Essential Tips for Any Business

Owning and operating a business is a challenging prospect, but ultimately a rewarding one, if you play your cards right. There are many factors that can contribute to the success of your business, so you need to bring your A game if you want to triumph over the competition. Luckily, there are just as many tried and true methods that can improve your odds. Here’s what you need to know.

Marketing

Marketing is an umbrella term that encompasses a number of distinct techniques that each raise awareness and recognition of your business and your brand in different ways. For example, advertising is a form of marketing. While many ads are declarations that a certain product or service exists, many are not, but all ads serve to make the consumer aware of a business or a brand. This is why ads often don’t focus on a product as much as they do a sort of personality that is then attributed to the brand. One recent example that springs to mind is the recent Planters Super Bowl ads featuring the death of their mascot, Mr. Peanut, and then the birth of “Baby Nut.” These ads say next to nothing about the products that Planters produces, but they play off of and promote awareness of the Planters brand in a memorable and entertaining way, which is an increasingly popular method of advertising.

Search Engine Optimization

Another facet of marketing is that of SEO, or search engine optimization. It’s exactly what it sounds like: making a business more appealing to the algorithms of search engines. With the ubiquity of the internet and, of course, search engines like Google, SEO has become an integral part of any business, and an industry has developed around the concept of optimizing a brand for search engines. There are many ways to do SEO and so many companies now that do them. Companies like Cincinnati SEO are a great resource for getting you started.

Graphic Design

Graphic design is something that not a lot of people think about, but it’s everywhere. Furthermore, it has a profound effect on people’s behavior, which means it has an effect on people’s perception of your brand. The graphic design of your brand should be engineered to provoke certain reactions from your customers. For example, when we think of Facebook, we think of the color blue, and blue tends to have a calming effect on people. For that very reason, blue is a fairly common color in corporate branding. Likewise, red has a more aggressive or passionate connotation to it, which can be seen to inspire more gung ho shopping in Target, for example. Beyond colors, there are a great number of components to a brand’s graphic design that have influence over the public’s perception of the brand. Coca-Cola’s cursive logo is iconic, and Geico’s gecko mascot has been a fan favorite despite the rise and fall of the Geico cavemen.

Social Media

Social media is a potent tool in the right hands, as it can help a business promote itself online alongside traditional online advertisements. The structure and popularity of Twitter makes it an ideal platform on which to promote your brand, as your tweets will be automatically visible to any of your followers. Likewise, a business can pay to have tweets treated as advertisements that are shown to everyone, instead of being seen only by followers. Brand related Twitter accounts have taken to a similar strategy to the above advertising strategy and have eschewed advertising a product or service in favor of being fun and memorable. This even includes various other brands commenting on the aforementioned Mr. Peanut “tragedy.”

Business, like any competition, requires a clear strategy and solid execution in order to win. However, there is a vast collection of information compiled by business experts in order to distill data into proven strategies that can benefit newer, smaller businesses. With these tips in mind, you will be ready to make the most of your brand and grow your business, in spite of the competition.