Your brand is your business’s personality. It can be what draws people in and keeps them coming back, happily trying out new products and services as you make them available. Of course, it can’t do any of these things if no one comes in contact with it. Sharing your brand with the people who could care about it is an integral part of running a business that grows and thrives; it’s a critical component of creating work that meets people where they are and helps them take advantage of what you have to offer. The following will explore a few things you can do to market your brand to potential customers.
What Is Your Brand?
Before diving in, it might be useful to break down what your brand actually is. The term brand is thrown around a lot and is defined differently by many different people. Your brand is the character of your business. It’s your flair; it’s how you do what you do and why. And just like when it comes to human personalities, your brand evolves over time as your business learns and grows.
Your brand encapsulates your logo, graphic design, company colors, online presence, the qualities people associate with your product or service, the non-profit-based work you participate in, your values and standards, the energy of your staff when they’re interacting with clients and customers as well as anything unique you bring to the table.
Swag
One of the easiest ways to sprinkle your brand throughout an event or situation is by having some branded swag on hand. This might means bookmarks or pens. It could mean something like this water bottle supplier—offering branded water bottles to your clients. People love free stuff, and this means that they’ll often take your branded swag and hold onto it. Then the next time they’re digging through their bag looking for a pen and pulling out your branded swag, they’re going to think of you.
If you’re not sure what swag suits your business, think about the things that your clients or customers often need when they’re in your presence and seek out ways to brand those items and offer them for free. Giving someone something when they need it is an excellent way to build trust with them.
Ask Your Happy Customers For Help
One fantastic way to share your brand and market your work is to ask your happy customers for help. Video testimonials are a fantastic element of marketing because, in many cases, part of your brand is your customer base. Asking clients or customers to make a 30-second video talking about their experience with your product and tagging you or using your hashtag can give you a plethora of options for Tiktok videos, Instagram stories, and Instagram Reels (Pinterest is now also allowing for video content). You can even increase people’s interest in participating in something like this by offering some sort of giveaway that involves randomly drawing a few people from those who submit for prizes.
You can encourage clients to take photos of your product in their lives and use your hashtag. You can share these sorts of posts in your Instagram stories which further encourages people to get involved and share their love of your product because it can help connect them with like-minded people (others who follow your account) and possibly even help them grow their following.
Live Video
Live video is a wonderful way to grow your brand organically. This is because it offers a bit of a reward for those who are lucky enough to be free to watch the live video when it’s occurring. It also offers people a chance to comment and ask questions and get real-time responses. Of course, it’s a good idea to check in with staff about how comfortable they are doing a live video or take a class or two on live public speaking. You also want to set up your setting so that the lighting is right and do a technology check. Lives can become an integral part of your marketing schedule and can cultivate a close community of your most eager clients.
It allows for casual relationships to develop between your brand’s supporters and your brand, sometimes even resulting in inside jokes and deep friendships that exist outside of the work that you do.
Collaborate
Depending on the work you do, you might be able to find comparable brands that are not direct competitors (or who are, but within an industry where products are so distinct that it doesn’t matter). Set up joint podcasts or conversations or meetings and see what content comes out of these things. The publishing industry does this a lot; publishing houses will pair up authors who write books for similar audiences and have them interview each other or hang out and discuss what it’s like to do the work that they do.
In film, it’s also common to see interviews between actors who have similar audiences. More often than not, other brands are also looking for ways to grow their brand and so are willing to collaborate on content creation projects.
Ask Your Followers What They Want To See More
One of the easiest ways to come up with brilliant marketing ideas is to ask your followers what they want to see from you or even more generally, what they want to see from brands. You might find out that everyone loved that one post your receptionist made about why products might be delivered more slowly than usual for the realism and honesty, and non-robotic voice, and you can incorporate more casual off-the-cuff feeling posts.
Maybe you discover that people want more how-to videos or behind-the-scenes posts. Perhaps people want more audio-only podcasts. Taking this information and using it to inspire new marketing ideas can help your brand grow with your audience.
The above information should have outlined a few creative ways you can market your brand. You may have noticed that many of the suggestions are tied to engaging with your audience, and this is no mistake. Your brand includes the people that make your business possible. They shouldn’t be discounted but rather valued and shown that they’re valued. Including them in the process of your work as often as possible. Social media, in particular, is a social endeavor; it involves interactions and social connections with your clients, customers, and fellow creators in your industry and space.
