Making your brand recognizable or even renowned isn’t nearly as important as making it relevant in the eyes of your audience. You need to be the one they seek when they need reliable information. You should be the first one whose blog they visit in search for a review when a new announcement is made in your industry. Finally, this is bound to translate to your sales, seeing as how trust is one of the most important assets of any brand. With that in mind, here are a couple of tips on how to make your brand gain on significance.
#1. Understand your strengths and weaknesses
The first step on this journey of a thousand miles lies in knowing your strengths and understanding the value of your business. While being optimistic and confident isn’t a bad thing, being realistic can help you know where you can start from and who you can compete with. Time is a resource and, with enough time, you might become the biggest name in the industry. For the moment, however, you’re still relatively small, so keeping your ambitions in a realistic range might help you achieve some worthy goals. Knowing your strengths will also help you spot the opportunities, while knowing your weaknesses will allow you to watch out for threats more efficiently.
#2. Establish high standards
Whenever someone uses the word “high”, it’s important to understand that this comparison (like any other) is always subjective and content based. In terms of height, what’s high for a person definitely wouldn’t be high for a room or a tree. Nevertheless, this idea needs to be embodied in both your design standards and your guest posting guidelines. First, invest an effort to see what goes as an industry standard and try to set your bar just above it. Now, pause for a moment, take a step back and try to estimate whether this is realistic for your brand to pull off. From the point of view of a layman, this might seem a tad intimidating; yet, this shouldn’t be that hard to realize.
#3. Build loyalty from day one
Some believe that in order to generate loyalty, you need to constantly offer something of value to your audience, but, in reality, it’s much simpler than that. All you have to do is be loyal to your target demographic, to begin with. What this means is that you need to create content for them specifically, make updates with them in mind and constantly try to adjust your own brand to them. In other words, loyalty, like everything else in life, is all about the art of giving and taking.
This is why, if you’re outsourcing, you need to find someone who knows your target demographic. At times, this involves previous business experiences, while, in some scenarios, it may be location-based. For instance, if you want to appeal to the local community in Victoria, looking for a branding agency in Melbourne would be your safest bet.
#4. Post meaningful data
This particular tip is both simple and straightforward – don’t write about irrelevant topics just to fill in the editorial calendar! No matter how loyal they are to your brand and how vehemently they click the refresh button while awaiting your new blog post, if the title is something that they really don’t care about, they aren’t likely to give it a try. Even though this may sound a bit harsh, it’s not like no one has expected to encounter it. After all, isn’t this what everyone does online? This is why you shouldn’t be surprised if a piece of content that isn’t that closely related to what your audience cares about gets ignored just one week after your previous piece has gone viral.
#5. Be authentic
Even if you’re writing on an old topic, try to add your own and be unique. Just replicating the content of other people won’t result in anything good. Sure, borrowing an idea or two is something that everyone does, even the top-dogs of your industry. However, if you can’t find a way to be authentic, you’ll significantly limit your maximum potential. Think about it: why would they come to you, instead of the original source (the one that you’re “drawing inspiration” from)? Keep in mind, nonetheless, that being authentic doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you’re inventing something entirely new. Finding a new angle on an old topic is more than enough.
Conclusion
We have already mentioned the importance of consistency, and yet, in the end, it all comes down to it once again. You see, unless you can constantly live up to the above-listed five expectations, you won’t be able to experience sustainable growth, which, at the end of the day, is your long-term goal.
Dan Radak
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and a regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.