Ms Penn said that if a large number of people are aware of a business but it is failing to “resonate with the target market”, then this could be related to the way in which the business is presented online, on the website of the business and elsewhere.

“If your business brand doesn’t look professional and trustworthy, [then] you need to do something about it,” she said.

“Where that’ll come out is crappy photos on LinkedIn, website not being up to scratch or the marketing of the business just looking a bit third rate – like you’ve done it on the cheap.”

Ms Penn said that in most cases this is because the business has done their marketing cheaply.

Business websites should be clean, neat and decent and should not include news that is out of date, she said.

“People come to your website for two reasons: one, because someone referred them to you and they want to check out who you are and see if you’ve got two heads, and secondly, they’ve got a problem and they’re Googling it and you’ve come up, which means they’re right in the consideration phase,” she said.

“When they come to your website it needs to tell them you can solve the problem for them and hopefully push them along to get in contact with you so you can close the sale.”

Higher-end firms can also have deficiencies at the other end of the scale, appearing “too high end” and out of reach for clients.

“If you have a business like that, then you need to go and find the clients you want and introduce yourself to them – that’s how you do that if that’s the issue,” she said.

“You do not dumb down your brand because all you end up doing is annoying your existing customers.”

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