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The business industry is a competitive industry. When running and owning your own company you need to make sure consumers view you as the better option over your competition. But how do you do this, you ask? The best way to improve your reputation is to market yourself to your audience across a wide range of marketing avenues. For those who would like to improve their business reputation and create more brand awareness, the following is a guide to the top marketing tips that you can use to help you become a leading business in your city and/or community. Let’s take a look at what you can do.

1. Build A Website

If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to build an appealing website that mimics the look and feel of your brand. When building your website there’s a few things to keep in mind and a few features that are important to help build brand awareness of your company. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• Making sure your website is mobile friendly and is a responsive design. What this means is that when a user visits your website on any sized screen, the image will adjust to their screen size. This makes it easier for your visitors to take a look at your website without having to constantly move the screen from side to side.
• Make sure it features a ‘contact you’ page, a blog, services or products page, and a homepage.
• Incorporate social media links so people can share your website with their friends on social media.
• Create a layout that’s easy to navigate and is user friendly. The best type of layout is having your main category pages a few centimetres down from the top of the screen and across the centre.

By creating a user friendly and attractive website design, you’ll have the potential to gain more interest from consumers.

2. Get Social Media Connected and Consider Outreach Services

Another marketing tip that can really improve the exposure of your brand is by getting connected with your customers on social media. Social media platforms are powerful mediums that can be utilised to help you interact with your followers. By interacting with your followers, you have the potential to gain more likes, shares and comments which can then generate more long-term customers. By adding a business page on social media, it allows people who are searching for a business like yours, find you in a much easier way. A few things to remember when using social media however:

• If you have a negative comment, never write a negative response back as this will hurt your reputation. Instead try to stay calm and work out how to resolve an issue with a previous customer. You could try something like ‘We’re so sorry that you feel this way, please accept this free gift.’
• When sharing anything on social media always keep things neutral. You don’t want to post something that’s offensive or rude as this will cause upset from your customers. Keeping it pleasant is the best way to go.

3. List On Local Directories

Local business directories are great for helping you gain more brand awareness. Adding your business to as many local business directories as you can will help you to improve your visibility when people are looking for a related business in your local area. Some business directories you can use that will better enhance your exposure include, but aren’t limited to:

• Google Places
• Yahoo Local Listing
• Foursquare
• Yelp
• com
• com
• com
• Bing Places

These will also help you to improve your website ranking and allow people to find you better
online.

4. Run Contests, Deals or Give Things Away.

It’s well known that people like free things, deals and contests. A great way to build your reputation is by running competitions, deals or giving away free gift vouchers. You can run these competitions in your local paper, social media sites, or even on your website. Some ideas could be:

• Favourite selfie competition
• 50 words or less competition
• Free gift vouchers to your if you can guess the sound/image/product

By showing your followers that you’re happy to give away things, or are open to having fun, they will be more receptive to your business and will in turn reward you by being loyal customers. If you’re going to give your customers deals, it’s important they see a noticeable difference in the price to make the most effect.

5. Manage Your Online Reputation

Review sites are great places for people to write reviews about different businesses. However sometimes you’ll find that not all reviews are good. It’s a good idea to manage your online reputation by replying to both good and bad reviews in a positive way. In doing this it shows your customers that you do care about them and what they have to say about your business. It will also show others who are considering a purchase from you, that you are willing to take that extra effort for your customers. Some tips to manage your online reputation include:

• Staying calm and being positive when replying to reviews.
• Signing up to different review sites and checking them on a weekly basis.
• Try to reply to as many reviews as possible as this shows that you feel your customers are very important to you.

In managing your online reputation, you will have a better chance of gaining more customers while building awareness of your brand.

Conclusion Building your reputation and brand awareness is all about how you can showcase yourself to your targeted audience. By taking the time to really push these key areas, you can improve your reputation greatly. So, are you ready to be a leading start-up business in your city?