Blog

There are many reasons your business is not flying as high as you want it to. From experience, I find that most of the problems businesses face in terms of customer conversion is one of visibility.

Consequently, Visibility is how well-known your business is to the customers you serve. You may have the best business that provides the best products and services in the best location with the best prices.
However, if you are not visible to your customers, no one is going to know you exist.

A visible business is not a business online or on social media. After all, there are millions of businesses online and even you do not know up to 100 of them.

Visibility therefore is a targeted way of putting your business in the faces of the people you want to notice it – not random people. Because, making your business visible to random people is the same as not being visible at all!

So, how can you make your business more visible?
Here are five very easy strategies to deploy.

1. Have a human face
Many business owners are all about the business, which in itself is not a problem.

However, the snag is that your business is selling products or services to people. And while it is often said that business and pleasure (in this case, read personal life) cannot mix, the market of today is moving more and more towards the point where buyers are more interested in the face behind the business than the business itself. It is a matter of trust.

Therefore, while you promote your business and market your products, integrate a bit of your personality into that process. It makes people connect with you easier because you are a person that they can see and imagine dealing with. You’re not just a name, a logo and a product.

In fact, business relations are no longer wholly a matter of B2C, B2B or B2G. Contemporary business relations that are successful often involve H2H (Human to Human) interaction.

People want to buy from a person they can see, and putting yourself out there is a good way to make your business visible.

What about the big organizations?
The same applies. In April 2020, five female officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service faced an official investigation and possible sanction from the NIS authorities for participating in the #BopDaddyChallenge on social media originated by Nigerian artiste Folarin ‘Falz’ Falana.

The wide outcry over the threatened sanction led to a suspension of some of the processes.

The NIS may have missed an opportunity to cash in on some positive press or goodwill as the participation of its staff was greeted with widespread applause on social media. People were happy to see uniformed women doing everyday stuff, and that makes it easier to be accepting of uniformed people. It shows they are like you and me.

That’s a good way of showing a human face in your business.

Also during the COVID-19 lockdown, Access Bank started a trend on its social media pages where they had staff record themselves at their home workstation discussing the work-from-home experience from their perspective.
Customers could see Access Bank staff at home, in a work setting and could relate with the experiences.

That is a hugely successful way of being making yourself visible.

2. Know Your Audience
Audience analytics, however data-centric or techie that might sound, is a no-brainer for executing a visibility strategy. For me, knowing your audience is a visibility strategy in itself. You have to know what age-range they are, where to find them, what their interests are and so on.

And then, start making yourself visible to them in the targeted manner that is now known to you.

3. Networking
Networking cannot be over emphasized. Social media won’t do it for you all the time. You have to meet people one-on-one, talk to them, exchange ideas with them and introduce your business to them.
No man is an island, certainly not you as a business owner.

Join professional groups, networking clubs, niche associations and like. You will have to engage with people who are likely to be interested in your product or service, or who know people who might be.

The more people you meet and can talk about your business to, the more visible your business becomes.

Consequently, the more visible your business becomes, the more leads you generate. And the more leads you generate, the more conversions you can make. The more conversions you can make, the more money you rake in!

This has a lot to do with showing a human face in your business as well.

4. Teach or speak to people
Beyond networking, actually being the Centre of attention in a room is the biggest visibility of all. Imagine being called to speak to as small as 100 people, and you are introduced as “Jane Doe, founder of Doe Media Consultancy, leading media strategists in the XYZ area.” That is a powerful introduction of you and your business to 100 people in under 60 seconds.

Make yourself available to speak to professionals or even (potential) buyers in your niche or market. You position yourself as an expert in that field and have a chance to introduce your knowledge about what you sell to the people who will either buy or inform others who will buy.

5. Targeted marketing
By targeted marketing, I make reference to what I call “keep-in-touch marketing”. This is marketing that is not focused on product hawking. It is simply about reaching out to contacts you have made at whatever fora and letting them know that you appreciated the time you spent in conversation.

They will remember they met you and also what you do. And they will appreciate the time you spent to reach out to them.

Over time, they may come to you directly to purchase what you sell or will be more disposed to your actual product marketing. Either way, they have seen and continue to see you and what you do.

Conclusively, as a bonus, there is need to mention that online visibility is not overrated.

Having a functional website and social media pages are useful visibility strategies. But there is more to this particular strategy than can be covered in this article. The same goes for having powerful logos, branding materials and offline visibility content like signs and signages for businesses with a physical presence.

What do you think?

If you’ve got any comment or questions, leave me a comment in the comment section and I’ll respond definitely. Or you could send me a message on Twitter or Instagram via the links at the bottom of this page.
Thanks for reading, and remember: sharing is caring. So hit the share button.

Julius Omokhunu is a Business Success Consultant/Coach. He holds a Masters Degree in Media and Communication and several certifications in management, development and leadership.

He is the author of the bestseller, Unlocking the Secrets of Freelancing.

Follow Julius Omokhunu on IG/FB @Juliusomokhunu

or visit his website- www.juliusomokhunu.com

Download 4 Steps to Starting & Growing a Business