7 Simple and Effective Ways to Brand Your Business Online

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

As small business owners and entrepreneurs with limited budgets, we do not have the luxury of spending millions of advertising dollars to brand our businesses.

Fortunately and thanks to a fundamental shift in the way that business is being conducted these days, there are a few things that you can do to successfully brand your business without breaking the bank.

I figured for today’s blog post I would round up a list of 7 inexpensive and simple ways that you can brand your business online:

1. Use a branded email signature. Wisestamp for business is my favorite email signature branding tool of choice. With this tool, you can easily create a customized email signature where you can add some of the following information:

Your contact information (Phone, Fax, Email etc.)
A professional picture or headshot
Links to all of your active Social Media Profiles
An RSS feed that features your latest blog post
A link to a Freebie or Giveaway

2. Create a Professional Logo. Your logo is a critical component of “brand identification”. It’s an image that will be used on all of your marketing collateral and etc., and therefore you should consider investing a little money to get a professional logo created for your business. Pixellogo offers affordable ready made logos that you should check out.

Recommended Ready-Made Logo Sites:

Pixellogo
99 Designs
Fiverr (least expensive alternative)
online logo maker
Looka

3. Use social media to consistently market and promote your brand. Social media is one of THE most powerful online branding tools that you can use these days –and rightfully so. In fact, the PewResearchCenter reported that as of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites! Before social media arrived on the scene, branding essentially took place via word of mouth referrals or through traditional means of advertising. However, it’s quite a different story now. Whether it be a winter snow plowing service or a small-scale technical solution startup, social media now plays the primary part of promoting any low to high-budget business. You can show brand mockups first to your client for good measure.

Kim Garst Twitter Profile

With free access to social media sites, you can easily:

Spread the word about your brand on a regular basis
Interact with your potential and current customer base
Engage and connect with fellow peers in your industry

Instagram is a powerful tool to attract new customers. And you can achieve an incredible boost using Instagram followers purchase strategy through the Socialboss. Just imagine how your brand awareness and traffic will increase with followers. Keep in mind such services.

4. Create a stand out business slogan and tagline. Like your logo, your slogan should be used consistently on all of your marketing collateral. If you need assistance with creating slogan for your business, check out my post entitled: 7 Tagline Generators for Creating the Perfect Business Slogan

5. Use testimonials to add credibility. Testimonials are one of the most powerful marketing messages and brand boosters that you can have in your arsenal. If you have received “rock star” testimonials from your customers that you have done business, here are a few things that you can do to maximize them:

Add them to your website
Tweet them out to your followers
Add them to your email signature
Publish them via Facebook

6. Start Blogging. Using a blog for branding in your business is hand’s down one of the smartest things you can do. Blogging clears the difference between branding and marketing practices to grow your business.

Blogs are very easy to start, are inexpensive and only require a bit of your time; just be sure to choose the best web host possible. With your blog, you can easily leverage the power of social media to build brand recognition in your industry and establish an online presence. Check out this step by step guide to starting a small business blog.

Here are a few ways to get the most out of your blog:

Write Great Content
Create Attention Grabbing Headlines that will attract visitors to your site
Share and market your content multiple times on social media

7. Show your customers the face behind your products and services. I don’t know about you but I am instantly more drawn to a brand when I can actually see who it is that is behind the brand. If you have a website and social media profiles, you should definitely add a headshot of yourself (and your team) to connect with your audience on a more personable level.

And there you have it, 7 easy peasy ways to brand your business online. If you enjoyed this blog post, please be sure to share it with others. Thanks!