How To: Get Your Brand on the Shortlist!
To get on the shortlist, you will be competing against other organisations offering a product or service that is very much comparable to yours on the exterior.
Once you’re in the boardroom pitching your product and services, it’s equal ground. You are the subject matter expert in your arena. You have the knowledge and skills that will solve their challenges, and help them achieve their aspirations.
But you’ve got to get there.
To make it on to the shortlist, we’ve collated our three most effective tactics that will help you make it on the most important stages of the buying cycle.
- Be visible and get found.
Building brand awareness will be integral to getting on the shortlist. Not only do prospects need to find you, they need to notice your brand over your rivals. To gain visibility online, you will need to achieve a balance between organic search, paid promotion and third party mentions.
Building your organic search ranking through optimisation and third party mentions such as a review strategy will promote your credibility as a brand, whilst paid promotion will surface your brand when it is most relevant, to both new and existing prospects.
By focusing on keywords and phrases that your audience, together with social media advertising, it is possible to reach new relevant audiences using specific persona-led criteria. By employing a retargeting approach, you brand will remain visible even after your visitors have left your website. - Take their pain away.
Steer away from jargon, and target the specific questions that each persona is asking. Overcome objections and take away their pain in the early stages of the buying cycle to increase your chances of making it on to their shortlist.
Your buyers are in the market for change, so take the opportunity to show them where you add value and why they need to work with you to overcome their challenges and achieve their objectives. - Be relevant and timely.
Share your content with your prospects and leads to help them through to the next stage of the buying cycle. Each communication should have a precise objective and only cover one pain point – this enables them to easily digest the information and action it appropriately.
You will also need to show your audience clear evidence of how you have helped other organisations like them before, and how you differ from your competitors. This will identify your brand as one to watch and give you a greater chance of making it on to the shortlist.
Getting on to the shortlist is no small task. It is a carefully curated series of events that target multiple contacts, some of whom you may not have met yet. However, if you put a robust strategy in place that enables you to be found, be relevant and be helpful, you build on the confidence and trust that will get you there.
Secret Source Marketing have developed the Source-In plan, which helps you to centre your marketing activity around your market and buyers, so you are more visible and have more likely to get on the shortlist. Find out more here