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3 Budget-Friendly Ways to Boost Brand Awareness

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article |Boost brand awareness|3 Budget-Friendly Ways to Boost Brand AwarenessAny small business wants to boost brand awareness, but often they do not have the budget to create and launch a nationwide marketing campaign. The pennies are simply too tight to justify spending them on something that may or may not work. For a small business, substantial investments can often be a risk. So what if there was another way? The good news is that there is another way, and even small businesses can boost brand awareness without chipping away too much of their budget.

Freebies

No matter how much money you have or how successful your business is, a freebie is a freebie. For small businesses, this is a fantastic way to spread the word about your business.

There are a variety of ways you can do this, too. From pens and pencils to personalized water bottles to car air fresheners, your logo can travel across the country, letting everybody know who you are and maybe enticing them to use your service.

Freebies are a subtle marketing technique that will trigger recognition for anyone who has come across your logo before. From here, you can expect to see a remarkable boost in engagement, and you can find an increase in business, too.

Guest Blog Posts

Guests posts from founders and CEOs are a superb way of letting people in your industry know who you are and confirm that you understand what you’re talking about. As a business owner, you should have studied your industry, and hopefully, you have plenty of insights on how to improve the way things are run. With a guest post, you can get your message out there.

You can also use these guest posts to conjure up interest in your brand, especially if you have a unique story. You can write about your struggles and how you overcame them and provide advice for other businesses who may experience the same problems when trying to get their fortunes off the ground.

Work With Local Businesses

Local interest is vital for cementing a small business as something to look out for, so you must take advantage of local companies to spread the word. There will be a variety of established companies in your area, and rather than try to compete with them, work with them in events and discount partnerships that will be mutually beneficial.

As locals will already trust these established businesses, they will also trust their judgment about you. By offering discounts and deals by showing flyers or coupons picked up in other stores, you can see an increase in awareness and profits, which will help establish you. All you need to do is prove that yours is a business worth using and provide a quality service to ensure that you generate the brand loyalty you need for growth.

Spreading the Word

Failing to boost brand awareness means that your little startup will remain little. Entrepreneurship is all about innovation, though, and by considering the potential for budget-friendly brand awareness ventures, you can witness an evident improvement. By increasing awareness through these budget-friendly means, you can experience an increase in profits, which will allow your startup to redistribute these funds towards more prominent campaigns and see even more growth.

Pushing The Digital Aspects Of Your Business

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Digital aspects of business|Pushing The Digital Aspects Of Your Business Lockdown is easing and with that comes the perfect chance for you to reboots your business. You may have had to diversify your business methods over the last few months and perhaps had to make some changes. Some of which you at be sticking with. However, you may want to look at ways you can push the digital aspects of your business now things are slowly getting back to normal. So what should you do? Here are some suggestions.

Rebrand your website

One of the first things that you can consider doing would be to rebrand your website. There is a lot of focus on online presence right now and with many people choosing to buy and shop online at the moment, your website needs to be up to scratch. Is there a way that you can rebrand your website? Perhaps look at a new logo or colour scheme, new content and layout, and even make it more responsive. These things could improve the chance of visitors turning into sales.

Launch an application

Another thing to consider right now would be an application for your business. Again with so much focus being online, it could be the ideal time to start thinking about an app which could streamline content or sales for you. Experts such as 8base could be a great option to consider to help you develop and app and launch it. It could be an ideal option to boost your digital presence.

Work on your social media presence

There is no denying the importance of social media at the moment, so it might be time to work on your platforms and see how you could improve this. It might be time to start getting consistent with the content that you share, or maybe looking at alternative ways to share your business such as different images or video content. Perhaps it could be a good time to start thinking about engaging and building your following organically. Answering comments and responding to direct messages.

Improve SEO

With so many people going online to shop or find things they need, you now need to improve your SEO the very best way that you can. This might include things such as the content on your website as well as social media platforms. SEO will be one of the ways to direct potential customers and clients from search engines to your website, so it may be time to start thinking about how you can improve the content you share.

Come up with a digital marketing strategy

Last of all, a digital marketing strategy will help you to bring all of the above together and streamline your approach. There is more focus online these days which means the competition has increased, so now more than ever you will want your business to be able to stand out from the crowd. Whether you hire a digital marketing agency or you come up with something yourself, make sure you have some form of strategy in place.

Let’s hope these tips help you to push the digital aspects of your business.

How To Restore A Business Reputation

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Reputation Management|How To Restore A Business ReputationNo business, no matter how large, small or seemingly impenetrable, is free from the benefits or disadvantages of having a good or bad reputation. It can take only one small social media scandal for your profits to dip. Just look how the reason release of the Samsung Galaxy Fold was handled. Sending out test units to online reviewers, many content creators found that the foldable screen could easily break when pulling off a seeming screen protector. This was not told to said creators ahead of time, and so they quite understandably fell into that trap.

From then on, the narrative regarding said phones was that they were a shoddy product, they didn’t work, and that folding phones were a gimmick. Samsung are now on the back foot, are redesigning elements of those models, and will need to re-release them. The business reputation has been somewhat tarnished, and stock value dipped. Even for a company as massive as Samsung, negative perceptions and narrative can stop their expected yearly results dead in their tracks.

But how do you restore a business reputation? Sure, we know it can be difficult to achieve. But is it possible? We would say yes. We’d also like to explore why:

Control The Narrative

It can sometimes be that the narrative gets out of hand when we are the new target among annoyed consumers. This can, unfortunately, lead to things getting blown out of proportion. Any attempt to publicly deflect that narrative, outside of clear statements as we’ll explain below, can seem like an aggressive and overly-defensive stance. This is where it can be important to take a more subtle approach to shift the narrative back in your favor.

