Getting your brand discovered can be one of the hardest things about growing your company and promoting your products and services. How do you do it? How do you make your brand easy to find? It’s an age-old problem that’s plagued companies for years, and it’s one that doesn’t have a straightforward answer. Depending on your industry, your company culture, how active you are on online platforms, and other elements, the strategy for getting your brand discovered could be vastly different from another company’s approach.
Fortunately, having worked with many companies on getting their brand discovered, we have a baseline of activities you can implement that will make a difference for your bottom line, no matter what industry and brand you’re working with.
1. SEO
Optimize your website and social media content for the terms you want people to discover your brand by. Do your homework with keyword research, and make sure your online copy matches those keywords. When done well and in large quantities (read: blog posts, web page content, social messages), a good SEO strategy will help your target audience find your brand.
2. Email Marketing
Leverage your contact list and consistently mail to your audience to help solidify your brand, your messaging, and your offerings. Create a schedule to keep your marketing efforts in line. Remember that it often takes 5-7 touches before someone knows your company and is ready to talk to you about purchasing your products and/or services- so keep those emails going.
3. Website
Your website is the best representation of your brand, so make sure the content, graphics, and infrastructure matches how you want your target audience to perceive your company. When people do find you via your other efforts, you’ll want to give them the best impression of your organization.
4. Blog and Social
Your blog and social messages are shareable pieces of content that are smaller extensions of your website. Establish a strategy for the content you’ll put out so you’re organized and can easily identify the areas of your business you’re promoting. Once you have it all mapped out, you’ll know what areas to supplement and how your brand will be perceived.
5. Local Online Listings
Another great way to help people discover your brand is to tap into local online listings. People generally like to do business with local companies, and you’ll find a lot of networking opportunities with people in your area. Plus if you join listing sites, it will give you great links back to your site that will boost your rankings.
6. Strategic Content
In addition to creating content on your website and social sites, create strategic ways to draw in your potential clients. Create great headlines and leverage images and video to pull people in and engage them in what you offer.
7. Value Exchange Offers
If you have items on your website that add value to other people and their organizations, it will be easy for you to get their information and start them on the sales process. Things like white papers, industry reports, eBooks, recorded webinars, infographics, and more can really act as an anchor for people to stay on and read your site.
8. Borrow Other Companies’ Audiences
Take advantage of networking and guest posting with adjacent companies. This is a great way to get your brand discovered and to reach companies and individuals you may not have had the opportunity to interface with.
9. Look for Press Opportunities
One of the best ways to getting your brand discovered is to secure press. Whether it’s coverage for your company, a quote you’ve made about your industry, or even an article you’ve written, it’s a great opportunity to draw attention to your company and your offerings. There’s even websites you can register for, like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) that will alert you to these opportunities.
10. Paid Media
Paid media, such as Google AdWords, LinkedIn ads, Twitter promoted tweets, and Facebook ads, can really bring awareness to your organization and your products and services.
