If you own a small business, you might think that branding is best left to big brands like Apple or Google.

But the truth is, no matter how big or small your company is, you have to think about branding. Of course, bigger companies have bigger budgets to spend on branding.

But here’s the thing: You do not need to have a budget as large as Apple to create a highly efficient branding strategy from the ground up.

There are plenty of things that you can do to make your business stand out, grab your customer’s attention, and make it memorable without blowing your budget.

Now, we will look at the nine branding strategies that will make your small business branding easy.

Start by defining your brand

Branding is more than just the logo that you place on your site. It is who you are as a company, how you treat clients, your values, and mission.

So, before you can move on to more tactical steps like creating your brand logo, do take your time to be clear on who you are as a company. In other words, you need to start defining your brand.

The brand character that you build should promote your business, connect with your existing customer base, and differentiate you from the rest of your competitors.

So, it is high time to review what are the kinds of products and services that you offer. Identify the space in the market that it occupies, and dig deep to the needs and concerns of your customers.

Find your brand’s tone of voice

Having a consistent tone of voice will help reinforce your business’ character to customers. It clarifies what you are offering to them so that they know what to expect with your product or service.

Remember that what you say is important, so do not overlook how you say it. Your company’s tone of voice is the language and personality that you and your team will use to deliver your brand message to reach your customers.

Remember that the most successful brands speak with a unique voice.

Think about all the brands that you look up to. How do they communicate with your customers, and what makes them unique? What’s the thing that you like most about their voice?

Figure out your target customers

The most common mistake a lot of small businesses make is to focus so much on the kind of products and services that they want to deliver, yet they fail entirely to figure out who they are trying to sell their products and services to. As a result, their branding suffers.

You have to take the time to know who is your ideal customer. Who are they? What matters most to them? What’s their predominant demographic? How old are they, and what’s their average income and education? What are they looking for in a company? When are they using your products and services, and why do they need it?

By knowing who your target market is, it serves as a guide in your branding strategy. The result is a brand that your audience will truly want to work with.

Develop buyer personas

As a brand, if you do not know who you are talking to in the first place, you will have a problem reaching your target audience.

Building buyer personas help bring those individuals to life, as you figure out a way how you can market your products and services to them.

At its core, a buyer persona is just a description of a customer that you are trying to reach. You can give that persona a name, and think of features that matches that specific persona. That way, when you do your marketing, you already have that “person” in mind, helping you address your message more specifically.

Create the look and feel of your brand

Once you have clearly defined who you are, your target customers, and what is working well for your brand, the next thing that you need is to create the look and feel of your brand.

Here are some things that you will need to create:

• A brand style guide: A brand style guide is an excellent way to organize your design details. Start figuring out the details such as your brand’s color palette, design dos, and don’ts, and so on.
• Logo: Your logo will serve as the face of your brand, and will serve as a jump-off point to other visuals on your site, such as your website and business cards.
• Business cards: Ideally, your business cards should match your design assets and logo.
• A website: when people visit your site, the look and feel should be consistent with the overall branding.

Build your social media presence

After you already have a defined brand strategy, the next step is to start connecting with your customers on social media.

Pick the social platforms that you know most of your audience is active on, then make sure that it is bringing a lot of high-quality leads for your company.

Create a consistency of communication with your audience, whether it is formal or informal, slang, or not.

The same way goes with your images, whether you prioritize something fun, serious, high-quality, relevant, and so on.

Stay true to your brand with every comment, like, or post.

Reward customer loyalty

As a brand, you should be doing everything to promote customer loyalty.

Sales are crucial to your business and are a driver of growth, and yet a lot of businesses forget the bread and butter of their income ? their existing customers.

Offering customer loyalty programs not only provide companies with various benefits, but it also becomes an expected part of the customer experience. This marketing approach provides rewards to customers who engage and purchase from a brand repeatedly. This ensures that customers stay loyal to your brand.

Add emotions to your message

As a brand, you need to establish an emotional connection with your customers.

Here’s how you can build an emotional connection with your audience:

• Think of the emotion that you want to evoke in your message. Is it freedom, pleasure, status, security, health, etc.?
• Use the right words that help stir up the emotion.
  • Freedom: Career, wealth, travel
  • Health: Participate, be active
  • Safety: Protect your family, loved ones
  • Status: Achievement, exclusivity
• Craft your message according to your audience.
• Use the right images to trigger these emotions.

Ask for customer feedback

When running a business, you have to do your best in satisfying your customer’s needs, please them, and make them stay loyal to your brand.

The most important driver of your business is customer feedback. If you do not take the time to find out what your clients think about your service, you will not be able to give them the best customer service.

These opinions are helpful so that you can adjust your business to fit these needs more accurately.

