People can’t make a purchase if they don’t know something exists in the first place. That’s why the first thing you need to do is market and promote your business and your products.
Even if people didn’t buy your products outright, having your brand name at the front of their minds can still benefit your business in many ways. You want to be the first thing people think about when they do need your products and services or refer them to friends and family. In other words, just getting your name out there already brings something to the table.
That said, how do you get people to notice you online? Let’s discuss digital marketing and the strategies to boost brand awareness.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of the most popular digital marketing tools, and for a good reason. Unlike ads, the goal of SEO is to get your pages in organic searches, basically putting your brand name in places people would typically find answers and solutions for their current needs.
SEO thrives because of how dependent we are on search engines. When we need something, we try looking it up on Google. In addition, some virtual assistants like Siri and Google Assistant use search engines to find solutions to your problem.
When people look something up on Google (and other search engines), they’re looking for some answers. So whether that’s just information, a product, or a service, you want your name to be where people are. Not to mention, since search engines are so widely used, there’s a high search volume from people who are using them.
So, getting your pages to rank in these SERPs increases the chance of someone coming across your company or your products and services.
2. Content Marketing
Think of content marketing as the opposite of paid ads. Instead of blasting your brand name out to several people and hoping some of them are interested, you create content to attract people who might have an interest in learning about your company or using your products and services.
One of the most accessible (and popular) ways to implement a content marketing strategy is blogging. Many blogging platforms already take SEO and content marketing into account, so they’ll often have a lot of content, metadata, URL, and other SEO adjustments to make sure your posts rank as high as possible. Not to mention, a lot of these blogs do show up in the SERPs, and can get a lot of traffic from the right audience.
Some of the new people you’ll attract will probably have never heard of you before, and that’s a significant step! However, you need to ensure they stick around, so provide them with content that actually counts. When you provide helpful content, your traffic and rankings are boosted. The more people come across your content, the more are exposed to your brand and become aware of you.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media has become a marketing platform from small one-employee businesses to megacorporations. What makes social media such a great marketing vessel is the number of people on the popular platforms. Play your cards right, and you’ll reach up to millions of active online users.
Build a following, get social shares, and user engagement. If you have enough followers and users engaging with your content, you can effectively promote your services.
This is also a great opportunity to reach more people and expand your online presence. A lot of people’s first brush with companies and their products is through social media, and that’s made possible by the ability of your social media tactics to reach as many people as possible. For example, viral Tweets can reach up to hundreds and thousands of impressions. Some of those impressions might be the first time someone’s heard of your company.
Again, people don’t have to buy anything from you right away. However, having heard of you—having brand awareness—means you become an option for when they finally decide to buy something.
4. Guest Blogging
Let’s be real; not everyone’s blogs and social media profiles get traction instantly. For some companies, it could take months to figure out the right keywords, links, and strategies to get traffic. Sometimes, your niche is simply that competitive. You need more means to promote your company to make sure you stand out against the competition.
A popular way to promote your blog and website is to write for more popular blogs and publications. Not only does guest posting boost your backlink profile—which is a massive deal for SEO—you also get exposure from a more popular site’s built-in audience.
That said, the best guest posting strategy is to submit articles or apply to sites that are relevant to your business. In addition, backlinks need to be relevant to your website and business for them to do anything to your SEO.
You’ll also want to get an audience who’ll be equally interested in the content on your own blog. For example, if you’re running a jewelry business, you shouldn’t be submitting guest posts to gardening and mountain hiking blogs. Instead, you should be writing to blogs relevant to your jewelry business, such as fashion blogs and other jewelry-themed online magazines.
5. Pay-Per-Click Ads
As the name suggests, you pay for each time someone clicks on your ads. You can see these types of ads almost anywhere on the internet—from the SERPs to social media. So if you want to get your name out there as quickly as possible, PPC ads are a great way to go.
Unlike traditional TV, radio, and print ads, PPC ads can be more targeted. Since most popular search engines and social media platforms have intelligent algorithms, you’ll have the option to show your PPC ads to a specific location, demographic, or website.
Again, unlike traditional ads, you can easily track your progress. How many people saw your ad? How many clicked? How much traffic did your site get from the ad campaign? Instead of printing flyers and hoping a lot of people see them, you actually get a reliable data set of people who have come across your ads and interacted with them.
This allows you to get an idea of how you’re doing, marketing and brand awareness-wise.
Bottom-line
There are so many opportunities to get your company’s name out there. While brand awareness alone can’t immediately triple your sales, it’s a great start.
Brand awareness should be the first step in a series of marketing tactics you need to build a sustainable marketing strategy that’ll benefit your company long term.
Author’s Bio
JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.
Leave a Reply