5 Low-Priced Branding Strategies For Your Small Business
It’s a huge surprise to me that small business owners create and execute strategies that make them remain just that- small businesses.
Branding is the only thing that will turn all your seemingly large efforts into profitable results. You think big-consumer brands care about making sales on Instagram or Twitter?
Nope.
They only show up to make great impressions through their branding and yeah, they’re trying to rub it in our faces. Why shouldn’t they? They are “BIG brands”
Now, what can YOU do to get you started on the journey to becoming a BIG BRAND?
1. Precisely Determine What Your Brand Identity Is
You need to decide who you want to be as an individual or as a business. Sit down and craft your value statements. Look at those things you value most in your business and let it show forth in your branding.
Your values are not what you’re aspiring to be. They are not what you think should be done in your business. Your values are those things that you already hold dear and are already practising.
This is not to say that you can’t begin to tweak the things you already value and chip in new ideas. For instance, if your values are Integrity and Professionalism, and you would love to start adding the speed of delivery to your processes, you can’t start to work in speed into your core values.
The thing is, it’s never too late to change what your values and principles may be. Just make sure that they shine through in your branding.
Also, be deliberate about the look and feel of your products, the packaging and delivery of your services, and your business operations as well, they all matter to your brand identity.
You need to take your time to get really care about who you are or who you want to be as a company. Let’s do a quick class activity.
- If you had to describe your brand in 3 words, what would they be?
- What do you want to be known for in the industry that you are at present?
- What difference do you want to make in your field?
Now use these questions to figure out how you want to be positioned as a big business brand that you are.
2. Go Over Your Visuals
I bet you’ve been posting content on social media and distributing other collateral as well, good.
Now you need to go back and get visual with your branding. Review your logo, does it give your business cue? For example, you run a drycleaning business, is your logo related to dry cleaning?
Although it’s not compulsory to have a logo that gives your business cue, except you are already a big brand, I strongly advise that you let your logo quickly tell the audience what your business is about for easy identification.
After you’ve done that, review your business cards and let it match your logo and other design assets. Also, don’t forget to choose your brand colours and stick with them throughout all your designs.
Choosing these items is not an easy task, that’s why I’ve written a post on Choosing The Right Colours For Your Brand, go check it out.
Now all of these items, gather them together and bind them in a ‘Brand Guide.’ Anytime you want to create and designs, refer to this brand guide, it will become your brand Bible from then on.
3. Build Your Credibility
I often hear when people say you need to separate your personal brand from your business brand. The only thing you should be separating in your business is your finances. You are your business brand.
What do I mean by that?
People will only purchase your offerings only if they know and trust you. We don’t like to buy from people we don’t know, especially when we are parting with a huge sum of money.
True, you can get customers who don’t know you at all and are complete strangers, from time to time. But that’s only because they’ve seen your content, from time to time.
You need to establish yourself as a subject matter expert so that you can do more business with more people. Content Marketing gives you the right opportunity to introduce yourself to your audience and remain top of mind to them.
Start creating highly valuable, good quality and extremely relevant content for your audience so that you can become a resource of knowledge and information for people who matter to your business.
When you have a well-defined niche, content creation won’t be a problem for you. Check out the post below on how to create a niche for your business brand.
Create blog posts, create content on social media often, write on Medium, answer questions on Quora as often as you can. Just make sure your content is valuable and helpful.
4. Leverage Free and Paid Tools/Resources
There are tons of online tools for you to create content, design your products and services and even learn all you need to know about your business.
I wrote a post on some mobile apps you should be using for your business, you should check it out here
If you want, you can download my ebook on 30 free resources to use in your business. It’s completely free.
Free resources are an Entrepreneur’s best friend. Running a business can be very challenging and it takes a lot to scale, so take advantage of all the free resources you can get your hands on.
5. Treat Your Customers Well
You see, the point of all these is to get customers to buy from you. But if you fail to treat your customers well, you would be wasting all your branding efforts.
Make customer service top priority in your business, value them and be their superhero. Listen to your audience, don’t always try to shove your products or services down their throat, but make sure it will help solve their problems.
Always look for ways to improve your customer experience. Customers are the lifeblood of your business.
But I must say this as well, don’t hesitate to move on if a said customer seems to be dragging you down. Customers are always right, but it’s the ones who are right for your business that is right!
Conclusion
One thing I haven’t mentioned is this, if you are hiring, hire the best people, but don’t always go out looking for the best. Train the ones who are trainable because you didn’t learn everything you know now in a single day.
It doesn’t matter how small of a small business you are, you need to start thinking big about your branding.
If you want to continue to get valuable tips from me on how to grow your business brand, you can join the tribe and let’s keep up.