Over to You

When it comes to branding your business effectively, you do not need to spend a large sum. All you need is a little bit of creativity and follow these tips. Now, it is time to go out there and start branding!

 

About the Author – Kevin Urrutia is the founder of Voy Media, a Facebook Advertising Agency based in New York. He aids businesses in effectively improving sales and conversion through the effective utilization of Facebook advertising. Voy Media is an expert in determining the best approach, coming up with a unique solution for each client.

“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful”, says Jeff Bezos of Amazon Inc.

Well, it is very true for all types of businesses to ensure that the customer base they are serving is successful in satisfying them by fulfilling their requirement and expectations. Such customers are the assets for the company as they are your partner for your success story. Even a survey shows that only those businesses have been able to prosper, which have kept continuously customer feedback their basis of improvement. Irrespective of the type of business, the owner needs to ensure that they can meet what has been expected.

A Glimpse on what the Data Say

The improvements that a company does on the ground of reaching out to the maximum consumers are based on sample study and analysis. According to a sample study, the following can be concluded when it comes to framing effective customer review strategy.

The study shows that approximately 3/4^th of the consumers go for a product that has better customer review.

Approximately 90% of the first time buyers read out the customer review while locking their choice with some local brand.

Approximately 75% of the instances recorded show that people trust those businesses that have positive customer review.

Approximately 90% of buyers believe in online reviews rather than personal feedback or recommendation.

A company or a brand hit more businesses by approximately 30% is the products or the services being opted to have a positive review.

Reviews Can Make or Break a Brand. How?

Believe it or not, in this era of digital marketing where online sale and purchase contribute to a considerable share of the revenue for the companies, reviews stand out to be the flag bearer. A positive review means that the services and products being offered are of optimum quality. Not only this, the company has a positive attitude towards resolving the issues (if any) and has a strong customer care system.

For example, a person ordering a product ‘Y’ from a company situated far east while sitting in the westernmost corner of the country would only rely on customer feedback.

According to the head of a leading eCommerce company, the following can be the effective ways to streamline the customer review strategy and the consequences, thereof—

Judicious Use of True Customer Reviews

Using the unedited reviews from the consumers positively impact the mindset of the buyers. Therefore, the sellers should always look out to leverage the best reviews in its raw version. In addition to this, the placement of such reviews on the website also plays a crucial role.

According to the experts, putting such reviews with the person’s name and photograph is going to bestow more trust credibility and genuineness. Another way is to dedicate a separate section to the Testimonials.

Responding to the Reviews Instantly

Never leave your buyers wondering and helpless after they purchase from you. Make sure you care about their thought- no matter whether it is positive or negative.

Well, responding to the reviews instantly helps put a positive impression on the present as well as prospective consumers. It is often seen that if the consumers were made to feel ‘good’, they would always try to indulge in a long-term relationship and can be a genuine, all-time consumer/buyer.

Making the Platform Easy to Respond to the Buyers

The general fundamental of the customer review strategy never makes the consumers beat around the bush in either searching for the product or allowing them to review. An easy to reach interface will always ensure that the consumers will quickly get in touch with the products or the service provider. In addition to this, a consumer must never feel exhausted while filling up the review form. Therefore, the pro-forma of the review should be kept simple.

Sharing the Reviews on Social Media Platform

The businesses are making great use of the digital platform. Therefore, such platforms can also be used to spread the message of trustworthiness, credibility, and genuineness about the services or products. Apart from this, this will also serve as a base for improving customer engagement through sharing, likes, and commenting.

Apart from social media, e-mails can also be used as a useful marketing tool. Sending promotional emails with the review is going to add a cherry on the top of the cake, and the effort of the service provider would always be a cakewalk.

Conclusion

Reaching out to the consumers with the USP of the business would never mean that you are going to dig a hole in the pocket of the prospective consumers. What is needed in order to promote brand and business is to ensure that customer reviews are positively incorporated during the effective marketing strategy.

Bio:

Jason Xu is a feature writer at https://www.randomstuffido.com. He specializes in health, business, entrepreneurship, technology and social media trends.

Public relations and reputation management tend to evoke the image of companies struggling to react in a crisis. But the truth is, properly managing your public image and reputation as an entrepreneur is an effort that should start long before problems arise. In fact, proper reputation management is something that should be proactively developed as it can yield many positive benefits to a company besides simply helping with damage control.

Taking Your Reputation Online

Once upon a time, the reputation of an average business and its owner depended on a pleasant smile, a firm handshake, and a good customer experience in a brick-and-mortar store. In the modern day, though, this is less likely to be the case.

While physical locations still exist for many companies and the experiences they provide are still important, one of the most crucial ways for modern entrepreneurs to protect the reputation of both their brand and themselves is to cultivate a positive, impactful online presence.

