Your business exposure will highly affect your retail sales. You could use traditional advertisements such as Google ads, Facebook ads or Twitter sponsor ads to promote your business. However, this strategy costs money, and the ROI (return on investment) might not be as profitable as you think. Let’s face the facts; people do not click ads as much as they used to. With the introduction of ad blocking software, not everyone will see your ads, and advertising programs still charge you for impressions. This is the cold hard fact of the advertising world.
Advertisement costs money, and might not get the best ROI for your business. Have you ever heard the expression “you have to spend money to make money?” Well, it had its point, but you need to be smart on spending your money to increase the visibility of your business or brand. Conventional methods demand you promote your businesses through paid ads, this is one of the most effective ways to make your business well known in a short period. But the downside to this method is that they might not be as targeted as they should be.
Don’t get fooled by ad companies that claim to show your business to targeted audiences, sometimes this only promises 60% of the right audience, and the rest are casual viewers. But even for this unrelated audience, you are still charged. We’re not talking about a few bucks here, 40% of the irrelevant audience might cost you thousands if you do not carefully monitor your ad campaigns. Thankfully there’s more than one smart way you can promote your business brand cost effectively.
Giveaway Promotions
You can’t underestimate the power of “Giving Free.” People enjoy getting free stuff, and it doesn’t matter if it’s just a piece of clothing or a trinket. Truthfully people are naturally greedy. By a business promotion point of view, this is an advantage for you. You can promote a giveaway event where you can give a free printed canvas paper bag, free cup, and free towel or even free t-shirt. Always, not forgetting to embed your company brand in the free items. This way, people will help carry your brand everywhere and increase your brand visibility, can you imagine if someone wore your t-shirt with your brand name and appeared on national television, instant free promotion for your company, well that’s if you got lucky.
Reaching Out to Social Media Influencers
An influential social media handler on Twitter or Instagram can boost your business visibility tenfold. For instance, if a Twitter user tweets about a topic related to your business and has about 1 thousand followers, you might want to take the opportunity to reach out to them and ask if they can tweet about your business or brand. Around 70% of them might consider it for a certain fee, depends on how powerful their influences are, you’ll still need to put up around $500-$1000 per-tweet.
You might think that is not worth it for one single tweet, but you’re could be wrong. Imagine the social media handler that has over a million followers, one tweet about your company name could reach these followers in one day, and if they re-tweet your tweet to their followers, it can double or even triple the exposure.
This is one of the reasons why celebrities are always the target of big companies to promote their products. Why? Because some celebrities have more than 100 million followers. Selena Gomez’s Instagram is one good example.
Press Releases
Press releases are one of the most efficient ways to increase your brand visibility, not only will they expose your business to influencers and media, but it also helps search engines such as Google or Bing to crawl your business website. On them, you’ll need to include all the relevant information about your business. Your full name, company name, company history and business address so people can locate you quickly. Your press release needs to be attention-grabbing, so it’s better to hire someone experienced.
After your press release content is ready, you can submit it on a few of these high authority and trustworthy press release sites such as Digital Journal, 24-7 press release, PR Newswire and PR log. There are more than 500+ press release website publications you can find on the web; you should submit your press release to as many of these influential sites as you can.
You might get lucky and be picked up by global news authority site such as CNN, and there’s one case where a local woman’s small home business got exposure from CNN, and her business has been blooming and opening stores since. It’s a long way from home business to store business.
Video Marketing to Engage With the Audience
One great way to attract people is to introduce your company brand visually, through a video. Many people would rather watch a video than read an article. That’s why video marketing is a current trend in content marketing. Through the free video-sharing site YouTube you can submit your brand’s intro video and get a chance to reach more than 1 billion users worldwide.
You should remember a few rules on preparing your video for marketing. Your video resolution must be of a high-quality, 1080p and no longer than 3 minutes. Make sure that the video can attract and engage viewers because if the audience loses interest in your video, they will never become your customers. Adding a voice narration on the videos can double engagement and viewer interaction.
Guest Posting
Although Google’s Matt Cutts said that guest posting is obsolete, this strategy still impacts brand visibility if used correctly.You can use guest posting to attract new visitors who potentially become your future customers. I’m not talking about random guest posting on low-quality sites, the effect of introducing your business brand will be better if you reach out to high traffic and authority sites such as HuffingtonPost, Engadget, Lifehack, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, NewsFlashing or this site, NewsBlaze. Which ones you choose depend on what your business’ target is. If you’re into fashion or clothing business, it will be better to reach out to high authority fashion website such as Marie Claire or Fashion Spot, among others.
Final Conclusion
There’s more than one way to increase your business brand visibility, don’t solely rely on paid advertisement ads that might not yield good ROI for your business. Be more creative on brand exposure, hang a banner or a poster board in a local store, distribute business flyers in the local community, put up a booth in the local supermarket for one-to-one customer interaction. Don’t be afraid to spend some money (wisely) on hiring a helper or professional to expand your business brand.