Are you struggling to make an impact? Do you feel like your business isn’t standing out enough? Here’s five tips to help you with that.
ONE. Make sure your brand reflects what you’re all about.
It will really help your brand to stand out if you spend some time gaining clarity around what it is that you do and why you do it. If you have a purpose then you can convey that through your brand and your audience will know exactly what it is that you can do for them.
Getting clear on what you deliver to people is really helpful. For example, in my case – confidence – I help business owners feel more confident about presenting their business and because their business looks good, their prospects have more confidence in them because their business looks professional and conveys their message well. I help businesses look the business so that they can gain more business! Knowing this means that I can talk about this and do whatever I need to do to help people understand this through my branding.
Ensuring that your brand reflects what you’re all about means that your business will have a look and feel which is completely YOU – and that’s great for attracting the right clients and being memorable.
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TWO. Attract the people you WANT to work with.
When my husband and I are wandering around a Garden Centre or a nice garden, we are attracted to different plants. I like the spiky plants that look like they just dropped in from outer space, he likes the big colourful ones. Just like us in the garden, your idea clients will be attracted to different things, so you need to work out what they are in to so you can get as close to them as possible. The more information you can gain about your ideal client the better – as you will be able to get closer to them through aiming everything you do at them.
It’s not only fun – but it’s useful to gain as much insight as possible – you can do this through surveys, talking to people, social media insights, looking at the clients you’ve most enjoyed working with before and seeing where the similarities are and by researching, thinking and getting inside their heads.
Try to gain as much information as possible. What are they interested in? Where do they shop? What gender are they? Are they married? Do they have children? Do they own a dog? Are they local to you? What car do they drive?
It’s a good idea to either make a Pinterest board for your ideal client or to find a picture that is “them” and name it so that you know who to target every time you are working to reach your perfect client – then they’ll be easier to reach and you’ll find that they are much more likely to be attracted to your business.
THREE. Make sure you look professional.
There are SO many businesses out there with logos that are not cutting the mustard. Logos that have been designed badly and don’t do the business justice or logos that have been thrown together and look like something you asked your pre-schooler to create for you.
If your business looks professional then that helps people to see that you care about the details, that you take your business seriously – and that if you pay attention to how your business comes across then that level of care will be transferred into how you treat them when they decide to work with you.
I’m not saying that a DIY logo can’t look professional. It can. If you do the work, think about your business in detail, do research and put in the time. If you just fling something together then it’s less likely to work for you.
There are also many places where you can buy stock logos, which will most certainly appear professional but you may well end up looking the same as another business or find that the logo isn’t effective enough – because it’s not geared towards YOUR business.
Don’t let your business down by having an image that is confusing, unclear, cluttered, mismatched or amateur looking.
FOUR. Use YOU.
Yes, this might sound scary. However, including yourself in your marketing is a fantastic way to help build trust.
People like to know who they’re dealing with. They like to feel like they know you. They like to get a sense of who you are and what you might be like to work with.
Why is live streaming taking off so much? Because people like to see people. If they can spend time on a Periscope, Instagram Story or Snapchat getting to know a bit about you, then that can only help when it comes to choosing someone to work with who offers what you offer. People like relationships – knowing a bit about the person they want to work with, getting a feel for that person and through showing them more of you they feel as though working with you will be worthwhile.
So get out from behind your screen, have some fantastic photographs taken by someone who makes you feel great about yourself, plaster them on your website and your social media, try making some videos or live streaming and see what a difference it makes.
FIVE. Be consistent.
O yes, here we are AGAIN. It’s me, banging on about being consistent.
That’s because it matters.
If you present yourself differently in different places then are people going to recognise you as you? If someone arrives on your website from Facebook are they going to know that they are in the right place? If they get an envelope through the door will they sense that it could be from your business because of the colours and fonts used?
This is not hard. In fact, it makes life easier because all of the guesswork is taken out. Which font should I use here? No need to think about that because you’ve already made that decision. Which shade of purple – well, it’ll have to be that one or you won’t be on brand.
Setting all this up before hand saves you time later – and helps your out when you’re trying to be consistent. If you show up the same way every time then people will see you as reliable and you’ll be memorable. They’ll realise that they’ve been consuming your content for a while because they recognise it and that will help them to see you as an expert.
So, do some thinking and research on why and who, ensure you look professional, use you and be consistent – and see what happens! Doing these five things will help you to stand out and be remembered by your audience – and because you know who they are and are working to attract them – your audience will be the right people for you, they’ll want to work with you and be impressed by your professional and consistent image.
What one thing are you going to do to help your business stand out more?