In your ongoing quest to keep ahead of your competitors you need to be constantly conscious of your visibility to your customers. In this case “visibility” refers to your customers’ awareness of your strengths and capabilities. Most likely there are customers that are in need of your service, but are unaware of how well you can meet their needs in areas of quality, cost and responsiveness. It is your challenge to provide them with reminders and incentives to contact you.

In this article you’ll find five ways to immediately increase your visibility. Implementing one or all of these strategies could be the key to your ongoing success.

Use a Targeted Direct Mail Campaign

Instead of blanketing an area with postcards or brochures, define a specific need for a targeted customer type and develop a short campaign aimed at that solution. Utilizing a smaller scale campaign allows you to be more specific in your mailer. This also makes it easier to contact recipients of the mailer, initiating your sales effort. This is especially valuable because follow up calls can increase the success of a campaign by 10 times or more.

Start a Newsletter

Email newsletters are an efficient means of promoting your offerings using the most accepted medium in the business world today. It allows you to provide unique and informative articles and offers to existing and potential customers in a manner and time convenient to them.

Today’s email marketing systems make the tasks associated with this type of campaign easy and affordable, while providing valuable data through campaign reports. Analysis of which articles are generating the most interest can help you focus on the solutions most needed by your customers.

Contact Existing Customers

Everyone is focused on finding new customers, for obvious reasons. But what can be easier than selling to someone that already knows the level of service they can expect from your company? Even better is the fact that you already know them: their specific needs; their unique way of doing business; what they like and why. If only you had that much of a head start with all customers.

Connecting with those you’ve worked with in the past is an easy way to learn about new challenges in their business, initiate discussions on your new service offerings, and reinforce the message that their business is important to you.

Upgrade Your Online Presence

You’ve got a website and it provides the buying public with information on your services, pertinent contact information, maybe even employment opportunities, but you still may not be utilizing this medium to its full potential. Enhancing your website to establish your company as a specialized resource in your industry can be as simple as installing blog software and committing to building an archive of posts. Comment functionality makes it convenient to carry on a dialog with website visitors (also known as potential customers).

As more and more people turn to the Internet as their initial source for information, you can become part of the answer by participating in relevant discussions on forums. Taking time to research the available venues and establish a reputation can provide unlimited gains to you and your company.

Become a Guest Speaker/Guest Author

Being an expert in your field has its advantages. One of them is the fact that people want to do business with someone that really knows the ins and out of their industry. By becoming a guest speaker at a conference or business function you can demonstrate your depth of knowledge and introduce your services and skill set to a new and interested audience.

Contact your Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club or public library and volunteer to share your experience and opinions. Many organizations offer seminars on a regular basis and are always on the lookout for a fresh face.

Making yourself available to answer specific questions after your appearance is a golden opportunity to learn about a customer’s wants, issues and needs. It doesn’t get any easier to get your foot in the door with a new account.

Don’t feel that you are limited to personal appearances. Newspapers, industry journals and established blogs are often looking for guest authors to bring a fresh voice to their publication. Prepare a sample of your writing and submit it along with your professional credentials to a publication that matches your area of expertise.