By Maureen Brakke, Marketing & Communications 

Here are the four top things you should do to increase your company visibility and build your customer base. These components are essential to you company’s success.

Do these in order, as they build on each other.

1. Establish your online presence.

Today, it’s really simple to download a FREE website template from WordPress, Weebly, Square Space, and many more. To get more than the basic templates, it might not hurt to invest a few bucks for a more customized, branded look.

  • Update your current website. It’s important to have an up-to-date website that matches your company branding. Your contact information should be easily accessible and visible. See examples here. Make sure you use good quality photos on your website that represent your company and your products well.

2. Establish your social media presence.

Find out what social media platform the majority of your customer’s use, then start with that one.

  • Twitter NOT Facebook: In our experience, most manufacturing companies use Twitter the most. Facebook is used more for personal reasons. LinkedIn is a good way to connect with individuals and companies too.
  • YouTube: People love videos. Short videos (under 2 min). Create a company YouTube channel. If your company has cool stuff to show off, take a video using your smart phone and upload it to YouTube. Don’t forget to share these on your social media channels. Check out slide.ly which helps you easily create videos and photo slideshows—and you can add free music to your videos.
  • Save a LOT of time. Automate your social media posts. Social media doesn’t have to be time consuming. Use a social media management system such as Hootsuite. This allows you to manage multiple social media network channels in one place. There is a free version or a paid version, depending on your needs.
    • Benefits of using a social media management system:
      1. You can schedule posts in advance.
      2. You can easily view analytics data.
      3. You can manage customer service on social media efficiently.

3. Create engaging content for your website

Engage your audience. Consider starting a blog. Write about tips, tricks, or “did you know” types of posts for your industry. See our blog for examples. Use lots of photos and graphics in the blogs. Like videos, blog posts should be short and to the point. People skim more than they actually read, so highlight things of importance in your blog post. Read more about The Anatomy of the Perfect Blog Post.

  • Use infographics: Infographics are a great way to get your message across in an engaging and interesting way. Use free tools such as Canva or gram. You can create anything from infographics to flyers with these tools. See examples here.
  • To use or not to use stock photos? Try to stay away from using stock photos as much as possible, as it doesn’t provide your website or materials with an authentic look and feel. In some cases, however, it might make sense to use a stock photo. Check out Pixabay or Shutterstock for free images.
  • Don’t have money for Photoshop? Check out PicMonkey, which is a photo editing, collage making, graphic design tool—and there is a free option!
  • Share blog posts on social media. Spread the word about you company on social media using your blog posts, infographics, etc. Include a link in your posts to your website, so your readers will want to go there for more information.

4. Stay in touch with your clients

It’s important to stay in touch with your potential, current, and former clients. Consider starting a quarterly or monthly newsletter, depending on how much news you have to share.

  • What to include in your newsletter:
    • A brief company introduction with your logo.
    • Company highlights
    • Your latest blog posts
    • Upcoming events (your own or industry events)
    • Your contact information so they can easily get in touch with one click
  • FREE newsletter tools: There are many free newsletter tools out there. Check out MailChimp or Constant Contact to get started. See newsletter examples

 

Maureen Brakke works in marketing and communications for the University of Utah MEP Center. She previously worked for the Utah System of Higher Education in marketing and communications, managing multiple initiatives, brands, blogs, and websites. Connect with her on Twitter.