Many of us trust a big company to meet our needs. As a small startup, it can often be hard to compete with these bigger and more credible companies. The best way to get around this is to convince your prospective clients that you are big. This shouldn’t be done through barefaced lying (telling people you’ve worked with hundreds of clients could damage you if the truth comes out). However, there are ways to suggest to clients that you’re bigger than you are. Here are some of those methods.
Invest in some SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way of boosting your rankings on search engines such as Google. As a rule, big companies can generally be found on the first page of most search engines. Paying an SEO company may get your company up there with these big businesses and persuade people that your company is bigger than it is. Few people will trust a company on page 10 of Google. Most people may not even search through the pages that far.
Boost Your Social Media Following
Having only a few followers on Facebook and Twitter make you out to be a small company. Make sure to invite all your friends and family to follow you on all social media platforms. After doing this, it may then benefit to pay money for a few extra followers. There are many sites that have cheap followers for sale. You can also use Facebook’s feature of promoting your page, which will hopefully get you a few more followers.
Embrace Online Reviews
Hiding from reviews could be doing more damage than good to your business. Whilst you may be afraid of negative feedback, having some feedback shows that you’ve had previous clients and are an experienced company. Persuade every good client you’ve worked with to leave a testimonial which you can put on your site. You can also persuade them to write a review on sites such as Trip Advisor and Yelp.
Change Your Address
If you work from home and need to receive business mail from clients, your address may be a giveaway that you’re not a big company. If anything, you may not want clients knowing your personal address. Outsourcing a virtual address can be a good solution to this. There are special courier businesses in prime city locations that will receive your mail for you and then reroute it to your actual address. By having a city address, people may think that you’re a much bigger company.
Outsource A Secretary
If you run a solo business but don’t want people to catch onto this when they ring up, you could outsource a secretary to take calls for you. Such services are useful for both offering an official telephone service and separating important calls from sales calls and general inquiries. This may allow you to get more done without having to constantly answer the phone, allowing you to only deal with calls that are necessary.