Six steps to ensuring your brand content is seen as relevant
There are many constituent elements and principles that are curated to make a marketing campaign work, but most of all, when we get down to brass tacks, we want our businesses to seem relevant.
Why is this? Well, because there’s much competition out there. There are many other businesses offering similar services to yours, or perhaps that are trying to if you’re particularly innovative.
Even industry-standard firms cannot escape this – think of how Apple’s pioneering app format is now taken wholesale by companies like Google and Microsoft.
In order to appeal to our clients, customers and business to business connections, it’s essential for us to present ourselves as relevant, and more than that, but to live up to the word in every respect.
This ensures that consumer confidence can be curated at a reliable point, that we know exactly what our customers need and might need, and that we’re always there to fulfill or at least consult the best course of action.
It’s for this very reason that many people consider marketing to be equal parts art and science. But how can even the best MSP Marketing translate to getting better clients, curating your image appropriately? Let’s consider that below:
1) Clearly and carefully list your services
Your branding is important, but more than what nice font you use for your website or how pleasing your logo is, companies and clients wish to know you can deliver. For this reason, it’s very important to break down exactly what services you offer.
This might involve a ‘process’ page that shows the booking process all the way to the delivery format. if using an online module, for instance, you may give a videographic presentation breaking down your steps and why your process has been structured that way.
This helps you showcase your offering to companies looking to make an easy and confident decision – here you’re doing the difficult research for them.
2) Market in the right spaces
It’s very important to make sure that you’re marketing to the right people. If you have expertise in a given industry, it’s better to use targeted advertising and SEO keywords that help them connect to your particular brand more appropriately.
Marketing in the right spaces can mean applying sponsorships to support business podcasts, for instance, or favoring an influencer or brand rep to curate a new brand ambassador, or doing your best to become a real face within your industry. You may achieve that by:
3) Having a physical presence
While Covid-19 and its associated lockdowns have certainly encouraged many services to digitize (and this may be the norm for MSP brands regardless) it’s also true that having a physical presence (when that’s possible) helps you be seen as more relevant.
Attending keynote events, for instance, can help you stand side by side with the ‘big boys’ in your industry, and just being seen in their presence can help identify you as a worthwhile entity in that industry.
You may give a talk yourself, or use trade shows as a means to promote your brand (such as by discussing modern SEO principles with like minded folks).
A physical presence, even if that solely means having quality merchandise made and fulfilling each order with these physical items, can help you become more of a tangible presence, a real business, one that actually has a corporeal form in the minds of your clients. They’re much more likely to come back to you and re-use your business if they’re given that possibility.
4) Commit to some good
In 2021, social consciousness is a positive and worthwhile cause, but also a good marketing tool. Unfortunately, some companies choose to only use these causes for marketing purposes, as we often see when brands decide to print their products in rainbow colors each pride month without actually donating to a charity or doing any exposure work at all.
There’s nothing wrong with flying those colors at all – but often, the community can see when they’re being used for hollow marketing ends, and quite rationally, do not appreciate it.
For this reason, committing to some actual good can not only help us support causes we care about, but they help us stay focused and able to market our business in the right circles. We also allow clients to feel like their use of our services is justified, repeatedly.
For instance, some mattress firms decide to donate one mattress out of every ten sales to a homeless shelter. That adds up, and it can certainly get the brand’s name out there. That’s a win-win as far as marketing is concerned, and yes, it helps you seem more relevant (and continually so) than ever.
5) Keep your branding consistent
In order to stay relevant you have to be memorable. Simplicity often helps. Most of us can picture Disney’s logo because of how simple and elegant it is. We can commit to those same principles. The less a client has to look at your service in order to remember it, the better.
This might involve a simple typeface used for your online formatting, a simple logo with the initial of your brand front and centre, or renaming your company motto to be pertinent to your industry while also being easy enough to remember.
Don’t get ‘too clever’ with it. This way, you can stay memorable and if you’re lucky enough (such as in Google’s example), you become synonymous with the actual service you offer (in that case, ‘Googling’ a search term). It’s more than possible for small brands to achieve this, too.
6) Be front and centre
Amorphous and hollow husks of companies can often feel quite forgettable after a while, especially for small brands. To counteract this, showing your team or at least you as a leader on your website can personalize your whole branding approach, helping you stay in the limelight, a trusted face for yout services, someone to contact and to see as a business partner.
That can be a tremendous way of staying relevant to clients who wish to know your service, not just use it.
With this advice, we hope you can more easily stay relevant to your audience, no matter if you’re dealing with private clients or a business to business audience.
Photo by dusan jovic