Public relations firms continually strive to restore consumer faith in businesses. It happens all the time. Rewarding loyal customers with extra promotions, offering customers that might have left or cancelled their service with ideal return offers, and taking excess pride in the practices your company has gotten write can often let the passage of time heal the issues that were caused in the first place. This can be freeing for every firm.

On top of that, subtle, yet informative marketing could be used to restore your company’s name in the public consciousness. Services such as Fat Joe, which operate as professional SEO firms, can help you wrap your business name within informative content through their excellent blogger outreach. Not only this, but their ability to raise the rankings of search results can help your firm avoid dying out due to a lack of attention, perhaps during a time when a truly aggressive marketing strategy might need to take a breather.

Understand Goodwill Is Valuable

Goodwill is an evasive word and concept. We can’t gift goodwill back to our shareholders. We can’t use it to pay the electric bill, or pay our staff wages. But without goodwill, the glue that ties a business to its audience washes away. It’s very important to consider this as a vital resource. Connect with your customers, listen to them, interact with them, and treat them as more than just people to bat away with a simple defensive statement.

If you can be clear, concise and direct regarding your strategy, honest about what happened and how things were caused, and why this will never happen again, you can get on top of the issue immediately. Some might even respect you more. You can be certain that your goodwill shall not fade as a result. And that’s extremely important to consider and manage.

Fix The Issues

We are living in the age of social media, where slights and issues aren’t swept under the rug. While we are used to political scandals often being forgotten about as the next one comes along, business injuries aren’t as fortunate to enjoy something like that. And that’s a good thing.

Jumping immediately to fix the issues should there be a legitimate concern is essential to helping you restore your name. Otherwise, this can be a black cloud that hangs over you, particularly if you fail to address it. Restoring a business reputation often means just that, restoration. For example, it could be that your product is defunct. Offering a full refund to any proven purchase can help you overcome the damage. However, taking another step forward and offering up to 50% off another purchase at your store can help people see this as less than a waste of time. It can also help you avoid a very costly class action lawsuit by offering the appropriate reparations immediately.

You gain nothing by ignoring the issues, but potentially plenty of goodwill by fixing them.

Rebrand

Sometimes, a negative business reputation can be so bad, you need to rebrand your operations. This might sound like a dark tactic, but it is often used in many industries. Even after fixing the issues and remaining forward-facing about the troubles you face, sometimes it’s not enough.

Starting again with a new business name, a new logo and aesthetic can be important. Of course, you cannot expect to hide your business past – but you might be able to redefine it. Consider how Dominoes once operated in the late 2000s. After many widespread reports that their US Pizza chains were terrible, and that the recipe tasted awful, they embarked on a major rebrand campaign. Of course, they weren’t shy about it and didn’t change their name, but after revolutionizing every recipe on their menu, for all intents and purposes they were a new firm with a new outlook.

You might be able to practice the same idea. Both front-facing marketing promotions such as these or hidden rebrands to help your firm gain some room to breathe, a rebrand might be just the thing you and your business needs to start again with a strong pace.

With this advice, we hope you’re much better able to shake off or restore a bad business reputation. This can be hard to do, but with enough dedication and a cohesive mindset, you can pull it off. Good luck!

How to Add Character to Your Local Store

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Branding|How to Add Character to Your Local StoreIf you’re a local store owner, you might feel like business terms like ‘rebranding’ and ‘brand curation’ are reserved for larger and more successful businesses. But this is not the case; in fact, small businesses can see some of the sharpest up-spikes in business after putting in the effort to spruce up their brand. This article provides some useful tips for small store owners whore interested in modernizing their brand’s appearance, drawing in more curious customers as a result.

Brand Redesign

Your brand consists mainly of your business’ name, your logo, your color scheme and all the other material you’ve produced over the years to give your business a character of its own. While this might have been a successful and alluring brand at some time in the past, it’s rarely a bad idea to go over your branding again, perhaps with a professional consultancy, designer or a trusted individual in your network. All of whom can pitch ideas as to how you can get your brand looking smart, professional and exciting in the eyes of the consumer.

Bold Lettering

As a store owner, you’ll know as well as anyone that books are judged by their covers and stores are judged by the shop windows. As such, this is a hugely important area in which you need to impress potential customers from the outset. One of the primary methods of sprucing up the exterior of your store is to commission and buy new lettering to advertise your store’s name. Find a provider of Channel Letter Signs to partner with to get your glowing and exciting new lettering front and center outside the front of your store to tempt new customers in to browse.

Staff Behavior

While character is somewhat maintained by a brand and the shop window that you advertise your brand’s ethos with, it’s also something that often boils down to the staff that you work with inside the store. Sullen and moody staff will give your whole brand a sullen and moody aura, whereas engaged, energetic and positive people will naturally help customers feel more welcome while feeling that your brand has something characterful and interesting about it. Make sure that your staff are on board with this responsibility so that your store is at all times exhibiting the right kind of atmosphere to prospecting customers.

Promotions and Rewards

Finally, many businesses use promotions, rewards, competitions and loyalty systems to generate repeat custom or inspire first-time customers to part with their cash. One of the most characterful and exciting ways to encourage this is through a one-day promotional bid, which you can advertise digitally beforehand. Many stores do this on their ‘birthday’ by offering free giveaways to the first 100 customers, or other such rewards that generate exuberant energy around your brand. Think hard about what your store can offer in this domain to garner publicity and excitement around your brand.

By using the tips in the article, you’ll be able to spruce up your brand by making changes to your store, helping you drive up custom to see a spike in profits this summer.