The Internet has made promoting brands easier than ever. A few decades ago, you had to be a multimillion company to put your advertisements on radio or TV. If you were a smaller business, you would have had to make do with handing out flyers on the streets or putting the word out on local newspapers.
But the times have changed and so has the way we consume information. Thanks to the Internet, practically anyone today can promote their brand online in just a few clicks. Try taking a look at your social media feed. You’ll probably be greeted with a barrage of ads from small and big businesses alike.
This 2020, the challenge for startup brands is no longer to find ways to reach their target market. It’s more about making their brand stand out, so they can catch the attention of their audience. Here are some ways you can do that:
Humanize Your Business
The key to humanizing your business is finding ways to connect with people on a deeply emotional level. To resonate with your audience, you need to create a brand story, a unique narrative that you can proudly claim as yours.
How to Do It: Build trust and connection by sharing why you do what you do and how you do it. Seek help from a boutique video production company to make sure you’re telling your story most compellingly and creatively.
Create an Online Community
Word of mouth has always been the best form of advertisement. Think of your online community as your unofficial spokespeople. Once you earn their trust, they’ll become your group of loyal buyers and supporters. You can easily create a community on social media platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
How to Do It: Make them feel important by actively answering their questions, providing instant customer service, and encouraging them to share feedback about your products and then acting upon those issues immediately. Once they feel that their opinion matters, you can expect them to be active participants in your surveys and market research. They will be walking testimonials of how great your products are.
Collaborate With Competitors
Consumers are more educated about their purchases today than ever before. If you are a startup, selling the same quality of product at a lower price would no longer work. Hence, you must resort to a different strategy when competing with other fish in the sea.
Many rival businesses today engage in collaborative competition, also known as coopetition, to improve the overall value of their brands. They do it to penetrate new markets, reduce costs of standard components, and share technical knowhow in many aspects, among many other positive reasons.
How to Do It: There are many ways you can make coopetition work for your brand. You can develop a product with your competitive business or offer their products (which are outside your specialization) at your platform to expand your reach.
Remember that building a brand story for your startup business is all about creating a distinctive narrative that will stick in your audience for a long time. Getting that initial traction is easy, but make sure to be consistent in producing standout marketing ideas to hit the spot.
