Barring short-term promotions or door-buster deals, the most effective advertising or marketing strategy has the goal of people top of mind. There’s a good reason for that.
You might be thinking that there’s no way you can have the brand recognition or top of mind recall of giant brands like Coke, McDonald’s, or Apple. After all, you can’t possibly hope to match the money they put into advertising. For example, Apple spent 1.8 billion dollars on advertising in 2020, an amount higher than the GDP of 14 countries.
Well, good news! There are more than a few low-cost efforts you can make that will help keep your business top of mind!
Why Is Staying Top Of Mind Important?
What do you think is more likely to happen:
Right when your potential consumer needs your product or service, they are scrolling on social media and see one of your posts. They think: “Wow! That’s lucky, I was just thinking about buying a -blank- at this exact moment!”.
They are starting to think about buying a product or service to tackle a problem or need they have, and think: “You know, I’ve been seeing this one company’s posts, reading their blog, and talking to them on a regular basis. They’ve been really awesome, even though I wasn’t ready to buy yet. I’m definitely going to choose them.”
It isn’t a trick question! If one looks way more likely it’s because it is. Promos and advertising have their place, but positioning yourself, so you’re the only call they want to make or the only website they want to visit should be your number one goal! As an added bonus, this can also lead to an increase in referrals too!
Tips For Staying Top Of Mind
We promised you tips, and we’re going to deliver!
Social Media
We’ll get the really obvious one out of the way first. While social media isn’t the free powerhouse it used to be, it can still be a useful tool. Organic reach is hard to come by these days (Meta really wants your money), but utilizing the full suite of formats like reels, posts, short-form, and long-form video, will give you a bump in exposure.
Also, please (please, please) don’t use your social media as an ad platform. No one will care, and you will quickly lose followers, or they will just mentally block out your posts and scroll right on by. Be helpful, funny, and relevant.
Email Marketing
You need to be careful with this one, but it’s an awesome way to keep up your frequency. A weekly newsletter, tools and tips, or just a helpful article to pass along, just as long as you aren’t bombarding them with email after email. Get creative and give them a reason to open it up!
Check Out Another Blog: Building Business Process: Lean, Mean, Well-Oiled Machine
Be Where They Are
People prefer doing business with people! Get out there, shake some hands, and make sure your business isn’t just a faceless organization vying for their dollars. Figure out where your potential customers congregate and make sure you’re there too.
Create A Formula
One helpful tool that many companies utilize is a plan for when and how a potential customer should be followed up with. This might be a weekly email, a monthly virtual meeting, and a yearly event. If you know exactly what needs to be done, it can make following up a lot easier.
Do you know who is a pro at this sort of thing? The latest guest on the Thinc Underground Podcast!
This week’s episode welcomes a top 1% real-estate producer in central Florida and leader of the Kendrick Team at EXP Realty, Kevin Kendrick. Join host Arif Khan as he speaks to Kevin about what it was like switching from a 2-decade long career in education, to one of the top performing real-estate firms in his state. Advertising, marketing, relationships, A.I., and encouraging referrals from even the most unlikely of places, it’s all par for the course in this discussion! “You would be surprised, I’ve got referrals from my plumber, carpet cleaner, flooring guy, roofing guy, even the guy who tints my car’s windows!”