Jane Brocklebank

Whether you are a household name, or a small local business, the principles of getting yourself noticed are the same.  The key is to be seen repeatedly, and in more than one place.

If you think about the brands you’re currently aware of, you’ll find that they are on TV, radio, in the printed press and probably online too. Big brands never do anything in isolation – they create promotional campaigns.

So how can you re-create that impact if you’re a small business?

It doesn’t have to be difficult or even expensive. For instance, let’s take a car valeting company as an example. Their unique selling point (or USP) is that they come to you with everything they need to clean your car. You don’t need to provide water, buckets, sponges or electricity.

Imagine they have come along to clean a car in a residential area. In order to make the most of that as a marketing opportunity, they could have a sandwich board that they put outside the house while the valeting is in progress. In addition, they could deliver some leaflets or postcards through the neighbours’ doors, saying “we’ve just cleaned your neighbour’s car – if you’d like yours cleaned, give us a call”. They could also advertise in the post office window, take out an advert in the local paper or community magazine, and build up their local contacts on social media, inviting satisfied customers to post recommendations. They could have a branded van, with their contact details on – and maybe a uniform or branded T-shirts.

All of this activity should be consistently presented, using the same logo, typeface, colours etc so that people become aware that they have seen this company before. In each case, the USP should be highlighted – “it’s easy, you don’t need to provide anything, we just get on with it”.

Very quickly, they would build up a local awareness. All they would then need to do is deliver a good service to make sure that people talk positively about them. Next time somebody in the area says “I need my car valeting” they would be front of mind, and most likely to be contacted.

So what else can you do to build awareness of YOUR business?

Photo: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Marketing tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.