Are You Making The Most Of Your Brand?

Brand engagement is often overlooked as a worthwhile marketing avenue. It is widely understood that customers make buying decisions not only on price and quality but by brand reputations as a whole. Nevertheless, small businesses often focus on campaigns that result in dollar amounts rather than recognition. While the bottom line is always a worthy pursuit, it may be time to start thinking about your brand image along with products and services sold.
In a digital marketplace where consumers say that over 70% of their purchasing decisions are made based on how a business treats customers, building a reputation for being fair, ethical, and socially conscious is an absolute must.
Below you will find five insightful ways to boost brand recognition and engagement:

Be consistent

Create a style guide to reinforce brand language, colors, and images. If you don’t have a style guide, borrow one from another company in your industry and make it your own. We recommend MailChimp’s style guide if you’re in a pinch. Make sure that any content connected to your brand represents the organization as a whole. Crystal clear messaging helps reinforce the mental imagery that accompanies any customer to brand engagement.  

Be a world community member

It can be difficult to stay up to date with everything that happens in the world each day, but your brand has a chance to engage by commenting on events that involve their location, industry, or audience. Simply raising awareness about worldly events can make you a part of a much bigger conversation. For example, don’t be afraid to engage with the topic of the day with hashtags, short news pieces, and blog content. However, be sure that tact and responsibility accompany each piece of content issued.

Tell a story

Small businesses have a unique selling point of the struggling entrepreneur. Each startup has an amazing story of how they came to be. Telling your story on your website creates a great opportunity to display the faces and lives affected by brand loyalty. Beyond your ‘About us’ page, take advantage of case studies, product reviews, and customer experiences to make your brand memorable to anyone who happens to stumble across it.

Give back

Small businesses have the unique ability to partner with non-profit organization, and actually create change within their community. Pick a cause, and work together to sponsor charitable events and promotions. When customers see your brand associated with their favorite charity, you will be their first choice when it comes time to make a purchase. Consider sponsoring clubs, teams, and other school events and promote your cause in every way you can. Your content (and your brand) will travel farther if it carries a message of goodwill.

Champion others

Partnering with other small businesses creates synergistic opportunities you won’t find anywhere else. Consider packaged deals to create additional value while also offering spotlights and guest blogs and videos to demonstrate that your brand does not exist in a vacuum. Not only will your efforts reward you in search engine value, but will yield warm-fuzzy brand promotion as well.