It doesn’t matter if you’re operating a restaurant in the heart of a city center or selling socks on your website; you need to make sure that your online reputation is sterling. With that said, here are several different ways for entrepreneurs to address their online standing and make sure that their influence remains untarnished.

Be Consistent in Your Message

No matter where or when you are in history, human nature is the same. People want to see things like consistency and dependability when they interact with a business leader. They want to know what to expect.

That’s why it’s critical that you project a consistent image of your own thoughts, messages, and values, as well as your company’s goals. If an entrepreneur and their company send inconsistent messages, it can undermine any trust that they may have built with the public. This doesn’t just apply to external communications, either. Even internal communications and interdepartmental strategies and efforts should point towards common, understood goals in order to avoid communicating mixed and confusing information.

Be a Value Leader

Successful businesses typically have a serious commitment to a set of clearly defined best practices and a code of ethics. Proper best practices and business ethics are imbued into the very fabric of a company. Everything from mission statements to employee training, leadership memos, and public communications should practice integrity, demonstrate trust, and exude honor.

If your business is properly established as a value leader, it shouldn’t be something that is only publicly seen through thinly veiled PR announcements and initiatives. It should ooze out of every bit of marketing and every interaction with the public.

Be a Networking Force

Cultivating a good image through consistent networking is another excellent way to increase your entrepreneurial clout. The positive recognition that comes from rubbing elbows with your industry peers can build your reputation all on its own. It’s also something that benefits more than just business professionals these days.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer, a medical professional, or anyone in between, everyone can benefit from a properly managed social media image. Taking the time to fully fill out profiles on popular professional social sites like LinkedIn and Glass Door is a critical first step. From there, you can engage with the thought leaders and peers in your own and other related fields of business in order to continue to build and manage your online reputation.

Perfect That Online Presence

Of course, social media networking is just a piece of the online puzzle. It’s also important to make sure that you have a smooth, user-centric design for your company’s website and any customer-facing software. Remember, your site is your online hub — the place where all of the “spokes” of your marketing and reputation efforts will point to. Make sure that it’s a place that reinforces your message, allows your customers to easily contact and interact with your brand, and generally keeps their experiences positive.

Practice Active Listening

The concept of active listening is just as crucial online as it is in person. If you want to establish credibility and trust with consumers and clients online, you need to make sure that they feel valued and heard.

This can be done by quickly and politely responding to all of the reviews in places like your My Google Business listing. If your business has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites, make sure to utilize those as virtual customer service centers as well. Respond and interact with customers. Make sure to show that you genuinely care about their needs and concerns.

Always Watch and Be Ready to Grow

Finally, it can be helpful to set up tools to watch for online activity that may relate to yourself or your brand. Things like Google Alerts, Addictomatic, and Keotag can help you stay up to date on your online presence, receive notifications when you or your brand are mentioned, and allow you to quickly address any feedback or responses.

Tools aside, it’s critical to also keep an open mind when it comes to fostering and managing your reputation online over the long haul. The rules and fads of the internet change on a regular basis. Therefore it can be extremely beneficial to stay abreast of the best ways to monitor your online presence. This enables you to make sure that the reputation of both you and your company remain as intact, valued, and authoritative as possible.

As consumption of advertising changes, so do people’s attitudes to content and the brands that produce it. People are less likely to swallow the fantasies that brands once marketed themselves with. Today transparency and authenticity have never been more appealing.

Self-reflective marketing is when a brand drops the pretention and promises to create campaigns and content that actually represent reality. The brands who do it well tend to do so with humour and a grain of salt.

Laughing at the expensive

New platforms like social media are flourishing, with luxury brands using them to showcase themselves. Meanwhile, your digital agency , advertising and  are getting some adventurous briefs. Whether they’re selling window cleaner or mountain bikes, being funny is something every brand and their dog are trying to cash in on. Not everyone get it’s right. But it’s safe to say that making yourself the butt of your own joke has a decent success rate.

Luxury brands known for regurgitating ridiculous clichés are finally starting to change their tactics. They’re taking themselves a little less seriously and looking to have fun with their audience. By rethinking their approach to themselves, luxury brands are getting meta in their marketing and using a digital frame to do so.

Punching up

For a long time now, luxury brand advertisements have been parodied by others to make a point. In 2006, Australian Lamb (known for their often controversial sense of humour) aired their “Lâmb: The Fragrance for Women” spot. In time for Mother’s Day, the ad poked fun of the perfume industry’s over-the-top self-aggrandisement.

More recently and in similar fashion, Hyundai went beyond perfume to take jabs at luxury brands more broadly. Using the tagline, “Feel the Feeling” Hyundai launched their N Class high performance model with a series of bizarre ads. One spot features a bathing man being sonically transformed into a horse through N brand headphones, whilst another presents the idea of an N cologne with the scent “L’eau de Burnt Rubber”. Hyundai dubbed the positioning as “ironic premium”.

