Small Business Brand Bootcamp: Milestone #3 – How to Build Your Brand on a Budget?

If you’ve been reading our small business brand bootcamp series, then you’ve made it through learning how to brand your business and how to make it uniquely yours so that customers are able to find you in a sea of your competitors.

And while it’s great to be able to build your brand, what if you’re on a budget? Small businesses struggle to find the finances to keep everything afloat without having to worry about building a budget for marketing. But you don’t need a huge budget to get your brand out to your potential and current customers; some of the easiest ways to market your brand can come from the simplest of ways.

“Free” publicity is key

Free publicity is good publicity, mostly depending on the publicity that you’re seeking. But just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the perks of getting the word out about your brand, your products, and your services. You can still market yourself with radio and TV ads – those are still popular ways of getting your brand out to your local targets - but these can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

There are many free ways in which you can promote your brand without having to spend a dime. A few ways to achieve include –

• Content
• Social media
• Business cards
• Email signatures
• Your current network
• Give out free stuff

Content

Marketing yourself and your business as an expert in your field is important; it gets people to trust that you know what you’re talking about and what your business is doing. The best way to do this, besides ensuring that you’re delivering the best service to your customers, is to provide content. Content comes in many forms, but the most popular would be blogs or articles from your website or content that you post on your social platforms.

Social Media

Social media has become a huge success, not only for connecting people with friends and family, but fans with celebrities, and even businesses to customers. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pintrest, and others are perfect places to market your brands to your customers, new and current; all of these are free and allow for businesses to purchase ad spaces for reasonably low prices.

The benefits to social media are many, but overall, you can reach more of an audience that are likely to buy your product. If you do want to throw some money at being a promoted listing, the costs are relatively low compared with radio and TV ads; leads are better ascertained with social media, allowing for you to target that audience better than you could with just a radio or TV ad.

Business cards

Most businesses will have their own business cards and that’s a perfect way to build your brand. How? By using the under used back of the card to supply your branding message. While many will have their business name, address, and other information on the front of the card, using the blank back side is the perfect opportunity to put your logo or even a short blurb about your business.

It's also a perfect way to make your brand stand out against the tide of competitors – people will remember your unique business card versus the other guys.

Email signatures

Email is still the king of communication, especially in business interactions. What better way of getting out your brand message and name than sending out daily emails? The email signature is a popular way of signing off on a message and depending on how many people you send emails to, your message could be seen by a number of recipients.

Email signatures will usually have your name, your title, your company’s address, your office number, etc. Make sure to include your website or any social media platforms you’re using; there are several different email signature apps that can help with that, such as WiseStamp, which allow you to create custom email signatures.

Remember that if you include an image, it may not be displayed, depending on the recipient’s email settings.

Your Current Network

Current customers or even family and friends can give the best kind of endorsement. Current customers can be great resources, especially if they have been with the business from the beginning.

Testimonials

Happy customers enjoy saying good things about a business they interact with, especially if that business went above and beyond to provide service and support. More often than not, you may hear more about a customer’s bad experience than their good experience, but this can work in your favor as well.

The way a company addresses a customer’s bad experience can lead to not only keeping that customer, but showing them that your brand cares to make sure anything unpleasant is met with a quick turnaround of making it right. Customers who feel that your brand supports customers, during both good and bad experiences, are more likely to tell others about their experience.

Give out free stuff

No, I don’t mean give out all of your merchandize for free, but nothing gets the word out about a business better than that business giving their customers things for free. It doesn’t have to be anything big – a free t-shirt, free keychain, free pen – but it should be something that has your brand on it.

Think of how banks get people to sign up – Chase, for instance, gives all of their new checking account customers $25 to start their new account. Just for signing up. Others may give out free t-shirts if you sign up during a promotion; restaurants will routinely do special offers or coupons. McDonald’s annual Monopoly game gives out free food along with prizes to luck winners.

Putting it All Together

It goes without saying that promoting your brand, while doing so freely, isn’t just a one-time thing nor should you just concentrate on one aspect of promoting your brand. With the free branding ideas listed, you’ll need to put in the time to promote, however things such as your business cards or email will only take a short amount of time to set up before you can use them.

When taken all together, however, you’ll be able to utilize all of these aspects at the same time to generate more focus on your brand. If after that, you decide - or have the budget - to go a costlier route, you’ll also have avenues open to do, while still also maintaining your free opportunities.

Read our Bbrand Bootcamp Series:

Brand Bootcamp: Crossing Milestone #1 – Showcasing Your Uniqueness

Brand Bootcamp: Crossing Milestone #2 – Differentiating from Your Competition