​CREATIVE WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR COMPANY'S VISIBILITY

Contributed By
​Ivan Serrano

Visibility is Important - here’s how to increase it

You have a product or service, and you want others to purchase it. The age-old tradition of marketing entails finding your customers and inveigling him (or her) to buy your product or service. In the modern age, however, you are just one company among a sea of competitors. In the old days, it was sufficient for small businesses to list in the Yellow Pages or the PennySaver (if you remember those). But today, the internet is the name of the game, though there are plenty of non-internet-bound techniques that still pack a punch.
 
You need visibility. Even if you are content to stay in a small geographic area, you’ll need new customers to sustain your business – especially if you’re offering a one-time-buy product. So, here are a few tips on increasing your visibility with a dash (or heap) of creativity.

The Internet

​Since the internet is so powerful, let’s start with an internet tip. Get yourself on the first page of Google using SEO. There are legions of internet users who rarely venture over to the second page of Google results (and plenty of people don’t even scroll all the way down the first page). But seriously, even if you don’t get a first page hit, you need to focus on your SEO. To get there, produce interesting and consumable content. One of the best ways to do it is through blogging.
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In fact, try making your own lists and sets. If you are in a line of business that’s often misunderstood, what are some tips you could give your customers. Of course, don’t make them so good that your customers can do your job instead of you. But if you can save your customers some frustration from stupid mistakes, you will grow your loyalty. Then people will happily recommend you, greatly increasing your visibility (through word of mouth).

Offline is still alive

​Okay, so how about some non-internet ways? For our first entrant, consider a guerrilla campaign. These are rather interesting and require quite a bit of creativity. They’re highly dependent on your business and market. An example? You’re an exercise company, and you install musical stairs at a business train station. You beautify the city (and younger consumers, like millennials, love causes) and you get your message out there.
 
Another guerrilla technique, which can be easy to implement, is using creative packaging. Instead of plain, common, boring packaging, make something stick out to the side (or top, to reduce shelf space and costs). Or change your package’s shape a little bit - nothing over the top, just a couple curves can help to differentiate your product from the others.

​Speaking of changing packages, make some other changes. They don’t have to be super significant. Just changes. It helps keep customers engaged if your business is always changing. Innovation is the best, but you can make superficial changes and still engage customers. The ultra-low-tech approach of word of mouth is still incredibly powerful. So leverage it, and when you change something, your customers will talk about it.

​One nice change? Help out your employees. There’s that corporate social responsibility again… But it also makes your employees happier and friendlier, which will reflect well on your company for the customers. No one wants to go to a business and be treated poorly because their server is worried about where his next meal is coming from while he serves the customer theirs.
 
One more tip before we go? We don’t mind if we do. Become more visual to become more visible. By that, we mean you should shoot videos, make animations, or at least use photography. Sure, text is still important, and it is useful for explaining abstract things that are hard to represent visually. But if it can easily be represented visually, consider using visuals. Our constant inundation in advertising has made our attention spans somewhat tiny. Our brains process visuals faster than words. Putting those two concepts together, if you want to reach your audience and jam as much info about your business into their heads in the shortest time, use visuals. Then you’ll rise up the ranks of your potential customers’ consciousness list, invaluably raising your visibility in the most important place in the world: your customers’ minds.

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​About The Author
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Ivan Serrano, a journalist and business enthusiast, enjoys sharing his knowledge within the business communities through his writing. In addition to covering social media marketing, he also likes to discuss globalization, business communications, and developing technology.