Small business branding tips are essential for developing visibility among your target audience. Whether you’re a brand new startup looking to make a name for yourself or have been around for a while, you need a solid digital marketing strategy to survive in today’s business world.
Did you know that nearly 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and 50% fail in the first five years? You must work hard to establish your online presence if you don’t want to be counted among that group. Consumers must know and trust your brand before they’ll buy from you.
But how do you gain visibility and build trust in your company? Keep reading for everything you need to know about how to brand your business and become recognizable.
1. Find Your Niche and Identify Your Target Market
First, you need to separate yourself from your competitors. It would help if you stood out from the crowd. What makes you unique in your industry? Do you have a specialty? Why are you better?
In most cases, you can corner a specific part of the market. For example, if you owned a small yarn/knitting business, you could cater specifically to moms with young children. You could sell knitting patterns and home-spun yarn explicitly designed for babies and toddlers. But ultimately, it would help if you pursued what you’re knowledgeable and passionate about.
2. Identify Your Goals
One of the essential branding tips is establishing your goals. How big do you want your business to be? How much money do you want to make in the first year? Where do you want to be in five years? Just as importantly, where do you want to find success? Are you looking to cater to a local community or the world? Is it essential to have a large social media following?
3. Spend Time Developing Your Brand Image
Imagery is vital in branding. This includes logo design, graphic design, slogans, color schemes, styles, and more. People on social media, your website, or some other shopping website should know your products/content when they see it. Developing a business brand is more than creating a recognizable logo and a catchy slogan. First, you must identify your purpose. What message do you want to convey to consumers about your company? Part of learning how to brand your business is figuring out how to relate to consumers. This can be done by telling your personal story about why you started your business. You can also make your business stand for something important, such as:
- Environmental concerns
- Animal rights
- Organic products and materials
- Women-run businesses
- Fairtrade
- Etc.
Decide what’s important to you and how it relates to consumers. Then, make your marketing message specific to that end.
3. Build a User-Friendly Website
Now you must create a user-friendly website to provide consumers with a digital storefront. Your website should also serve as an information hub with a blog full of helpful and engaging articles. Make sure it meets all the standards of user-friendliness, such as:
- Mobile Optimization
- Quick loading times
- Intuitive navigation
- And more
If you don’t have experience in website design, we highly recommend finding a professional web design agency to help you establish your online presence.
4. Establish a Strong SEO Strategy
Next, you must implement a search engine optimation strategy to ensure online users can find your website. SEO is the coding used by Google and other search engines to find relevant websites based on keyword searches. Roughly 88% of consumers research products online before they buy. When they search for information, products, or services in your industry, your SEO coding will determine whether or not they find your website. You can improve your website’s SEO by incorporating a blog full of relevant articles. It would help if you also used internal, external, and backlinks from other websites. Finally, please use images, videos, titles, and headers by embedding them with SEO metadata.
5. Use Social Media to Connect With Consumers
One of the most critical branding tips is learning to use social media marketing to increase consumer awareness. You can use organic social media marketing by publishing engaging content and encouraging your friends and followers to share your content. Paid social media marketing allows you to establish a daily marketing allowance. Based on that allowance, a certain number of people in your chosen target market will see your ad daily. You will also receive beneficial insight into your ad’s performance. For example, you can see how people reacted to your ads based on their engagement (link clicks, likes, shares, comments, and profile follows). Using this information, you can perfect your marketing approach.
6. Get Your Brand in Front of New Audiences
As a startup company, it’s essential to understand that establishing a solid online presence and brand awareness takes time. Therefore, one of the most practical small business tips is to pay for increased exposure. There are several options here. We already talked bout paid social media marketing. However, there are two other options worth mentioning – PPC and SEM. Search engine marketing (SEM) is similar to search engine optimization. It uses keywords to direct search engine traffic to your site. With SEM, however, you pay the search engine to bring your website up at the top of the results pages.
You can usually set a total SEM budget for the month. Then, you pay the search engine a predetermined amount each time a user clicks on your website. Once you meet your cap, your ad is deactivated, and you must rely on your organic SEO coding. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to post ads for your business on other websites. You pay the host for each click your ad receives; in return, you can access their audience base.
7. Publish Customer Reviews
Finally, one of the best branding tips is establishing your reputation through customer reviews and testimonials. When people research products, what they’re looking for is validation. They need to know they’re spending their money on a reliable product from a credible company. Customer feedback can help your business become trusted among your target audience. Provide incentives, like future discounts or small bonus products, to encourage people to post reviews.
Want More Branding Tips and Other Small Business Marketing Help?
We hope our branding tips help you boost your company’s visibility and reputation. However, we understand if you still feel lost. Small business marketing isn’t easy. If you know your business needs help, we’re here for you. Our marketing agency prides itself on creating custom marketing strategies by addressing the specific needs of our clients. We don’t believe in a cookie-cutter approach because one size does not fit all.
Take a complete look at our services, or contact us today if you have any questions. We look forward to working with you!