Giving your company a professional appearance demands just as much effort as delivering your offering to the market.
When decide to create your own company as an entrepreneur, you need to value professionalism. Behaving in the most professional manner is key to success. Let’s say, to illustrate the importance of being professional, that lack of professionalism is a clear path to failure. But professionalism doesn’t only refer to the way you as an individual behave with your employees, partners, and customers. It also refers to the way your company presents itself to the market. Giving your company a professional appearance demands just as much effort as delivering your offering to the market.
Check out these five specific factors that can turn your business idea into a market success.Click To TweetIt is a mixture of making the most of your online presence through your content and your web design, expressing your brand personality, valuing your customers as individuals and giving them a unique product or solution. At the core of your professional look is the need for custom-made strategy, design, and offer. In other words, customization boosts professionalism. Without it, you just look like any other entrepreneur. With customized solutions, you are at the head of a professional and respect-worthy company. Here are five specific factors that respond positively to a customized approach and that can turn your business idea into a market success.
#1. Don’t Copy Content Ideas
When you enter the market as a new competitor, it’s not uncommon to audit what other companies are sharing on their websites and the way they describe their products and solutions. You may even want to monitor the keywords they are using. However, this research work should not be used as a basis for your web content. You need to define the appropriate keywords for your offering and your audience – it’s likely that these will be slightly different from other companies. Working with an SEO company can be useful to establish your audience profiling and the context in which they will research your solutions. Indeed, if you are a fashion designer who’s chosen to work only with organic materials, it’s likely that your customers will be searching for environment-friendly clothes instead of the latest trends for fall 2017. Doing this preliminary target research is key for SEO experts to produce the right kind of content that is unique to your website and that promotes the most relevant keywords for your audience.
#2. A Website That Showcases Your Offer
Free websites and free design templates are great if you have a personal blog. However, when you choose to build a professional website, it’s best to stay away from free templates that are not up to the market test. Free templates are not designed for a professional look, especially because they use standard stock images and background displays that your users are likely to have come across in the past, on personal websites. Your website needs to convey a message that is tailored to your company and your audience, using the content, design and interactive exchanges. In other words, trying to fit your brand into a premade template can appear tacky and cheap. It will not convince visitors that they need your services. It will just convince them that they can’t trust a company that gives a bad first impression. Working with a professional designer allows you to design a website that offers smooth navigation, exciting display – the ‘wow’ factor is what keeps customers coming back to the site – and that keeps a consistent branding throughout the website.
#3. Your Brand Is Your Identity
It’s likely that you already know the branding message of your competitors. But don’t let it inspire you. Your brand is what defines your business against others. It is your business personality and consequently, it needs to be specific to your business, and not made up to fit the branding trends on the market. Consequently, when you create your brand, you need to stay away from the urge to copy other companies or simple online templates – which is even worse. Your brand is individual; it’s the customized design of your company, starting from your message from your logo. As you define your company identity, you will rapidly find that it also includes defining your public voice, whether your company is engaged with the local communities or whether you choose a national HQ approach. As a rule of the thumb, brands that keep their heart close to their customers – geographically as well as in thoughts – are more likely to develop a recognizable personality.
#4. See Your Customers As Individuals
When it comes to customized strategies, most businesses tend to assume that it also relates to their marketing strategies. Indeed, being able to offer a personalized marketing approach to your customers allows your company to deliver an individual message to each everyone – as much as technology allows. This in-depth personalized look means that your company can become highly relevant to your target audience. As you understand their needs better, you customize your offers to match their situation. Target, for example, maximizes the data they hold about their customers, from demographic information to baby registries. As a result, by analyzing purchasing patterns, the marketing team was able to give a pregnancy prediction score and to adjust the messaging to expecting mothers. While this is intrusive, it was highly effective for Target’s customers as the customization remained subtle.
#5. Make Your Offering Unique
Your company offers a product or a service to the market. As a result, your company also needs to compete against other business that offer similar outputs. As you can’t remove competition, you need to be aware that monitoring your competitors’ activities should not be used as guidance for your marketing strategy. Indeed, you can’t copy their strategy. But you can certainly use it as a target to overcome. For instance, you can offer lower prices to beat the competition and stand out from the crowd. You can also choose to improve the relationship with your customers by making the purchase process more convenient than anywhere else. For instance, if you offer an easy return policy as an e-commerce retailer, your customers will be more likely to shop with you. Or as a local shop, you can offer longer opening hours, so that customers are more likely to rely on your business. Differentiate your offering from competitors by learning what they do. But never copy their offering otherwise your business will never get noticed.
