It is a tool that makes you as a brand, much more relatable to your consumers.

Business and marketing are two colors in the same Rubik’s cube that is entrepreneurship. You may create the best-in-class products or services, but it won’t make much of a difference if you don’t have a good marketing strategy in place, to ensure your customers know what you do. To continue, marketing isn’t just limited to spreading awareness about your product or service. It is a tool that is meant to set you apart and well above the competition. It is a tool that makes you as a brand, much more relatable to your consumers, so they remember exactly why they buy from you. As an entrepreneur, you should consider the following marketing strategies, if you haven’t implemented them already.

• Personal Branding: This is as simple as getting your story out there, visible to the right audience. Social Media and blogs just happen to be the most unbiased of all mass communication platforms. Just like companies use websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote their brand, LinkedIn can be the perfect choice for you to express yourself professionally. LinkedIn is a business focused social media website and is used by many influential people across the world. With a fully optimized profile, and proper connections you will have a popular profile within a short period of time. The reason for doing this is synonymous to your success agenda since wealth and fame go hand in hand.

• Website: If you look from a marketing perspective, having a website is the virtual equivalent of owning a business card or a company T-shirt. Since we humans are only second to cats in terms of curiosity, there is a fair chance that your clients might visit your website to know what they are going to deal with before approaching you first. Hence, it is very important that you keep your website updated with relevant information and a sophisticated User Interface. Once the appearance is fixed, you need to focus on the content of your website. A website gives you the ideal platform to explain exactly what your company does in minute detail, along with the opportunity to communicate with the visitor as well. Search engines like Google have keywords which if included in your website’s content, can make it appear among the top searched results. You can take the help of tools like Google Adwords and Facebook Adwords to generate the keywords. If your website doesn’t show up on the first page of Google search, it is as good as dead.

• Testimonial Marketing: Everyone loves and trusts a good review, especially if it comes from a known face. Word-of-mouth Marketing is among the longest surviving tools of marketing for one very specific reason, adaptability. Since the advent of digital means of marketing, reaching out to individual customers is as good as your morning cup of coffee (Just sooo good!). Testimonials are like the digital form of word-of-mouth. Hence, it is important that you take feedback from your clients. You can set up a testimonial column on the homepage itself or just prepare 3-4 questions on a pop-up form to be answered by your clients. You can also ask them to leave a review about their experience while working with you on websites like google reviews or glassdoor.com.

• Write blogs: Writing blogs and write-ups may be time-consuming, but they can help you promote your company as well as establish you as a thought leader in your respective industry. You can host a blogging website, blog on your own website or even write for standalone FAQ websites like Quora where you can answer related questions to your company or yourself, asked by people from all across the globe. Blogs, especially if you choose to write for yourself, are a personal statement of your thoughts. They give your company a face, and the market, a guide to look up to. We know about Bill Gates from Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and Jeff Bezos from Amazon (to name a few) because of their presence on media platforms. While you may not have had any press releases for yourself, blogs written by you are a good place to start.

• Visit networking events: Networking events are a good source for offline marketing. You can visit various networking events in your city and interact with new people. The online flipside to offline networking events is data. Events like these will not only help you increase your network, but also create business opportunities for your company, and with digital marketing strategies like email marketing, timely follow-up could even ensure it.

Better still, you can sponsor such events (if you have the funding and the strategy needed) and get your name printed in the brochure and even start the event with an opening speech about your company. Branding and marketing strategies such as these are a more subtle way to reach out to the right audience as opposed to the mass audience.

Article written by: Sherina Kapany