Starting a business is tough. With 80% of businesses failing within the first year, coupled with an ultra competitive landscape where more approximately 543,000 new businesses are started each month, it’s not easy to stand out from the crowd. Throughout this series, we will explore ways you can make your business brand more memorable to make sure it’s always at the top of your customers’ minds when they a ready to purchase.
Differentiate
Being the same as your competitors is a sure fire way to make your website forgettable. It’s important for any small business to create a unique value proposition (UVP) and to communicate this effectively. A UVP is the reason (or reasons) why potential customers should care about your products, services and business. It is your brand promise.
Side note: If you’re unsure how you are different from competitors or what opportunities you can exploit to make your business more memorable, a quick SWOT analysis can help.
Once you have identified what makes your business unique, the next step is to create a strong benefits-orientated tagline to convey it. This should resonate with potential customers and be memorable. If you have a few tagline option, test them out on customers to see which one resonates the most.
Engage
Building relationships with leads is very important, and will help your business stay on the top of their mind when prospects are ready to purchase. Ways of doing this could involve offering free phone consultations or by exhibiting at conferences or events.
Having a positive one-on-one conversation or in-person meeting will always be memorable to potential customers. Even though a lead may not be ready to purchase at that precise moment, they will be at some point in the future and having a positive personal experience will be an influencing factor.
If you are in an industry where consultations are not possible, there are others ways you can engage with leads prior to them becoming customers. For example, a blog is a great way to engage with leads. Creating content that is interesting or educational to your target audience will help to make your business become more memorable. Not only that, it can also help to position you as a thought leader within your industry, and will make your business more credible, which in turn should make your leads more likely to trust you and want to become your customer.
As well as a blog, posting regularly on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin is a good way to keep your brand in front of people.
If you have an ecommerce store, newsletters are a great way to engage with leads. Start collecting email addresses via a newsletter signup form, and email leads regularly to tell them about new features/products to make sure your brand stays top of mind until they are ready to purchase. Pay attention to how often leads are emailed though, communicating to frequently may negatively impact a leads perception of your brand.
We have plenty more ways to keep your business from becoming unforgettable. Keep your eyes peeled for Part Two of the series!