This Week's Question: How do I get my business name out there?
Transcription:
Have you ever found yourself saying, "how do I get my name out there? People just don't know who I am." Many small business owners they feel like they are the best-kept secret.
In the marketing world, the problem that you're solving is brand awareness. It's how do you get people to recognize and remember your business. We know that people are more likely to buy from a business that they're familiar with. If you're tired of being the best-kept secret, keep watching!
Hi, I'm Tom Malesic, founder and President, of EZMarketing, a marketing company in nearby Lancaster, PA, and you're watching Ask EZ. This is where small business owners go to get real answers to their marketing questions.
how do you build brand awareness?
So how do you build brand awareness? It really comes down to three things: being recognizable, being relatable, and being active.
Be Recognizable
Let's start with being recognizable. When you see this shape, what company do you think of?
Combined with their famous red and white logo, Coke is the world's most leading recognizable iconic brand. Over 94% of the world will recognize that Coke bottle.
So how do you be recognizable? It starts with your logo, it's the colors you use, it's the fonts that you select. It's really about being consistent from one advertising source to another. So that if somebody looks at your website design, and then they look at your business card, and then they look at your social media marketing, and they look at a print ad, does it all look like it's the same company? It sounds so simple but most small businesses, they just don't do it.
Be Relatable
Getting people to know about your business isn't just about your logo and the visual identity, it's also about your message, your values, and what you say you do. It's being relatable, especially for small businesses, people buy from people, not from nameless, faceless companies.
Does your prospective customer feel like you can really solve their problem? When someone reads your website do they come away with, yes, finally somebody gets me!
Does it create an emotional connection with that prospective customer? An
example of this would be our customer, Blessings of Hope. They're a food bank, for food banks. Their old website just kind of talked about what they did and really didn't pull in that emotional connection. When we changed it we really focused on their message, which is, "peace begins, when the hungry are fed." It's not what they do, it's why they do it.
Be Active
But being recognizable and relatable it's still not enough if you're not spreading the word about your business. So our last tip is, be active. You have to do something. You can't just sit at your desk, in your four walls, and wave your magic wand and think people are going to know who you are and want to buy from you. It takes five times for someone to hear about your business so that they actually remember you.
And this speaks to doing a lot more marketing. So it's doing a great website design, it's social media marketing, it might be print ads, it could be a variety of things, it could be wrapping your car with your logo all over it, you could sponsor an event, you could even leverage some of your existing customers by having a referral contest or asking for reviews.
The point is you need to do a lot more marketing so that people will remember who you are.
Your Homework
So here's your homework:
I want you to take all of your marketing materials, whether that's your business card, a printout of your home page, it could be some printouts of your social media ads, any direct mail, and I want you to lay it all out on a table.
Then I want you to look at it and say does it look like it came from the same company? Is it recognizable? Then I want you to read the copy, is it relatable? Are you getting your message out there correctly? And then last, I want you to look at it all, and say what aren't I doing right now and pick one more marketing tactic, and do more marketing to take action.
If you're talking with marketing agencies in Lancaster, make sure you give us a call. Our marketing company specializes in small businesses in Central PA. We're happy to help, and don't forget to like and subscribe!
