3 steps to boost your local and online brand awareness…for free

3 steps to boost your local and online brand awareness…for free

Brand awareness is often not at the forefront of current marketing strategies. Businesses’ attention is typically focused on how to market their product or service to solve a problem, while going unnoticed in their local markets and continue to have no branded footprint in their industry.

Below are 3 simple steps to give any brand a jump in visibility and the only cost is the time to set them up. You could do it, or maybe you have a receptionist or colleague that could take the time needed to enhance your brand presence.

1. Create a Google account to optimize local and online branding

Setting up a Google account for your business not only gives you a large arsenal of business tools that you can utilize for free,  it also provides you with some great optimized opportunities to expose your company brand online and locally.

When you create a Google account, you can now claim your Google My Business Locations Page. This is the information that will display when your business shows up on the Google map search results (typically found at the top of the page results). This not only brings exposure to your company, it provides a great insight about your company to anyone who comes across it online.

Take the time to fill out the page profile completely and as detailed as you can. If you have a website, take all of the contact and company information from there, and use it on the profile for your Google My Business Locations Page. Use images that are both a good representation of your business and enticing to the online viewer, so they want to click through to your website or give you a call to learn more.

Another great advantage of having a Google Account for your brand is utilizing the Google Reviews feature. Have a customer that would leave a testimonial or exceptional review about your company? Have them take a couple minutes to leave a review on your Google Business page. Reviews build credibility for your online brand by having third party feedback from a customer point-of-view. This speaks volumes to anyone who finds you through searching online and has to decide between your business and the competition.

2. Create an email marketing account to use as a marketing channel for your brand

Email is one of the most popular ways of communication and a great marketing channel for businesses. It is easy to execute and hardly carries a price tag. Mailchimp is hands-down the most effective and user friendly email marketing service currently available and…it is free until you hit 2,000 subscribers. Even if you go beyond 2,000 subscribers, there are payment options available to accommodate any list or subscriber size. They also offer paid email automation features, pop up advertising/subscription widgets for websites and more.

Mailchimp’s email setup and design process if very user friendly, allowing any type of business the ability to have positive results when used. A company can set up branded templates to use for lead generation, newsletters and internal branding. Mailchimp also provides great insights for email campaign results through simplified reports, including who opened the email and what they clicked on. These reports are easy to understand and can be exported and shared digitally as well.

3. Tell everyone and their mother about your company

Now that you have your online presence boosted with a fresh and optimized Google Business Page along with a newly acquired email marketing account, it is time to give your brand a push through a simple brand awareness marketing campaign. Here is a link to Mailchimp support on getting started.

Grab all the email addresses that you have within your company’s possession, all of your LinkedIn Connections, the email addresses of your family, friends and social media contacts. Put all of these names and email addresses in a list on Mailchimp and label it something that you can identify with this campaign, maybe something like: “Brand Awareness Launch Group”.

Throw your logo and company information into an email template on Mailchimp and create a message that will offer some exciting news about your recent brand upgrade:

• Boast about your new email marketing communication efforts
• Ask past clients to leave a review on your Google Business page
• Tell your family and friends to forward this email to everyone they know and say something great about your company

Get people talking about your brand!

These 3 steps to boost your brand awareness are simple, quick and most importantly…free. Red Technologies can help further your company branding and marketing efforts by offering a team of versatile and reliable specialists that cover everything from logo design to mobile apps. Check out some of our recent work here.