Your expertise lies in designing your product and service. Once you’ve done it, now you’re ready to consider how to announce it to the world in the most effective brand launching strategy possible. See below for executive strategy to introduce your brand.
- Write a comprehensive business plan:
Not only will this be a potential requirement when your company is being vetted by funding or partner companies, but it will also provide a clear and essential roadmap and guidelines for your growth trajectory and efficiency.
Your plan will encompass product details, pain points it solves, features, benefits, brand ethos, budget, forecasting, and growth strategy. This document will help support writing the marketing portion of your business plan.
To get a comprehensive business plan template, click here.>> - Define how you’ll successfully execute your business plan:
Further clarify your future propulsion and process efficiency by identifying as exactly as possible how you will put your business plan into action. This clarity will translate directly into the velocity with which you will grow your business. It will involve research and diligently envisioning the steps it will take to move your company from one stage to the next as seamlessly as possible. Expect this to take longer than simply writing your business plan, and dedicate yourself to making it as robust and detailed as possible. - Public Speaking:
Research and identify events and conferences where people in your industry will gather for information and growth opportunities. Offer to speak at these engagements as a single or panel contributor for free or a small fee at first. Prepare a compelling lecture regarding cutting edge topics for the industry in question. Aim to educate, answer common questions and solve potential or actual problems regarding this topic. This will funnel direct business opportunities your way in expected and unexpected ways. As you become more seasoned at this, you may be compensated with greater sums in return for your clout and the positive impact of your speaking engagements. - Social Media:
Daily activity on social media, especially LinkedIn, is essential for businesses. Your daily thought-provoking posts will keep you and your company top-of-mind as well as serve to position your business as source of information, inspiration and thought leadership. With your clients’ permission, be sure to include content that highlights your client work in a way that elevates you both. Express your delight and excitement for these client engagements, and you will inspire others to come forward to inquire about your services. - 3x3x3 Method:
Connect with 3 people or companies with whom you would like to do business every day on social media. This connection then goes two more layers deep…“Like” their posts as well as sincerely commenting or endorsing their efforts. Remember that others are potentially reading these endorsements, and this could serve as another bread crumb that leads potential clients to your doorstep. Once you’ve commented and liked posts by your person or company of choice, reach out and ask them engaging questions about their work, company or industry to express your genuine interest in what affects or challenges them. Note that once you have done your homework and can speak intelligently to their needs and how you can solve problems for them, you will have their attention. This interaction is sure to materialize some warm introductions to key players with whom you can drive a business proposal conversation or building deeper trust equity. - Attend Trade Shows:
Trade shows come in many sizes, durations, locations and varieties. If large ones are cost prohibitive, then start with the smaller or more local ones. These industry-specific events can offer valuable opportunities to network with your target clients as well as potential business partners or collaborators. - Business Cards:
Handing out business cards is still considered an essential part of doing business. It not only makes a great first impression, but it also assists in networking and branding efforts. Keep in mind that statistics show that people are 10 times more likely to retain a business card that has color over those that are simply white. Also, 86% of customers prefer a high quality, thick business card stock and are more likely to keep or pass it along. From a sustainability perspective, here are also digital options available where your contact information is transferred to a device using a QR code. Aim to have both options available if you can. - Email Database:
Collect email addresses in any way you can. Create a secure database where these are stored and follow best practices when utilizing them to build trust with your contacts. This can be done manually as needed (i.e. harvesting business contact info from business cards, emails or meeting notes), via a collection method installed on your website (on the main or blog pages), or via a collection method you align with asset download offerings you launch. An aggregator and email database manager such as Mailchimp can be hugely instrumental in facilitating the myriad uses of this goldmine of business potential. Read on for how you can use this valuable information! - Digital Newsletter:
Create a weekly newsletter filled with company news, client work, industry news or any points of interest and current events in your industry. This will serve to keep you top of mind as well as poise you as a thought leader in your industry and community. Be sure to email these at regular intervals to the contacts on your growing email list and offer your social media community a downloadable link to it for added audience and reach. Be sure to make this download require an email address to continue your email database growth efforts. By regularly reviewing the stats and data associated with your newsletter views you can make a point of reaching out to anyone who has consistently opened and viewed your newsletter. This can spark a new business conversation or revive efforts for existing proposal efforts. - Produce a Content:
These 800-1,600-word articles are highly effective ways to not only get valuable information across to your audience, but also increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) online. Whether your website visitors or general Google searches stumble upon your site, or you publicly announce these high quality, regularly published, nuanced, experience-based contributions to the web, you’re sure to increase your presence and chances that people will reach out to inquire about your company and services. The best part is that the possibilities for content subject matter are virtually endless. What an amazing opportunity to build blog maturity, add content depth to your industry, give voice and shape to your presence in the global web landscape and mark yourself as an available resource for your ideal clients at such a low cost. Be sure to meticulously label or meta-tag the photos used (with permission) in each blog, so that if they have the best chance to come up in a Google search and that they will lead directly to your website when clicked. - Press Releases:
Another way to generate your own buzz in the biz world is by launching press releases. This helps to get the word out about your latest product releases, collaborations and partnerships in a way that helps you control the narrative associated with your brand. This approach can be even more effective if you can manage or maintain a fixed cadence with these bits of impactful news about your company and brand. Press releases can either be written or recorded, and may also be called a “news release”, “media statement” or something similar. Do note that press releases will live in perpetuity in public domain, and will be visible by everyone including your partners, competitors, customers and stakeholders. These effective forms of brand exposure can have many benefits including crisis management, critical communications, SEO benefits and lead generation. You may want to use a press release to share any of the following examples of company news:
* Hiring or executive action
* New product launches
* Grand opening
* Awards received
* Rebranding initiatives
* Upcoming Events
* Mergers and acquisitions
* New Partnerships
* Exciting project collaboration
* Product updates - Networking:
Among the best ways to generate interest and traction with company awareness and sales is in-person networking. There are countless, often industry-specific, opportunities to attend formal and causal networking events where you can make personal connections and build relationships. These can help you get in touch with people and business entities that can support and inform your business decisions as well as provide you with opportunities for successful and long-term human connections that can funnel business your way or provide you with valuable inside information—such as unadvertised insider information, services or jobs. Networking can help your business, but the reciprocal is also a possibility. You never know when you can offer advice or assistance to another individual or business in need. - Create a package deal:
No matter what industry you’re in, you can always thoughtfully put together an irrefutable offer. Challenge yourself and your team to come up with a compelling package of goods and services at a price that your prospective clients will be hard pressed to refuse. You may want to keep a look-out for collaborators that can partner with you on these efforts for the ultimate win-win solution here. - Partner with agencies:
In most industries, there are related agencies that are always looking to grow and be more relevant by offering more robust packages of goods and services to their clients. Seek out opportunities where you can become a part of this solution for agencies in your area of expertise or related fields by embedding what you do within what they do. Offer them a discount for services you would provide as part of their package solutions. The advantage of this, depending on your services and industry, may be that you can expand your outreach globally. Another great benefit of this exposure is, of course, the possibility of referral business. - Webinars:
You may already know that webinars are simply an internet presentation or seminar, allowing global participants to participate in the learning provided. Here are some examples you and your collaborators can deploy. You can host an impactful live Zoom webinar with planned appointment viewing, have a live interactive audience, and choose to later edit the recorded version of that webinar to post on your social networking and business sites. You may also opt to have a live, in-person seminar with an individual or panel of subject matter experts filmed and edited for posting and sharing. Whether you offer to share the webinar in its entirety or not is up to you. But keep in mind that there are numerous nuggets of smaller impactful soundbites and anecdotes within the webinar that can also be harvested and shared as “shorts” to win favor and attract - Lunch-and-learn Opportunities:
Offer to host a complete lunch where you speak to a captive audience about a variety of light but relevant topics with teams within businesses where you wish to remain top-of-mind, earn trust and collaborate on future projects. This can consist of a large or small group of team members—ideally it would be those key players who would most benefit from your information or be most involved in deciding whether to use your services. This professional development session can serve as a mini group product training or cross-training session, while sharing key experience-based knowledge that can position you as a thought leader in your industry or community. Be sure to plan the well-timed event thoughtfully, with a skilled presenter and a space where you can answer additional questions in person after the event. Also be sure to consider dietary needs, remote employees, and minimize the duration of the event to harness optimum participant focus and attention. It is also important to recap points from the presentation as pivotal take-aways for the audience. Also be sure to ask for feedback to improve your efforts. - Offer to buy ad space in other company newsletters:
You may be surprised how many diverse key decision makers view and act on information they see on newsletters. Offering to be featured in a newsletter or article created by outside entities can have a broad impact and present powerful opportunities for you to build new professional relationships. It can also be a fun and meaningful way you can support the growth of those you truly value. - WOSB and Minority-Owned Businesses:
Being certified as a Woman-Owned or a Minority-Owned Small Business has unique advantages and allows access to vast networks of programs, opportunities, support and increased visibility. You may gain access to federal funds and contracts as well as be afforded specific tax breaks and funding opportunities. The benefits to the clients of such businesses is their public contribution to companies that are directly addressing DEI/B, and that customer service is often among the top priorities of these small businesses. By shopping locally when it comes to these small businesses, businesses will also ensure that they are making a sizable impact on the local economy—this is conversely another reason why it’s important to become such a business if and whenever possible.
And if you are busy leading your product/service development and would like expert brand launching support, please tell us about your product/service and we would be happy to do a discovery call and discuss what this would look like. Contact Verity Marketing here.>>