5 Cost-Effective Ways to Turn Your Business into a Brand

There are numerous benefits to having a well-branded business but it’s tricky to turn your business into a brand and even trickier to keep that brand consistent. The online environment created a lot of novelty when it comes to the way modern businesses approach branding but, contrary to popular belief, it didn’t make traditional branding inconsequential.

Most new businesses have a limited budget that they can allocate to their branding efforts. We’re going to discuss some approaches that businesses utilize to solidify their branding efforts without having to break their budget limits in the process.

1. Blogging

We have to start with blogging since it can do so much for a brand with so little invested. Having a blog that dishes out content on a regular basis provides a business with material to engage with their audience, provide value to their audience (if the content is good quality), raise their ranking in relevant SERPs, establish a voice for their brand and much more.

All you need to have in order to start a business blog is have a website, which is pretty standard for businesses these days, and somebody on your team who has a knack for writing. Sure, it takes quite a bit of research to get a grasp on blogging but it takes very little investment to get things up and running.

2. Social media

Depending on your branding goals and style you may decide to opt for one particular social media network or more than one. Social media networks most commonly used for business purposes are:

• Facebook

• YouTube

• Instagram

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Pinterest

They all have their own particular flavor but they all allow you to network, address and engage with your desired audience. Once you’ve established your brand identity and your goals you can decide which one of these will help you solidify that brand and reach those goals.

You can do so through natural growth, paid social media ads or a combination of the two. The fact that maintaining a brand page doesn’t cost anything and paid ads usually start at $50 so even starting an initial paid campaign shouldn’t drain your budget.

3. Office branding

We’ve mentioned that real-world branding hasn’t lost its effectiveness and we’re going to explain why.

All successful brands ensure that their customers know they have entered one of their facilities from the moment they come through the door. This may be achieved through a combination of approaches like painting the business space in brand colors, displaying the brand logo in a very visible space, uniformed staff, branded folder binders, and other stationery, etc.

This makes their customers feel like they’ve entered a different domain and they know what to expect from the domain this brand offers. While this may not seem like a very cost effective approach, if done from the very beginning, the difference in investment is minuscule.

You are going to paint your office, get a logo, office stationery, and the only difference would be your mindset when doing these things – focusing on branding.

4. Newsletters

This approach to branding has been around for a long while and its effectiveness is undisputed.

These days there is a lot of buzz around email newsletters due to the fact that the costs of running this kind of campaign are much lower and the results are more immediate. It takes some time to build up a base of subscribers and the costs boil down to creating the newsletter design and whatever you may be paying for your newsletter mailing software.  

Still, traditional newsletters and pamphlets have their merits too. First of all, not everyone pays attention to their emails enough for you to be able to engage them properly through that channel. Depending on your target audience you might want to make an effort to reach them directly.

5. Testimonials & referrals

Through very modest investments you can easily motivate your already loyal customers to leave you testimonials and provide you with referrals. New customers tend to view other customers’ experiences with your brand as more reliable sources of information.

Giving discounts and creating loyalty programs are just a couple of ways you can motivate people to promote your brand.

Testimonials can be used to promote your brand in any environment. You can choose to display them in your ads, your office space, on your website, social media or wherever else. Just make sure that they are legitimate and honest.

Referrals are a bit more direct and create solid leads for you but they are also harder to get. Naturally, rewards for consistent referrals need to be more substantial. You are basically creating brand ambassadors that are not on your payroll and there should be worthwhile rewards for them generating referrals for you, especially if they do so consistently.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that consistency is the biggest ally to your branding. We don’t just mean in your branding efforts but also in the service and products you provide. Everything you do in service of branding fall through if you fail to match your brand’s identity in your business interactions.