Published by Programme B
Let’s say that you’re starting a company. You hope to dominate your niche, and you think you can do it. You have some great products that you’re sure your customers are going to love.
You’re going to have to take some steps to make sure that everyone knows who you are. Marketing is a huge part of that, but you also need to create a highly recognizable business persona.
Your company needs to have a certain feel to it. Consider: do you want to be funny, serious, romantic, adventurous, kooky, or something else?
There are five easy steps you can take to create your business persona, and we’ll talk about those right now.
Get Your Team Together and Brainstorm
At some point later, you’ll need to come up with the best retail display ideas and things of that nature. Before you ever get to that point, though, you need to sit down with your company’s other decision-makers and talk about your collective vision.
You can assemble in-person or virtually, and everyone can contribute. You don’t need to include lower-level employees. Only high-ranking company personnel should attend.
Talk about what you want the company to be and also what you want to avoid. You might discuss other companies in your niche. Are there parts of what they do that you wish to borrow, or do you want to be something completely new and mold-breaking?
Create a Business Website
Next up, you’ll need to create a business website. You might have someone already on your team who can do this, or you may need to hire someone.
If you hire a web designer, you can either bring them on full-time, or else you can get a freelancer. Either option can be advantageous.
If you hire a full-time web designer, you should have plenty of work for them. Maybe you need them to create multiple websites under the same blanket company, or perhaps you plan on coming out with a ton of new products, so the site will constantly change. If that’s true, a full-time web designer makes sense.
If you feel like you can get away with hiring a freelancer, that can save you money. In either case, you’ll need to talk to them about what you want the site to be. It should resemble the vision you came up with during your brainstorming session.
Create Social Media Accounts
Next, you’ll need social media accounts. This is no longer optional. There was a time when only some companies used them, but now they’re absolutely critical, regardless of your niche and what products and services you wish to sell or provide.
You’ll need to figure out what social media platforms to use depending on your target market. You only want to utilize select ones since there are dozens of them, and you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.
You will likely need to find a social media manager or specialist for this task. You can go with a freelancer, but you may want to hire someone full-time for this job since you’ll likely want a steady social media message stream regarding your products going out.
Like with your website designer, you’ll need to talk with your social media consultant about your company vision. The posts they send out should reflect who and what you want to be.
Create a Marketing Blitz
The next logical step will be to do a marketing blitz when you’re about to open your doors for the first time. That could be literal if you have brick-and-mortar locations, or maybe you have an all-digital eCommerce setup.
Social media will be part of your marketing, but you might also consider radio spots, TV commercials, billboards, guerilla marketing, and all kinds of other tactics. You’ll probably want to bring in experts in this area as well. They can study your market and recommend certain marketing techniques while telling you to stay away from others.
It’s at this point that you really want to drive your company’s persona home. Your marketing blitz should cement what you are in your would-be customers’ minds.
Create a Company Blog
The final step is to create a company blog on your business website and post there regularly. You’ll need to hire someone to craft these posts.
This way, you’ll have fresh content so your website can stay at the top of the SERPs. Your blog can also reinforce your company’s personality as you talk about what’s new in your industry.
Photo by Fallon Michael from Pexels