Getting your company noticed online can seem nearly impossible with so many emails, blogs, Facebook posts, and advertisements to compete with for attention. With the average customer, you literally have seconds to make an impression or get lost in the sea that is your competition.
Don’t worry. It’s not as difficult as it seems to draw business online, you just need to know how to make a powerful first impression. Follow these five steps and you’re sure to be met with success.
1. Pick the Right Persona
Your business needs a clear, catchy brand so that when consumers are looking to make an investment in your products or services, they will remember you and seek you out.
However, before you can develop your brand, you have to understand your target audience and what appeals to them. Obviously, you need to start by deciding who your target audience is. Next, observe them via social media to feel out their interests and values. This will help you make your brand’s message crystal clear to them.
2. Dress to Impress
In the same way that you would wear your strongest outfit when meeting an important person for the first time, you need to highlight your company’s best attributes to get yourself noticed online. While your website may not have a mega-watt grin or a wow-inducing wardrobe, it does have insightful information that your customers want and need to know.
It is vital that you understand what motivates your audience in order to set yourself apart from the competition. When ‘dressing’ your business to impress online, you need to be aware of how your website’s theme and graphics reflect it. Choose colors, fonts, images, and textures to make your message clear.
3. Be Bold
No matter how great your graphics are, you still need to be bold and put your brand out there. If you don’t, you’ll never know how the target audience is going to receive it. You’ll need to take the initiative to reach out to potential customers through a variety of social media platforms. Posting regularly will show that you are consistent, and keep your brand fresh in their mind. Participate in a variety of online activities such as webinars, guest blogging, and online interviews so that they see how multi-faceted you are and have multiple opportunities to notice you online.
4. Learn the Lingo
If you want to communicate effectively with your audience, you’ll have to learn their language. Learn what words carry a positive connotation with your potential customers, and how they use them in everyday life. This may sound difficult at first, but it doesn’t have to be. Social media is good for a lot more than just advertising. By paying attention to their comments in social media and the language in any emails you receive from them, you’ll start to notice that many of them are using the same expressions to explain their challenges, frustrations, and interests.
For more scientific results, consider conducting a series of interviews with a focus group. Doing so might require a bit of an investment, but the increase in profits will be worth it.
5. Be Your Own Brand
It may sometimes seem easier to copy the other brands that your target audience is already buying into. However, if you do so, you will never be better than them. You will always be one step behind them.
To make yourself more marketable, you need to make yourself remarkable. Find a way to get people talking about you. One of the best ways to do this is to approach marketing online with an all-or-nothing attitude. Be genuine in your conversations with customers to make an impression that sticks. Show them where you stand and what you stand for. Doing so will exude a confidence that cannot be reproduced. That kind of confidence is what builds a business, click by click.