Small businesses obviously need positive brand recognition just as much as their larger competitors. A wide variety of inexpensive methods exist for getting a brand noticed by members of your target market. The following three strategies are among the best small business options:
Charity
Whether your primary target audience is local or online, performing charitable acts almost always guarantees the positive increased recognition of a brand. For example, you and your employees might clean up trash from local roadsides and parks or help out at retirement communities. Additional charitable possibilities include holding fundraising events for local or national charities, investing a percentage of your revenues yearly to a specific charity or creating a public awareness campaign about an important social topic like domestic abuse, adult health screenings or homelessness.
Social Media
It doesn't matter if the members of your target market live in your geographic region or halfway around the world. Most consumers utilize social media platforms to interact at some level with businesses. A potential customer might check your business out on Facebook, Twitter, Ello or Tumblr. Since a majority of businesses use social media to attract customers, most shoppers today expect all businesses to do the same. They expect you to engage them on social media platforms with live Q&A sessions, product sales and instructional videos, giveaways and contests. They also expect you to provide links to your website and other social media platforms.
Brand Visibility
Although your business name can gain a lot of positive attention via the other two methods mentioned, you also need to make certain that your name, logo and brand color scheme pop up everywhere your target audience frequents to create a near-constant public reminder of your brand through visual cues. You achieve this goal with graphics like those produced by a graphic design firm like Schilling Graphics that can help you create an attractive graphic that accurately represents your business. Most graphic design firms also offer screen printing and other options to add the design to marketing materials and the merchandise and promotional items that you sell or give away to partners, vendors, employees and customers.
All of these methods involve different degrees of upfront time and financial investments. That said, the revenues from increased brand recognition, consumer interest and sales will more than make up for the expense. In fact, you can expect immediate results if you start today with any of these methods.