Branding is important because it helps you build a unique identity. Your “brand” is your reputation and the stronger your brand, the more long-term success you should endure.
Poor branding makes a company forgettable, even if they are good at what they do. Having a brand strategy helps guide your business by keeping you consistent. The end result of strong branding is the difference between millions of people spending $200 for basketball shoes that cost $16 and struggling to sell $30 shoes.
Learn To Create Digital Presence
Next is keyword research and SEO, without it, no one will find your site. To put it simply, the websites that are listed first are the ones that the search engines trust the most. It boosts their brand when they give people what they are looking for quickly. If you rank high for something, not only will you get traffic, but people will trust you, because Google trusts you.
You need to pick the low hanging fruit that gets a lot of traffic with the buyer’s intent, not research intent. If you work with an SEO agency, their aim should be to get you to rank high for buyer keywords with a high volume and low competition, not just research phrases that have a high volume. Best, top, cheapest, etc. have the buyer’s intent. It’s good to rank for both, but buyer keywords should be your goal.
Determine what you want to offer and how to offer it better than anyone else can. You will rank higher and get more returning visitors with a current theme that’s mobile-optimized since 58% of searches are done from mobile devices. Page speed, scheme, images, and font should be pleasing and memorable or people will bounce. Monitor your progress and adjust as needed. Make sure you are able to monitor the analytics from day one.
Develop Your Vision
First and foremost, figure out why you’re starting a business and what you have to offer. Having a clear vision makes it easy for potential customers and clients to fully understand your company’s mission and how it can help them. You have to answer the following questions. Why do you have a company? What does your company do? How can you do it better than the rest?
Know Your Target Audience
Of course, you’ll sell to anyone who wants to do business with you, but for the fastest possible growth, you need to know who your customer is and aim for them specifically. It’s much better to aim at a demographic that you would enjoy serving the most, giving you the biggest potential to grow a base. What is the age, gender, and location of your base? Then target some more.
It’s one thing to know who’s buying your product, it’s another thing to know why. You need to know what drives them, what are their values, social status, lifestyle, interests and personality traits. When you fully understand the way your audience thinks, it will feel as if you have read their minds.
Aiming at a small subcategory of people should still leave you with a lot of people in need of your services, who think and behave the same way. Targeting psychographic data helps you understand your audience so you can easily connect with them and possibly build a strong following.
Research Your Competition
There are many ways you should do this. Start by searching for the companies that are making the most money in your niche. Analyze what they are doing. To be more specific, check their website data, including traffic and net worth, and check their social media footprint by searching on different platforms. Watch how they engage with their base. Find out which pages drove the most traffic, received the most social shares since social media usage is steadily climbing, and which pages were linked to by other websites. Knowing how they get their traffic is a large part of the battle. Be sure to research your direct competition as well as the big timers.
Pick a Name, Logo, and Tagline
Your company name should be easy to remember and associate with the field and services you offer. Check to see if the domain name is available, as well as social media profile names. Try to have a unique name that can’t be confused with another company. Your tagline is extremely important because it summarizes your company’s vision in a few words.
Build a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
Now you can begin creating content for social media and your website. Content marketing in today’s digital age can make or break even the largest or smallest businesses. With a great strategy put together, you can hit the ground running, instead of producing content that’s all over the place and doesn’t convey a consistent message. When done properly it can simultaneously increase your reputation and visibility.
This also includes gathering your marketing materials for your website and social media. You’ll need photos, graphics and artwork. Either purchase licensed photos, find stock ones or hire a photographer. Figure out the best font for your type of business. Have your business cards made and printed, develop templates, reports and other tools with your logo on it that you and your staff will need.
