How your brand & website legitimise your business

I was chatting to a client of mine during her Project Wrap Up call recently and she shared some really interesting points that more service providers need to know.

The Project Wrap Up Call

The Project Wrap Up call is a call I provide to my brand & website clients a few weeks/months after their project goes live. It gives them a chance to ask me any questions that might have come up for them.

I always want to make sure my clients have the confidence to make small tweaks to their website and use their social media template or any other part of their brand. My clients know they can try things out and they’ll then have a chance to get my perspective on what they’ve done.

It’s also a great chance to catch up with my clients in general and see how their brand & website has improved the results they get in their business.

That’s where this week’s conversation comes in.

Marketing your new brand & website

What my recent client was pointing out was how important her brand & website were in the follow-up to the in-person networking conversations she’d been putting a lot of work into.

Since she just launched her business and her website, she knew she wasn’t going to fly to the top of Google search results (even though I did lay the SEO foundations for her work).

SEO for new websites

No matter who you are, if your domain has only recently gone live Google will take a while to trust you. And if you don’t have dozens of SEO optimised blog posts on your site and submitted to Google Search Console, Google won’t have much to go on.

There is always potential to improve your SEO results as you build your business, but this client was right to know that dream clients weren’t all of a sudden going to start finding her on Google the week after we launched her website, when her industry includes a lot of well-established and trusted websites.

Her actual marketing method

She wasn’t going to rely on a form of marketing that wasn’t developed enough to support her yet. She rolled up her sleeves and joined networking groups in her area, started attending events and actually having conversations with the right people.

And of course like many of my clients (and I know you’ll relate to this), she had years of experience in her field working for corporate companies before she decided to back herself and start her own company. Therefore, she had built up a solid network of connections with people in her industry and in complementary industries that she could reach out to and share her new business venture with.

So these types of marketing are obviously quite traditional but it’s often what comes next after the initial conversation with a potential client that makes all the difference.

The follow up after the initial conversation

If you spend lots of time networking, having conversations and pitching your services, you want to make sure the follow-up after these conversations matches the great impressions you’ve worked so hard to make in person.

How your brand & website make all the difference

And having a brand & website that backs up my clients expertise has made a huge difference.

As she said to me “I look legit”, “It proves I am who I say I am.” And it not only does that, it shows that she has the experience to make her worth hiring.

She can confidently send potential clients to her social media and website, whether from a business card or through a follow-up email, and know that they will help attract the clients who are a right fit for her.

The kind of clients who value what she does and have the budget to really invest in her services.

The cost of looking less established than you are

Without the brand & website to help seal the deal, even when you use networking and word-of mouth as your main marketing methods, the conversations you have at networking events can come to nothing.

And obviously not every connection or conversations leads directly to a new client, you want to convert as many of the people who are in need of and interested in your services as possible.

And remember, if a company is in the market to hire an expert for a specific service, they will likely do their due diligence and research many options.

Are you going to leave the showcasing of your expertise up to chance or are you going to make sure you have a brand & website that make it obvious?

Referrals and networking are powerful ways to find trustworthy experts but to make sure your good impression lasts, your brand & website need to back up your expertise so you can stand out from the competition and get hired by your right-fit client.

How your brand shows authority instantly

When you invest in your brand and make sure it visually encapsulates everything you’re about, you will naturally stand out from your competition.

So many people ignore the power of good branding and are happy to have a generic logo representing their company. All this does is make them blend in with everyone who has decided to do the same.

I know you’re ready to take a different approach. The way you do your work and the results you deliver are way too good to be hidden behind bland visuals.

You are ready to wow your ideal clients and make a real connection with them the second they land on your site.

Signs your brand & website don’t back you up yet

If you relate to any of the below points, it’s probably time to finally get a brand & website that backs up your brilliance:

• First of all, you don’t even like the look of the website yourself
• You cringe when you think of your dream clients landing on your site
• You wish you could just show them how good you are instead of your brand & website representing you
• You waste hours putting together social media posts on Canva and you don’t even like the results
• You try tweaking your DIY or old website when deep down you know it’s time for an overhaul

If you feel ready for a brand & website transformation contact me here and we can talk about how we can bring you from being a hidden gem to attracting your dream clients.