Here are seven things you can do to propel your home-based brand into the spotlight with a surprisingly impressive outcome.
When you’re a stay at home mom trying to build a successful home-based business from scratch, it can feel like an uphill battle, especially if you haven’t yet gained any initial momentum in the endeavor. When sales and traffic stats are almost non-existent and literally nobody knows about your brand, it can be difficult to imagine a reality in which your company is a major player on a global scale. However, thanks to the power of the internet, it’s possible for even the smallest beginnings to blossom into a surprisingly impressive outcome. With that being said, here are seven things you can do to propel your humble brand into the spotlight as quickly as possible:
1. Attend Trade Shows
Attending trade shows is a great way to gain exposure for your brand, make new connections, and provide samples of your products or services to prospective clients, partners, investors, the press, and other kinds of industry insiders.
Of course, competing with the other booths at these shows can be challenging without the right guidance, so be sure to do your research and discover more ways to make your booth stand out amidst the hustle and bustle of the event.
2. Start a Blog
While offline promotional efforts (i.e. – attending a trade show) are great brand builders to an extent, it goes without saying that an online approach will allow for a much wider range of exposure. Starting a blog that covers informational and/or news content related to your industry is a good way to start being noticed by people who are looking up keywords related to your niche or the products and services in it.
Sharing your blog post is just as important as writing it because, without promotion, it simply won’t be seen by that many people. As an online business owner, you should be honing your blogging and SEO abilities regardless of what industry your company operates in. Covering a diverse range of topics on a regular basis will ensure that your blog shows up repeatedly in relevant search results.
3. Use Third-Party Platforms for Promotion
Many times, there are other selling or networking platforms that can drastically boost your outreach capabilities beyond what your home website is capable of achieving. For example, if you operate an online store that sells retail goods, you could create shops on Amazon and eBay to find more customers and then link back to your official store/catalog within your profile or the product listings.
Even if you choose not to directly link to your site, simply making your brand name and logo visible on these mega platforms will be beneficial for branding. If your business provides online services, you may want to consider signing up for a freelancing platform like Upwork to find new clients and apply for projects.
4. Social Networking
If your company does not have a social presence, it is undeniably missing out on a significant chunk of the traffic and attention it could be receiving. In addition to staying active in the main staples like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it’s also good to find creative ways to participate in more visual sites like Instagram and Pinterest. Then there are video social sites like YouTube, which can help your brand go viral literally overnight!
In addition, you can join forums relevant to your industry and add links and info about your brand in the post signatures, so every time you start a thread or author a response, you will essentially be advertising your brand as well.
5. Partnering with Other Businesses
Many businesses will gladly display your business card, flyer, or other promotion at their physical locations. Likewise, many online stores and websites will gladly refer their visitors and customers to your company in exchange for a small commission or other kickback. Business to business networking is one of the best ways to make your brand known among other entrepreneurs in your region, so you might even find a new business partner or investor along the way.
Aside from manually approaching other businesses, another way to increase referrals is to join an affiliate marketing networking to gain access to marketers that will promote your brand for commissions.
6. Paid Advertising
Although free promotion is always the best kind, sometimes the most readily effective forms are those that require an investment. Typically, when you pay for an advertising service such as a pay-per-click ad campaign or another results-based format, you’re going to see at least a nominal amount of progress.
While you might have to put some money down to get the ball rolling, once you’ve started to generate traffic, you should be able to achieve a return on your investment with a decent conversion rate. Paying to have your ads displayed on relevant sites and below video content is an excellent way to make your brand known to people who would otherwise never encounter it.
7. Video Marketing
Starting a YouTube channel is one of the best ways for a business to generate publicity and display professionalism. Once you’ve established a sizeable subscriber base there will be people lined up to digest your content as soon as it’s posted because they’ll receive notifications whenever you publish a new video.
Marketing research has proven that video content is more engaging and more entertaining than its contextual counterpart, as pages that contain videos receive longer visit times on average than those that do not. Plus, making informative videos is an easy yet effective way to display your expertise to potential prospects and become known as an authoritative provider your niche.
Practice Consistency and Diligence
All of the above tactics and techniques will be of little help if you can’t maintain and sustain the effort over an extended period of time. In fact, the ability to keep plugging away is often what separates the aspiring amateurs from the prospering pros. While diligence and consistency are important to have in any kind of business endeavor, they’re particularly essential attributes to develop when the goal is to spread brand awareness on a widely targeted international level.
