5 cost-effective branding strategies for SME’s

You know the saying, “You need money to make money.”

Well, I’ve got some excellent news for you.

As an SME owner, that saying is no longer applies in today’s modern marketplace.

Now, branding makes money.

Sure, you can spend thousands creating and maintaining a branding strategy, as many businesses do.

But you don’t have to.

All you need are 5 cost-effective branding strategies that connect, engage, and convert viewers into life-long customers.

Let’s get you branded.

1. Define your brand identity, be consistent, give it a voice

Before you can create a brand that works for your business, you must define your brand identity.

Your brand identity is the image people will formulate when they think about your business. Now is the time to ensure that your image is a true reflection of your brand.

You define your identity by establishing who you are as a company, what you stand for and believe in as a business. It’s your values, goals, mission, and how you treat your customers. It’s the personality that connects and engages with viewers emotionally, establishing familiarity and trust.

Your logo is the core of your identity

The anchor of your brand identity is your logo. How you want to convey you brand will flow from your logo design. It should represent your brand look and feel – fun, luxury, energetic, young.

If you already have a logo ask yourself if it aligns with your brand identity. For new businesses just about to launch, it’s important to have your logo design nailed before you open your doors (physical or virtual) to the world.

There are many ways to craft a logo design. You can use a machine generated logo designer tool,  freelancers or logo design competitions. With so many options you should be able to have a design created that puts your brand identity in the driving seat.

Once you’ve got your identity, give it a voice:

Your brand’s voice is more than how you communicate with your target audience; it’s the definition of your personality and how you present it to the world.

A recent Stackla survey found that 86% of consumers now consider authenticity as the number one aspect when choosing a brand. Your voice provides that authenticity and creates consistency throughout all your marketing strategies.

It’s when you figure out who you are, create your brand identity, and establish your unique voice can you begin to design your visual and content marketing strategies.

Maintain Branding Consistency 

Your branding needs consistency to bring all of your marketing strategies together and create familiarity with your target market, which builds the trust required for your prospects to become life-long brand followers.

Your visual marketing consists of every element you use for promoting your brand.

From the typography, you choose on your website and social media campaigns, the colors you choose to represent your brand, and of course, your logo. All require market and consumer research to ensure you use the ones proven to work.

2. Increase your brand’s visibility by creating and sharing content

You can quickly and cheaply establish your brand by creating relative content for your target audience.

Consumers want content, not advertisements, when choosing a brand. And that’s excellent news for all SME owners as the most it will cost you is time. A Demand Metric survey tells us that 90% of businesses use content to promote their brand, and 70% of consumers say they’d rather discover a brand by reading an article, not from an advertisement.

Your content strategy is about sharing online material (such as blogs, videos, and social media posts) that do not explicitly promote your brand but stimulate interest in your products or services.

You can use content marketing to promote your brand in the following ways:

1. Establish your brand identity, connect with your audience, and help maintain brand awareness across numerous platforms.
2. Gain an organic competitive edge over your competitors by providing content that attracts customers.
3. Create long-term relationships with customers and prospects.
4. Generate website traffic without having to invest in advertising.
5. Content is proven to convert visitors into leads and increase conversions.

You can also promote your content by using already established brands; it’s a great way of building trust and directing attention to your new business.

Create partnership opportunities:

81 percent of consumers said they have to trust a brand before making a purchase, and as it takes on average 6 impressions for people to remember a brand. So, how do you create trust when you’re on a marketing budget?

The answer is in partnering with a brand related to your niche, with a similar but non-competitive target audience. It’s a trust by association strategy, where your chosen partners’ community trust their brand’s recommendation of your product or service.

Write A Column:

Guest posting on websites and blogs related to your niche is another strategy for getting your brand seen and creating trust by association. And by providing relevant and useful information for your target audience, they’ll quickly see you as an authority within your field.

You can apply to guest post on numerous publications, such as Forbes, the Huffington Post, Entrepreneur, and even HubSpot. And if you’re writing your blog, it’s a great way of boosting your organic traffic.

3. Use the power of organic social media

With almost half of the world’s population using social media platforms, not using social media is no longer an option for SMEs. It’s now an essential way of reaching and engaging with your customers, gaining valuable consumer insights, and creating brand awareness.

If your target audience is on social media, your goal is to identify which platforms they use and how they’re interacting with brands that provide a similar product or service to yours. Statistics speak for themselves, with 80 percent of people following businesses on Instagram alone.

You can do this organically by providing consistent, relevant content and visuals. By doing so, you’ll create a community following who will like and share your brand. Social media is also perfect for providing customer support, with 67% of consumers choosing it as their preferred way of contacting a brand.

And providing excellent customer support is essential for creating customer loyalty, which reduces your marketing efforts, saving you money on acquiring new leads.

5. Leverage Local SEO 

One of the most powerful strategies you can use to promote your brand is by leveraging local SEO and ranking it on Google My Business.

Google My Business works by making your brand visible using high ranking keywords that position your business in what’s called the map pack. It’s a combination of all your Google platforms, including your Google Maps profile, Google+ profile, your Google reviews, and provides access to data on Google Insights and Google Analytics.

The map pack is the three Google My Business listings you see before the organic search results. If you rank your business in the top three, you’ll see a considerable rise in quality leads without having to spend a dollar on advertising.

Local SEO has been around with us for years, but it’s now crucial for local business owners due to the recent surge in online mobile shopping.

How to improve your local SEO:

1. Create a Google My Business account.
2. Register on local business pages (Bing, Yelp, Better business bureau)
3. Focus on SEO factors like web architecture and title tag.
4. Optimize your website with local keywords.
5. Optimize your website for voice search and mobile.

Google also allows customers to leave reviews on your listing page, that alone is one of the most effective branding strategies for SME’s as 57 % of consumer use it for reading reviews, making Google the most popular review platform, and it’s free!

 

27/01/2021