The Green Sheet Online Edition
February 2, 2025 • 25:02:01
Position your business for success in 2025, Part 2
The digital age has changed the game for ISOs and merchant level salespeople (MLSs). At a time of anywhere, everywhere commerce, we must be anywhere, everywhere ISOs and MLSs. We need more than a big shiny headquarters to attract new customers and partners; we need to cultivate a strong online presence.
This series explores the assets you need to be discoverable on the internet and social and digital channels. Part 1 provided a basic checklist and Part 2 will take a deeper dive into each of these building blocks.
Brand voice
Brand voice is the most important component of brand positioning and needs to be clear, concise and consistent. Above all, make it reflect your personality and key differentiators. Avoid writing in third person about yourself or your company on your personal LinkedIn profile, company page or other social media sites. Speak directly to your target audience.
Photography
Your image is important for your company and personal profile. Resist the urge to use a smartphone selfie on your profile page; invest in a professional headshot. Regional shows offer this service to attendees, and third-party service providers offer competitively priced packages.
Consider hiring a professional photographer for interior and exterior shots of your corporate headquarters and candid interactions from professional events.
Brand image
Decide on one logo and have a graphic designer set up a branding package of logos with high-resolution images in different sizes and backgrounds. Have a short, compelling tagline for your business that reflects its purpose, and make sure you’re happy with the logo and brand colors because rebranding is expensive.
Make sure when you choose a business, website domain name and social media handles that all are available and there are no national trademarks that could get you into legal issues. Have a professional business card; you may not hand out many, but when you do, it should not be a cheap card.
If you’d prefer to have an electronic card, you could use a service like Linktree, and when someone gives you one of these, make sure you mark it as a lead to avoid losing the contact.
Brand presence
Have an email address that reflects your professional domain and not a generic email server like Gmail or Yahoo. Pay for your website domain and set up at minimum a landing page with a short bio and information about the services you provide.
A basic website has About Us, Services, sections as well as links to your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites. Include a picture of yourself, and instead of just using your ISO’s name, position yourself as a solutions provider and consultant.
Once you establish the basic website, you can add pages and a blog with fresh content on a regular basis for search engine optimization (SEO). It’s also important to post frequently on social media; you can use Canva or hire someone to post for you once or twice a week.
If you’re not great at posting, share articles of interest with other professionals in your network two or three times a week. Don’t set up pages if you don’t plan to post, because they will just get buried or removed by these platforms.
Make sure that you’re discoverable on major search engines and featured on “Google my business page.” If you’re home-based, just put your city and state.
A monthly newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with your customers; you can send these out in email blasts and post on your social media.
Make a difference
If you are making a decent residual income, invest in your business. It will pay off in the long run. A few decades after the Yellow Pages changed the game by letting our fingers do the walking, the internet changed the game all over again by letting our fingers walk online.
We’ve come a long way from the early days of having an internet address. The digital world is moving fast. Don’t be the MLS who gets left behind. Invest in yourself and your company, and leverage all the available tools and digital channels to promote your payments brand.
Want to know more? Keep reading The Green Sheet and consider following me on LinkedIn, where we can share ideas and support each other. 
Allen Kopelman, a serial entrepreneur, is co-founder and CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems Inc. and host of B2B Vault: The Biz to Biz podcast. Email him at allen@npsbank.com and connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenkopelman/ and Twitter @AllenKopelman.
Whether you want to upgrade your POS offerings, find a payment gateway partner, bone up on fintech regs or PCI requirements, find an upcoming trade show, read about faster payments, or discover the latest innovations in merchant acquiring, The Green Sheet is the resource for you. Since 1983, we've helped empower and connect payments professionals, starting with the merchant level salespeople who bring tailored payment acceptance and digital commerce tools, along with a host of other business services to merchants across the globe. The Green Sheet Inc. is also a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals.
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