The importance of having a fresh and active website and online presence can never be overstated. In fact, the traditional website is already outdated as we witness a rise in demand for interactive content, mobile friendly designs and tools and services relevant to the target consumer’s immediate needs. Depending on how far reaching or great an impact your brand has, a mobile app will be an absolute necessity. If you don’t at least have a website, your business in the eyes of potential customers, practically doesn’t exist. And with the Yellow Pages being dead for the past decade, businesses absent from the web; are certainly without a paper trail.
Simply having a website is not enough. A static, “placeholder” presence will do nothing for your brand or make an impact in eyes of prospects who stumble upon your site. If there’s little to no activity, there’s a good chance they’ll be gone without a click. There has to be something interesting that pique’s the user’s interest.
Transform Your Business into a Brand
In addition, a challenge exists for many brands that seem to not have any interesting content to publish except their product listing, a few images, company profile and contact details. Their product is suited for a very specific, low profile audience. The average human simply cannot relate to a product listing of the various mechanical parts of an industrial forklift, for example. It’s not a hip product or service provider like Google or even Victoria Secret. So how can the average “boring” business bridge the gap and capture user attention? After all, attention is what it’s all about.
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Regardless of how obscure your business may seem to the average, there are some very effective methods of creating content anyone can relate to by presenting unique perspectives powerful enough to gain you headline status. Or at least drive above average interest, traffic, recognition and credibility for your brand.
Find the Tools That Best Suit You
Any company and brand can publish. Every brand must, if they want to reach a wider audience and grow business. Developing a system and acquiring an appropriate set of tools to get the job done efficiently is easy. There are tons of tools online that assist with web design, publishing and help automate the marketing process. IM Creator, for example, is an ideal website building tools designed to help any novice or professional quickly build and maintain beautiful websites. Your marketing tools can mean the difference between success and failure online.
Treat Content Curation like an Adventure
Personally, I don’t think there exists any boring businesses per se. It’s just a matter of perspectives, who is delivering the content and the medium. One powerful example of not-so-sexy brands doing great things in marketing and social media is engine, refrigerator and light bulb maker, General Electric (GE). It’s safe to assume that 90% of the planet’s population doesn’t have a clue about how engines work and for the most part, we don’t care –they just need to work. GE’s target market is not always the average everyday web user and yet they’ve been able to amass huge followings on social networks through videos, graphics and rare photos of what their employees do on a daily basis.
Just check out the photo of a jet engine below which they posted via their Instagram account. You and I won’t be buying anything like this from GE but you cannot help but stop, look and say wow. That’s the emotional response brands need to soar, increase reach and eventually positively impact sales. It captures our attention and makes us a little bit more inclined to listen to what the company is saying.
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I’m certain there are gems within your business you could fashion in a similar way and share. Remember, no one knows your business like you do and you’re the best person to share something unique that would make the average person say wow. Whether it’s deeply insightful statistics, photos in places people hardly ever see or an intriguing story of how you changed a customer’s life. Make the impact through originality.
Your Blog is the Foundation of Your Online Marketing
There’s an adventure to be found in any given week in your business and your website or social media account is the perfect place to share. Don’t limit your content to text but use as much interactive video and photo content as possible since these have greater appeal and will garner more attention.
Hire a content manager / marketer or assign someone within the company who is great with words and is willing to use a camera or some other method to feed this to your company blog.
Your company’s ability and willingness to share real stories will trump any traditional independent advertising spend.
Collaborate & Leverage Other’s Resources & Reach
If you’re having a difficult time coming up with great stories to push to your audience, identify other businesses or brands that could potentially complement your products and stories. Does your product work well another? Is it indirectly helping to solve other problems for customers in a different industry? There exists an opportunity.
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Find brands or websites that have strong following, extensive reach and trustworthiness. Pitch an idea to collaborate and get the gears going. The content created from these partnerships will place your brand and website in front of potentially millions of viewers you wouldn’t normally reach on your own. Resulting in an increase in traffic, potential sales and building brand equity.
You do not need to do marketing on your own, collaborate.
Distribution is Queen
Once you’ve created some amazing content for your “boring” brand, it’s time to get the word out. Gone are the days of generic advertising and your new content will be a sure hit being pushed via social network advertising. This is where you’ll achieve the greatest return on investment for your advertising dollar.
Spend on advertising when you have a great story to tell.
In the end, as you spend more time telling great stories about your brand via building up your website and social media accounts, your company will evolve and find a lasting place in the minds of consumers.
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