’s disposal. Everyone’s online nowadays and most of us have a profile on some social media platforms. This means that, if you were to post something on one such platform, chances are you’re very likely to get noticed by a significant amount of people.
However, you need to be wary of social marketing trends in 2020. Things that have worked even a few months back won’t be as effective today. As for the latest trends, it’s all about video. Both Facebook and Instagram have a Story feature where anyone can post a quick video of an interesting moment. Since the attention span of a modern person tends to be very short, what with our fast-paced lifestyle and availability of content, these short videos are perfect for creating short and concise, but captivating, ads. And the best part? They’re free.
Paid Marketing Pays Dividends
Though there are many ways to market your products for free, you will still need to commit a significant portion of your funds toward your marketing campaign. Your social media marketing strategy will give you a nice leg-up, but it won’t be enough to draw in a vast number of customers.
Luckily, both Facebook and Google offer sponsored posts and ads which allow you to reach specific people in your niche. Not only that, but a targeted sponsored post can also give you an edge over your competition, making it this type of advertising a necessary expense, but well worth the investment you’re putting into it.
Consider a Joint Venture
When you’re company is still small, you need all the allies you can get, especially if you’re competing with a much larger brand in your niche. That’s why many businesses consider joint ventures as a means to attract customers by promoting each other, rather than trying to one-up one another.
One of the best ways to do this is to host an event. Your business is certain to benefit from people coming in and checking it out in person. You might not be able to convert all of your visitors to customers, but it’ll be a great way to expose your business and earn a few referrals. When hosting an event, however, it’s best for small businesses to partner up and hire an event management agency to help them prepare an event that will show them at their best.
Reward Referrals
Since time immemorial, word-of-mouth advertising is one of the best forms of marketing in the world. Numerous surveys show that people are always more likely to trust their friends and family referring business to them than any other form of marketing so far. And that is why, as a new business, you need to heavily invest in this form of marketing early on.
Awarding referrals is one of the best ways of doing it. Offering gift cards, discounts or even free products for people that bring in their friends is a great way of boosting your business. What’s even better is that there are people that are actively looking for those types of deals, and, while you might lose a bit of money on them, they’re certain to bring more people to your brand, so consider them as a small investment.
Offer Testimonials
This is a sort of extension of the previous point, but testimonials are a great way of showing how good you are at what you’re doing. The benefits of testimonials are the same as a person recommending you to their family member or friend, and it will fit great in your word-of-mouth marketing campaign.
With that being said, every business has a number of testimonials displayed on their website, and you should definitely encourage people to leave theirs on yours too. Again, you might incentivize them by offering various perks based on the quality of testimonial and the impact it has on your business. You can use testimonial tools such as TrustMary to help you get more testimonials and display with easily for more conversions
Start an Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing has basically replaced flyers in the modern world. But, while handing out flyers was a numbers game, email marketing is more targeted and quite a bit more effective. Email marketing allows you to target specific people that have expressed an interest in your product or service before or are looking for a product/service in your niche.
However, what many brands using this type of marketing scheme fail to realize that generic emails are more likely to hurt their cause than help it. If you don’t want your emails to get flagged as spam, be sure to make them very personal and approach the customer on a familiar level.
Conclusion
And that’s about it for our tips on how to get your brand noticed. Remember that, as a small business, you need all the help you can get when getting off the ground, so be sure not to get focused too much on one marketing campaign, but to utilize as many tools as possible. But also remember that you’re doing this for a very small group of people, so don’t fan out too much, or you might not get the right type of exposure you need.
