by Ellie Kapsalis
Making your company stand out in today’s digital age is especially necessary, as building credibility can make all the difference for your business in an ever-changing market. By adopting a distinct and clear social media strategy, you will be able to elevate your company’s brand, increase customer loyalty, and ultimately remain in the minds of many.
Professional and Personal Brand Management
Brand management is critical to any organization or business – it involves maintaining a clear and respectable image of a company’s products or services in order to reach target, and even niche, markets. A key part of positive brand management involves creating and nurturing consumer relationships, as it shows that the company values its clients. Employing the best marketing techniques is very powerful, and when done right, will lead to client retention and potential word-of-mouth references.
Along the same vein of business branding, personal branding is the practice of marketing one’s self, skill set, and interests as one cohesive unit. Entrepreneurs, artists, business leaders, and more all have a specific personal brand that showcases their core values, talents, and personalities. Everyone has a personal brand – it is the combined elements of all we have become associated with. The more we grow, the more our personal brand evolves.
How to Create a Brand
Today, LinkedIn has grown into an influential and widely used platform used to market oneself as well as one’s business. The most important part to highlight when branding your business is including your company’s mission statement and value proposition, or the value you hope to provide potential clients. Your value proposition is intended to convince people to use your product or service over other competing businesses. The more unique your service is, the more you will attract newcomers. With the world of business becoming increasingly tech savvy, it is important you strengthen your digital presence across various platforms and through your own website.
When marketing oneself, a person should always include their career objective as well as former experiences that have led them to obtaining their expertise in a chosen field. A portfolio, for example, can serve as a digital gallery walk of one’s professional experiences. The individual may also highlight relevant interests and talents to appear distinctive from others. Maintaining professionalism is vital, but adding a personal touch can help set you apart and ultimately humanize the business experience. Content creation—whether through video, photo, or text posts—is also another outlet in which people can voice their thoughts, further their brand, and provide immense value to those around them.
Depending on your industry, it is important to research your competitors through a competitive analysis. This will help you hone in on what you exclusively offer in comparison to other rival businesses. Additionally, this can lead you to becoming inspired by more veteran brands and help you optimize your own services. Business is ultimately a never-ending learning experience; by teaching others, we teach ourselves as well as refine our own hard and soft skill sets.
Developing a brand identity and voice can be challenging, and it all comes down to the industry you are in and the target market you are attempting to reach. Some businesses operate more formally, while others are more casual (think news platforms versus influencer marketing). Hashtags, specifically those unique to your business, are a great way to increase traffic to your page as well as set you apart. Additionally, having brand ambassadors (especially well-known individuals) helps build your business by opening more networks to your target audiences. An important question to ask yourself is: What culture does my brand emit? Overall, it is important to remain consistent in your brand voice and company mission.
Developing trust and relationships with your target audience is essential to keeping them engaged for the long run. Every business owner should map out customer personas, or archetypes and characteristics that represent your target customers, in order to understand them and how to meet their needs. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer and think about how you would like to be treated and what you would like to see from any new business you encounter.
A large part of maintaining client relationships is continually responding to both positive and negative feedback in a timely manner. Personalized responses, as opposed to generic messaging, make clients feel like they are valued and listened to. This way, your company will deliver emotional appeal to your clients, allowing them to trust you and do business with you in the future.
The Visual Side of Branding
How we come to identify brands is more often than not how we visualize them. Design—whether through colors, logos, or particular fonts—allows us to associate brands with businesses. Big Tech and leading social media platforms are great examples of this. An apple and bird logo, for example, lead to swift associations of Apple and Twitter. By creating a cohesive, unique, and sleek theme for your business—whether through traditional marketing collateral or digital design on your website and social media—your company will become memorable and a household name to current and future clients.
Planning and Measuring Marketing Strategy
Organization is key for your marketing strategy to be effective. Creating a monthly content calendar for marketing campaigns and posts is an extremely helpful tool. By using websites such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Facebook’s scheduling feature, you can also schedule your posts in advance on various social media platforms. However, some platforms have not advanced to this level and may need to be posted manually.
An important note to consider is maintaining a frequent stream of content. Stale content can lead prospective clients away from your services, as they may feel as if your business is outdated or lacks proper web maintenance. Utilizing Instagram Stories and Highlights is a great way to keep your clients updated without fully spamming them, as they would view these at their discretion.
Lastly, it is important to assess whether or not your marketing strategy is, in fact, efficient. By using digital analysis tools such as Google Analytics and Twitter’s and Facebook’s analytic dashboards, you will be able to see if your marketing efforts have had a true return on investment over a given period of time. Through these tools, you will be able to evaluate data, review SEO performance, and view the amount of impressions on top posts.
The Importance of This All
Brand management can cause your business to either sink or swim. Before beginning any marketing strategy, you should always outline your list of goals and intended outcomes. It is also beneficial if you welcome the creative suggestions of those around you. By doing so, the preparation and patience involved with developing a strong marketing strategy will be more than worth it and will propel your business forward.
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