Turning the tables

Interestingly, it seems that ironic premium has been appropriated by the very people the label makes fun of. Rather than calling on brand development services  to rebrand and try to change consumer perceptions, luxury brands are embracing stereotypes with humour and self-awareness. Meanwhile they’re using the digital space to get their message to a modern audience that not only appreciates a laugh, but wants to get it digitally.

High-fashion brands like Gucci and Balenciaga have been particularly successful at doing this. Last year, Balenciaga presented a series of images featuring their latest range in paparazzi-style situations. They filled their Instagram with celebrities covering their faces with branded bags, walking evasively in glamorous outfits. In this way, Balenciaga made light of their brand perception through self-deprecation. It makes us long for the accessories, not the life it might take to own one.

By contrast, there’s another luxury brand who turned the digital angle on its head using witty self-awareness. Rather than claiming to offer the latest and greatest, high-end hotel brand Kimpton did the exact opposite. Taking shots at futuristic technology like AI, they present the fact that they’re fully human operated as what sets them apart. They call it “The Kimpton O.S.” and the result is hilarious. Because why would you ask Siri for help when you can ask a real person?

These are just a few examples of how the digital realm has been used by luxury brands to create self-reflective campaigns. But they prove just how effective the move can be. As technology, rules and trends change, expect to see more manifestations of this entertaining line of thinking.

Author Bio:

Henry Richards is the senior copywriter and content specialist at brand design agency Sydney, uberbrand. With fluid style and witty turns of phrase, he demonstrated an intuitive understanding of the power of language which helps him nail TOV in copywriting. Written words are his second love, after Jasmine from Aladdin.

If you would look for a definition of the word brand in some dictionary, you would probably find the answer that a brand is one company’s identity. The way it’s perceived by its customers and competition. It should be obvious that changing this identity or building it from the ground up takes a lot of time and effort. But is this reserved only for the juggernauts like McDonalds or Apple? No, your company is developing its brand by its very existence. Here are a couple of tips that should help you do that properly.

Decide how you want to be perceived

This may sound superfluous, but before you even start thinking about some more concrete actions, you will need to be 100% sure what your brand needs to be. To come up with the answer to this question, do a quick market research and see where your company has the best chance of succeeding. Once you know to whom you are reaching out, you will be on the right path to discovering which core values you need to embody.

Embody the brand’s story

According to branding experts from Studio X, “brands, like people, are defined by what they actually do, not what they say they do.” That is why your company needs to embody the story it chooses to run with. Embody its actions, marketing messages, and even the look of the premises. The change doesn’t need to be excessive or jarring, but it has to be thorough and consistent, or the customers will quickly see through the cracks.

Make the brand visually appealing

Defining the appealing visual identity is one of the most important steps in successful branding. To find this all-important visual language your company will be remembered for, start with something simple as a logo, and put it into perspective. Imagine how that logo will look on your website, product package, app or a billboard. Figure out what imagery enforces the message you are sending. Try to make it timeless. When you finally come up with a solution, you will have all the important design blocks for building the rest of the house.

Establish yourself as a trusted authority

Now that you’ve laid the foundations, it is time to start a blog that will discuss the industry-related topics, and establish your company as a reliable industry authority. This blog won’t only serve as a cornerstone for the later SEO and social media actions, it will also help you further develop your brand’s unique voice and expand its reach to the people who may not necessarily be interested in the things you sell.

Create a strong social media presence

The story is simple – the general audience will more likely stumble upon your social media posts than your website. That is why you need to use social media as the springboard for your content. Before you go on the offensive, though, see which social networks suit your business the best. Once you find your target audience, do your best to maintain a consistent, two-way communication, engage the followers with various actions, and invite shareable user-generated content.

Use the freebies

Try not to look at freebies only as a way to quickly put the brand in the public eye by offering free stuff. Free branded products are a very powerful tool that can be used for a variety of different marketing purposes, ranging from guerrilla actions to social media giveaways and calls to action. As long as you’re creating buzz and gathering valuable feedback, the money you have spent will be money well spent, regardless of the amount.

Have a killer customer service

Finally, an unparalleled customer service will go a long way in helping your brand to stand out from the competition and start the much-needed positive word-of-mouth. The recognition you will earn simply by being there for your clients when they need you will establish you as a professional who stays true to the promise. And in the words of Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, “a good brand is a promise kept.”

The story of branding is much bigger than this. But now, you have the key plot points. What’s really important is to make all these elements work together and build upon each other in order to work. And never stop growing. Great brands are timeless, but never immobile.

 

Author Bio: Cooper Klein is an entrepreneur with a degree in Marketing and a regular contributor to SmoothDecorator. In order to spend more time with his family, Cooper decided to take a break, and he’s currently working from home as a blogger. You can find him on Twitter.