You’re starting a new business, you’ve:
✅ – Hired your staff
✅ – Got your product
✅ – Set up a Facebook page
✅ – Bought your domain
But… is it enough?
There are plenty of different elements to starting a business from the legality’s of registration & PAYE, to the logistics of production & delivery. But arguably, the thing that is really going to sell your products is your brand! Here’s our top 5 tips to creating or improving your brand!
1️⃣ – The look 👀
No matter what industry you’re going in to, the likeliness is – it’s a noisy old industry with 100’s, if not, thousands of other businesses offering the same/similar service to you. Now it’s an old saying that ‘you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover’ but as humans, we’re programmed to do just that! Creating a logo & content for your marketing materials, whether they be digital or printed, is essential. Make your logo easy to understand, innovative & make it POP!
2️⃣ – Interaction 👋
Whether it’s replying to a comment on your post, or simply interacting with your potential clients/network; it is absolutely vital that you’re prepared to interact! That can be a chat with a potential client on LinkedIn, a comment on a member of your networks’ latest post or a simple ‘Thank you, *insert name here*👍’ on a nice review or comment on your social media platforms. That one little piece of your time could be the difference in what someone thinks about your brand & by engaging with your community you’re showing from a corporate point of view, that your company really cares & takes the time to get to know & speak to its audience.
3️⃣ – Advertising 📲
You’ve just started out, your Insta audience is growing, your TrustPilot reviews have started coming in & your Facebook ‘likes’ list is increasing. But, when you actually look at the organic audience you have on your social media outlets, the majority seem to be friends & family – which is great because from a word-of-mouth perspective, these are the people that will kickstart your business & give you that initial boost that you need!
But you’re now ready to grow further & expand your client database – how do we do that? Advertising!
Whether it’s Google, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube – you can advertise on them all! You can also limit the audience you’re targeting to those ‘in market’ for your product, ‘experienced a life event’ or purely on a demographic & location basis.
Not only can you limit your targeting, but upon creating your campaign, you can set goals, targets & conversion points so that you’re able to track & work towards various things from product sales on your website, to newsletter sign-ups, to lead generation forms.
4️⃣ – Data 📊📈
Your advertising is set-up, your page is growing but you seem to be spending money like there’s no tomorrow & not really achieving the results you need! 😣
The only way to get round this is the data! 📊 Whether you’re advertising on Google, Facebook or Twitter – each of these platforms has the ability to report on your performance. Regularly pull your report, check what time of day you’re likely to convert, track which audience is most likely to convert in to a sale & ultimately, re-prioritise your budget into the best performing campaigns/audiences or ad groups.
5️⃣ – Consistency 👍👍👍
Like most things in life, by being consistent & persistent – you’re more likely to achieve your goals. Well, the same goes for your brand.
Changing your logo every week will get you nowhere, it’ll only confuse people as the come across your posts & connote that your brand is indecisive & unable to make long-term, business-focussed decisions.
Now that doesn’t mean you can’t change your logo occasionally, or your tone-of-voice to suit the platform, but it’s about consistency & ensuring you remain recognisable. Always remember, if you’re going to make a change to your page/website/colours or logo – take your audience with you! Give them an insight in to what changes you’re making, why you’re making them & maybe even get them involved in designing your next brand.
By creating a logo you’re proud of, a tone-of-voice you can work with & colours that contribute your business & each other; your brand is guaranteed to be recognisable, approachable & ultimately, successful.
Phew.. now that’s covered off, grab yourself a coffee, chocolate biscuit & get stuck-in to creating a brand, tone-of-voice & colour scheme to be proud of! 😍