Gaining visibility is a major concern for every business whether a startup or an established company. Businesses need to make more sales but to achieve that, they must first invest in building a credible brand which takes time and resources to build. After that, it becomes imperative to create significant awareness for their brand to the public.
What is brand visibility?
A brand is the image of your business in the eyes of your customers. It is what they think immediately your company name or products comes to mind. For example, whenever we hear the name “Indomie” in Nigeria, a number of things come to mind such as quality noodles, and creative advertisements.
Furthermore, brand visibility is putting your business out there and being able to differentiate your products from the million others offering similar services. This includes all the different methods used by a business to stand out from the crowd.
Why should a business invest in brand visibility?
The overall goal of every business is to be known, liked, and trusted by its target market and that is exactly what gaining visibility as a brand in a whole industry, will do for your business.
What this means is that your customers will not buy from you if they don’t trust your ability to deliver qualitative services. One way to build trust is by strategically positioning your business in a way that appeals to your market.
How to improve your brand visibility using marketing strategies
Here are the best ways to improve brand visibility:
1. Identify your target market first
The first step to getting your brand out there is to commit to intense research. Your business cannot serve everybody in the market because of the varied interests and needs of different individuals therefore, there is a need to narrow down to a specific audience you can focus your marketing energies on.
You really don’t need to be everywhere at the same time, just be where the market for your product is, and with exponential growth comes the extra market share.
This is the very first rule of strategic marketing.
Then, when you have identified who your ideal customer is, deciding which channel to best get to him/her becomes easier. For instance, if your marketing is targeted at young people in their prime, using a marketing channel such as the newspapers will almost be a waste of time and money. That’s because most young people within that age bracket hardly read the papers.
Instead, you could channel most of your marketing budget towards social media, school-related sites, and groups where they can easily see and connect with your brand, for effectiveness.
Hence, it goes to say that choosing the right marketing media for your brand visibility strategy depends on your targeted audience.
Now that you have identified who your target customer is, what next?
2. Strategic content marketing
Whether it’s on your marketing plan for the year or not, nothing beats good old content marketing. Using this strategy, you could show your customers why they need your product and why you’re the best option instead of your competitors. By doing this, you can create a lasting impression on the minds of potential customers long before they even walk through your doors.
There are many ways to do this, some of which are:
- Set up an email list: A good way to target a specific market and boost brand awareness is through the use of email marketing. It is simple to operate, less expensive than other traditional marketing channels and (my favourite) highly effective. There are many tools that can help with automated emailing to reduce stress, one of which is Constant Contact.
- Get an official website: In the recent past, middlemen were a necessity in the marketing channel to connect consumers with producers. These days, a website solves all that complication. Having an official website for your brand is a must-have because it serves as a direct link for communication between your customers and you.
- Blogging and YouTube videos: You could create awareness for your brand by starting a blog or YouTube channel where you can share relevant information centered around what you do. That way, you can interact with your audience, build a following and become an authority to them.
3. Social media tools
Any brand seeking visibility in this modern age needs to be represented on social media because that’s where everyone worth their salt are converged. However, consistency and regular page engagement is required to make a long-lasting impression.
How to be consistent on social media, as a small business owner without a huge marketing budget? All you need do is to create content in batches and schedule your posts using apps like Postcron, Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Buffer, and Business suite. By this, you can create content during your less busy days and schedule for posting at your busiest.
How to choose which content to post? There are so many things you could post that will attract and engage your target audience on social media and give you visibility, some of which are:
Share different styles and types of what you do, talk about your challenges and how it relates to the pain points of your customers, take question and answer sessions, compare price, size, the durability of products, ask for their views and opinions, share relatable stories and many others.
The rule of thumb is to share valuable and informative posts that will spark the interest of your customers in your products as well as build a strong awareness of your brand.
Social media interaction strategies: Your customers need to know you outside of the service you offer, it is simply putting a face behind your business.
Also, take client reviews, complaints, and feedback seriously. Engage your audience on social media, interact with your customers and ask for their help in improving your product. Make it all about their needs and desires.
4. Fulfill your corporate social responsibility
Whenever you can make a contribution to the community around you in whatever measure, consider it as an opportunity to boost your brand awareness. Doing this leaves a strong impression about your business ethics to those involved.
This is also a strategy to gain brand visibility and one of the fastest ways to become a household name ahead of your competition. When people know your business as the sponsor of an initiative, project, or donation, it gives them a natural warm feeling about your brand and also solidifies your relationship with them.
5. Set up marketing campaigns
The term ‘guerrilla marketing’ applies here. Take your brand one step further by engaging in serious marketing campaigns with the aim of familiarizing the market with your brand. Established businesses do this regularly to refresh their brand name in the minds of their audience.
Invest in paid ads, influencer marketing, referral programs, social proof marketing, all these and more will increase your popularity and build confidence in your brand.
6. Partner with popular brands
This is a marketing strategy of joining forces with major market controllers in your industry to pursue a common objective. The effect of this is that your business would benefit from the publicity and validation such brands usually have.
You could also partner with complementary businesses for mutual gain. For example, if your company produces shoes, a complementary company would be a socks producing company.
7. Provide real value
The best marketing strategy out there is to be reputable as a brand that delivers quality. After all is said and done, the quality of your offerings will determine whether your brand will grow or become one of the statistics. Therefore, put on your creative hat and build products that will awe your target market.
When this happens, you do not need to announce your presence in the market so vigorously, because one customer will always bring the next to your doors.
