MARKETING EXPERT REVEALS 4 TOP SECRETS TO INCREASE VISIBILITY TO THE RIGHT CUSTOMERS.

If you've ever wondered just how much profit your business stands to make when the right audiences begin to come to you, you're not alone. Thousands of start-ups and small business owners spend tons of money to attract the right type of audience to their business.

In this post, Nigerian expert brand marketing consultant, Taiwo Okunlola, popularly known as Taiwo Orbs, joined us in an interview to reveal deep insights on ways start-up businesses can increase visibility to the right customers. By the end of this interview, you'd have gained four best practices to increase your visibility regardless of your budget cap.

Proceed to the interview transcript below, if you want to quickly and massively increase your brand visibility!

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For A Business, What Should Visibility Mean?

Taiwo Orbs: Short answer, this is how well people know your business.

Long answer, this is the extent to which your potential buyers or users know your business because you could be visible to other people and not to your potential buyers.

Hypothetically Speaking, If You Were Consulting A Start-up Business, What Steps Would You Lay Out For Them To Gain The Visibility They Desire?

Taiwo Orbs: I like this conversation because of the word "visibility" and you see according to the biblical story of creation, I think the first thing God created was the light and that means visibility.

Step one to any visibility growth endeavor is defining your target audience. This means businesses should be able to have a clear understanding of the set of people they are serving.

Businesses should understand that it is impossible to serve the whole world, so knowing the set of people they are serving is important, we call it demography.

For instance, if you sell Pampers, a brand of diapers used in Nigeria, your target audiences are nursing mothers.

Also, under this process, businesses must be able to answer questions about their target audiences such as; "What are their interests? What are their pain points?"

Once you know who your target audience is, you can begin to tailor your visibility efforts to them.

Step two is to carry out market research.

The power of market research is sometimes overlooked.

The truth however is, when you have a product idea, chances are that this idea is not new, and a thousand people might have already thought of the same thing.

Here's where the importance of market research comes in. Market research helps you know what's going on in your market and how to stand out.

What to do here is to;

• Search the internet for the companies that are doing that exact same thing, these are your competitors.

• Research the type of audience your competitors serve.

• Dig deep into the complaints your competitors are currently getting from their audience. This helps you perform better.

• Research the marketing style and content type of your target audience. Facebook ads library allows you to see adverts about your product that your competitors have run. Using this tool will give you insights into your competitor's content style and how to better create your own.

Step three is to never underestimate the power of content. Whether it be images, videos, or written, content holds the power to expose your business and attract customers to you. Content is the vehicle of visibility, that's why they say content is king.

Here are four tips for content creation;

1. Do not create content centered only around asking for product purchases. You must focus on showing the value you have to offer, your unique selling proposition, because this is what will set you apart from your competitors.

This particular tip takes me back to encounters I've had with two restaurants; Bukka Hut and Chicken Republic. The two very different brands are in the same fast food industry, very obviously selling the same type of food, deliciously made. But one thing I noticed about Bukka Hut's takeout is the way they package it. They actually go the extra mile to extra seal your takeout before delivering it, just to show that they do care about what happens to their food during the delivery process. This is the value they offer and that's what sets them apart from the rest.

2. Give value. Give value. Give value. Loyalty is not built by purchase requests. It is only built when you give value to your target customers. Free value via your content is most appreciated, however, I'm not saying you should give your product out for free or you shouldn't sell your product. But let there be value involved in your content.

3. Don't shy away from investing a little in paid adverts. You see, social media won't allow you to get to an extremely large audience especially when you don't have a high follower count. The social media algorithm is designed to trend certain top content, which is how some posts get large views while others don't. Social media owners also need to make some money.

So for your business's benefit, do not rely only on organic reach, spend some money on paid adverts so that you can reach more audiences.

Most social media platforms have sponsored ads. I believe the minimum ad budget per day for Facebook ads is one dollar. Running sponsored ads isn't too technical, you just need to understand the basics. Numerous tutorials on YouTube can easily guide you on this. If you however don't have the time or interest to learn, simply outsource this task to an expert.

4. Have a content calendar, please. It'll help keep your social posts organized.

Step four is to attend events, collaborate with event hosts or host an event yourself.

This simple activity helps a whole bunch. I remember when I'd recently moved to Lagos state, I used to leverage a platform named Eventbrite to locate business events in Lagos. My target back then was to network and meet at least two new people per event.

Networking works a whole lot and it only costs you as little as you want it to.

And yes I know networking may be a bit hard for introverted people, but you just have to find a way to make it work for you.

In My Understanding, Visibility = More Brand Awareness = Higher Sales Rate. Right?

Taiwo Orb - Yes

Great! So, How Long Would You Advise A Start-up Business Owner To Push For Brand Awareness Growth Activities Before Getting Worried About Revenue Growth?

Taiwo Orb - Okay, this question is an important one. Start-up business owners need to know that just because you're investing in visibility, it doesn't mean that you'll get an immediate increase in revenue. Other factors affect product sales, for example, the preference of a customer. This means there are other arrangements that business owners have to make to propel their product sales.

That said, a timeline of six to eight months minimum should be put in place with a heavy visibility-based plan.

Remember, before people can buy from you, they have to know you first. There's an abbreviation I like to use; "ACD"

• A for Awareness

• C for Consideration

• D for Decision.

Awareness is the reason for the visibility campaigns. The truth is that it may take some time to convince people to purchase from you.

It is this awareness that then gives room for consideration. When your target audiences have seen a lot of you around, they begin to consider giving your product a try. This eventually leads to purchase decisions favoring you.

Sometimes business owners don't have a clear-cut financial plan on what their monthly expenses on ads should look like. Rather, they just wake up one morning, decide to run ads and after one or two weeks they get frustrated if they see that it isn't increasing their sales.

I would advise business owners to create a visibility plan and timeline, factoring in the costs and also setting their key performance indicator (KPI) to help them measure up their performance during that period.

One more thing, start-ups must learn to capture leads. Leads are people that show interest in your product either from ads or your organic content. Some of your audiences may not be ready to buy from you but are still interested in your product and that's fine. But make sure you find a means to collect their contacts and nurture them to the point where they become buyers of your product.

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