How Entrepreneurs Can Market a New Brand Successfully

Whether the entrepreneur is launching a high-tech start-up or more of a grassroots business development that they hope to grow organically over time, getting the brand noticed matters enormously.

It’s a hugely competitive marketplace out there, and being noticed above the din of other marketing messages isn’t the easiest thing to do, especially if there are budget constraints when there is only so much initial funding available.

Accordingly, here are a few suggested ways to market a new brand well.

 

Look for Strategic Partners

It might be a social media influencer that has an affinity for their type of product or service, or a business contact that has shown consistent interest in the brand since it launched. Any person, either entrepreneur or business contact in another business is a potential strategic partner.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that a joint venture will be arranged in the future either. It can just mean that discussions are had, and the influencer loves the product so much that they promote it for free in exchange for the inside scoop on what’s to come, or taking their product improvement suggestions into consideration in the next round of upgrades.

Consider Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are sometimes about making money and other times about making more connections with potential customers. It’s a little like with a loss leader at a supermarket where they virtually give away one product to entice customers into the store knowing that most will fill their basket with other items too. The supermarket still profits even though they’ve sold at least one item at cost or below cost.

With a joint venture, it’s a business arrangement. It may be borne out of an existing strategic partnership or it comes out of the blue. Quite often, a new joint venture is mentioned when meeting contacts at a trade show and getting into discussions that wouldn’t normally happen over the phone. But however it happens, it’s always worth exploring.

These types of deals might not always have advantageous terms. For instance, if the influencer or industry leader has a major following, they may insist on taking the lion’s share of the revenue or commission on a deal. At first blush, that might not make sense. However, if the entrepreneur receives the customer’s details with each purchase and they’re marketed with their brand, not only the influencer’s or industry leader’s brand, then it’s powerful branding marketing at work. Following up with each customer when a new product is launched is much easier and the customer database has expanded significantly as a result.

Guest Posting on Reputable Sites

For new businesses that don’t wish to wait many months to potentially rank high in Google for relevant search terms, they must look for other ways to get attention for their brand. Driving targeted traffic to their website is a secondary but important objective too. Guest posting is a valid way to accomplish both goals.

The idea with guest posting is that an article is written and then submitted to another website for publication. Each website has their rules on what a guest post should contain. Editorial standards, minimum word count, suitable topics and other relevant points are often listed for people interested in submitting an article for possible publication. Some patience is needed here as time is required to get an article written, submitted, reviewed, edited and finally published. There’s often an editorial calendar with posts scheduled well in advance making it necessary to wait for the next available publication date.

The more relevant the website is to the target customer, the better. The idea is to impress the reader with the knowledge imparted by a brand representative. This often peaks their interest and they click across to the website for more of the same. At that point, they’re more receptive to the possibility of buying a product. This is because their barriers are already down as the guest post has effectively passed their ‘sniff test’ of acceptability.

Answering Questions Online

Answering questions posted online is a useful way to put the brand in front of people who are interested in that niche or category. For example, a question is posted on Quora about lawnmowers and a representative from Black and Decker, a lawn mower producer, replies with useful information that answers the person’s question. The answers that are voted the most useful via a crowd voting system move to the top.

By answering questions in a helpful manner, a brand achieves several things. It delivers brand recognition. It makes the company seem friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. It shows that they’re not only about making profit, but they like to assist people too. It also shows that they’re willing to speak one-on-one with people and not only market on national forums like a TV station.

Powerful Web Presence

A powerful web presence is required for the brand to get noticed. Once other forms of promotion have suitably encouraged the person to visit the website, it mustn’t disappoint. Otherwise, the opportunity will have been lost and it probably won’t come again.

Consider how the website can convince the visitor that they should work with the brand. How can it provide an effective presentation that makes them buy the product or sign up for the service or subscribe to their newsletter? A website should be approached from this perspective because making a strong first impression when arriving on the site is critically important.

For sites that require a portfolio to be presented of past works, then using a specialist portfolio platform is a good idea. A provider like Format is an excellent example of this. They have many graphical themes to choose how the website will look so that it’s suitable for the industry. There’s a portfolio maker to effortlessly add photos into a collection that visitors can flick through quickly. The images might be of products, photography for sale, or mock-up designs. Each can be artfully displayed to give the best impression to visitors.

Extra Care is Required

Marketing a new brand must be done right. Every aspect of it requires careful orchestration to deliver a powerful impression, the right answer and the best representation of the brand. One ill-considered customer service reply on a social media channel can go global in as little as half an hour, undoing many months of work on branding and image. Taking a brand from its earliest beginnings to a respected one where people almost don’t even remember a time when it didn’t exist is an artwork for entrepreneurs who’ve successfully achieved this on multiple occasions.

Brand marketing is almost something that you must live and breathe to get right. There are many aspects that go into it. It can take a lifetime to master them all. For busy entrepreneurs, choosing where they’re best representing the brand and skipping other areas that they don’t have time for is a reasonable strategy. For instance, mastering one social media platform while only providing scant updates on the other ones is effective if the type of product or service suits that social channel but not really the other ones. This way, the entrepreneur can get the balance right between getting the brand out there and trying to do too much, too quickly.