Expand your brand presence with these 11 tips

How can you reach your audience in a noisy world full of brands competing for their attention? Even if you have an awesome product or service to offer, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. Fortunately, there are lots of things you can do to expand your brand presence. 

1. Create a website: Creating a website for your business should be your first step. If a company isn’t online in the 21^st century, it may as well not exist. There are lots of services out there that require little or no coding knowledge that make it simple to create a professional-looking website.
2. Master social media: Social media is a free way to connect with millions of potential customers. Keep your content strategy fresh by using a mix of text, videos, and images. Post at least several times each week.
3. Become a thought leader: Credibility sells. If you can establish yourself as an expert in your field, people will be more likely to believe in your brand and, ultimately, buy from you. Publish think pieces, videos, and guest blogs to boost your credentials. You could even consider writing an ebook or whitepaper.
4. Draw up brand guidelines and stick to them: Your brand should be instantly recognisable and send a consistent message. Take time to formulate a brand vision, brand colors, templates, and text style guides.
5. Start a referral program: Reward your existing customers and win new business by giving people an incentive to refer their family and friends. For example, offer customers a discount code every time they get someone else to sign up for your services.
6. Go out of your way to provide an outstanding customer experience: Everyone appreciates incredible customer service that makes them feel cared for. Respond to complaints and problems quickly and with grace.
7. Partner with other brands: Find businesses that offer products that compliment your own, and set up a mutual advertising strategy. For example, if you sell online workout tutorials, you could team up with a sports nutrition brand and promote one another’s products.
8. Team up with influencers: Influencer marketing is an increasingly popular brand positioning strategy. You can find influencers in your niche manually by searching for relevant hashtags, or by using an influencer partnership agency. Influencers have the power to sway thousands, or even millions, of potential customers to choose your product.
9. Try PPC advertising: Pay-per-click advertising is based on a simple premise – you pay every time someone clicks your advertisement. Search engine PPC, which can get you at the top of Google’s search results, is a good place to start. Google makes it simple to bid on relevant keywords. As long as you can convert traffic into sales, you will quickly recoup the cost of each click, which can range from just a few cents to $50 or more.
10. Experiment with paid social media advertising: Social media has lots of potential as a free advertising platform. However, paid ads will help your brand gain extra traction and increase your exposure to your target market. It doesn’t have to be expensive. For example, you can expect to pay around $1 per click on Instagram.
11. Give out freebies: You can give out branded merchandise at special events, hold giveaways, or include freebies as part of your customers’ orders. Not only will giveaways establish your brand as generous and fun, but when people use your branded merchandise, you benefit from free advertising.

Whatever strategies you use to expand your brand presence, you’ll need to be patient. Very few brands become famous overnight. It takes time to build a great reputation; think in terms of months or years rather than weeks. However, if you stay consistent, you can establish a strong presence in your niche.

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