When you’ve just started a business, it’s easy to worry about how your work appears to clients and potential customers. The following will explore a few things you can do to help your business appear more professional.
Branded Design
Working with a professional graphic designer is a must when it comes to branded design. Sit down with a professional and get your logo, colors, and graphic elements sorted out. This stage is critical if you want your business to feel fresh and relevant. Graphic design trends change rapidly, which means that you might need to revisit this step every few years at the minimum. It’s also important to avoid anything too trendy so that you don’t accidentally date yourself. Classic and minimal tend to be better for longevity.
Branded Offerings
No matter your business, there’s a pretty decent chance clients will have regular huan needs while interacting with you. Things like water bottles with your logo on them, branded paper and pens, or even tissue packages can add polished professionalism to your client experience. If you’re not sure how to find branded versions of everyday items, you can find out more at alexasprings.com. Be sure to keep accurate records of purchases of this kind and when things run out so you can properly budget for future repurchases of branded items.
Get Your Digital Space Organized
Nowadays, a website is critical for establishing yourself as a legitimate business. Websites need to be highly-functional, aesthetically pleasing, and clear from clutter. Optimize images on your website for quick load times and standard screen sizes. If you need to, work with a professional web developer to help you get a clean and user-friendly website up and running. Your site should immediately answer all the basic questions a potential customer might have.
You should have your elevator pitch in big text on the first page. An elevator pitch is a single sentence (or, at the most, two sentences) that makes your work and brand clear. Consider using a formula along the lines of:
- We are ____, and we help ___ do ___ so that they can ___.
Immediately people need to know what your business is and how your work can benefit them. You also want an About Us page detailing your brand story and a Contact Information page. A Frequently Asked Questions page can also help potential customers.
Communications Training
Give all of your staff communications training. Communications training saves you a ton of time and money because there’s less chance of mistakes occurring. For example, if all your staff know to reiterate meetings and email chains with something like To confirm, you need that data from me by Wednesday and the photographs by Thursday? or I need the forms from you by Monday if I am going to be able to get you that data by Wednesday. Is that doable? miscommunication and delays are far less likely.
Beyond this, if staff know how to phrase things when dealing with customers, your whole business can appear more polished. Consider teaching effective rephrasing like:
- Instead of: “Sorry,” say “Thanks for flagging or Good catch, I’ll address that.”
- Instead of: “Customer,” say “Client.”
- Instead of: “Price or cost,” say “Investment.”
- Instead of: “Price sheet,” say “Price menu.”
Find professional ways to communicate best in the workplace and share these techniques with your staff to make interactions clear, concise, and on-brand.
Professional Email Addresses
Everyone within your company emailing clients should have a work email address. A typical structure is employeesname@yourbusiness.com.
Invoice Promptly
70% of freelancers have a client who has not paid. Payment delays or absences are a problem facing many new businesses or growing businesses, but you can avoid them. You should have a contract presented to clients once a deal is made (with a deposit if needed), and then you should invoice promptly upon completion of a project. There are tons of online options that can help you craft invoices quickly. Remember to always keep a copy for yourself.
Establish A Social Media Presence
Whether or not social media will continue to provide long-term sales still isn’t clear; many analysts are under the impression social media marketing is a bubble that will burst one day soon. This being said, what social media can be utterly fantastic for is establishing you as a legitimate and authentic business. Having a solid following on a social media platform tells potential clients that you’re trustworthy and professional. An amateur or recently-opened business won’t have many followers, but an account with many followers indicates that you’ve been in business for a while.
The above list should have given you a few ideas of how you can communicate your professionalism and expertise to potential clients. It can take a while to build a stable brand, but every interaction brings you closer or pushes you further from your business goals, and this means each point of contact between your work and your client base is important.