Ever since COVID-19 has spread around the world, a great number of small to large businesses are trying to keep their products and services afloat with low-budget branding. More often when you conduct your online research you may come across many branding topics, and you will have to figure out whether you should do it yourself, hire an expert, hire a close friend, or perhaps hire a start-up agency. This process can become pretty overwhelming, and when you want to grow your brand fast it can get very expensive. The trick is to keep your small budget in check as you grow at a consistent pace and steady rate. For this reason, you cannot focus on short term gains when you have a low budget. Instead, become more creative with your branding approach, and be clever with how you deliver branding messages. You can share key information that highlights your company’s brand culture, brand principles, brand goals, brand mission, brand personality, brand values, brand voice, and much more. Here are five tips on how to keep your branding strategy affordable.
#1 Create a Highly Customized Customer Profile
Begin by creating at least three different customer profiles. Each profile should be filled with specific characteristics. They should describe your ideal client that is most likely to purchase your service or product; it should also encompass the targeted group of your preferred choice. For example, you can create a bulleted list that will include categorical information like their monthly income, communication of choice, geographic locations, job title, job responsibilities, job goals, preferred social media channels, psychographic factors, and sociocultural factors too. Depending on the quality of customer data you gather, it will better understand your primary group’s needs and values. Once you outline your customer’s qualifying attributes, it is then that your brand stands the fighting chance to become more prominent in its respective industry; fortunately, when you adapt those crucial selling points, you will be on your way to growing your lucrative business.
#2 Develop a Unique Brand Voice & Brand Tone
After you create a few highly customized customer profiles, spend some time on creating a brand voice that is distinctive and relatable to your primary target audience. For your brand voice to be truly unique you’ll have to think about a set language you will use across all digital and traditional media channels. As an American writer, Rita Mae Brown, once said, “Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.” When it comes to business, your brand voice, the moon, will have to commit to delivering and maintaining a consistent emotional state, humor, image, and personality of your choice. Once you master this area, you will be ready to move on to concluding on a brand tone.
Moreover, one day your brand may face a complicated situation and by learning to adapt your brand tone, the water tide, your company will always be prepared to handle any situation in a professional and quick manner. In fact, a brand’s tone will have to change more often since it depends on the particular messaging context at that particular moment. Adjust your brand’s tone and try something new like being more authentic, eccentric, irreverent, or passionate. According to Forbes.com, Apple is known for being one of the world’s most valuable brands and on its homepage, you can clearly see their use of brand voice and brand tone which are short, clear, and confident. For example, the iPhone SE is introduced with a phrase that says, “Lots to Love. Less To Spend”, the iPhone 11 is introduced with the phrase, “Just the right amount of everything.”, and the IPad Pro is introduced with the phrase, “Your Next Computer Is Not A Computer”.
On the other hand, Tim Cook recently wrote a press release titled “Speaking up on racism” where you no longer hear the usual authoritative and confident tone used across all their product messaging campaigns mentioned before; instead while keeping the brand voice confident, Cook intelligently adapted the companies tone to this important global matter and carefully communicated his message in a caring, compassionate, and inspirational way.
#3 Utilize Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends
Save money and conduct a quality keyword research by using two popular SEO tools:
- Google Keyword Planner is a tool you can use to help narrow down your keyword list. You will be able to access valuable insights that help you research the best keywords to implement and attract the right audience to your website.
- Google Trends is a tool you can use to see which words are trending now or are more likely to trend in the near future at a global, national, or local level. You can check if a popular keyword on Google’s keyword planner is gaining popularity or decreasing in search volume while comparing Google Trends insights.
#4 Launch a Company Blog To Attract Your Target Audience
When you decide to kick off your blog make sure to keep your customer profiles in mind upon creating them. Start with an editorial calendar dedicated to your blog and commit to uploading at least two blogs per month to your website. If you can’t make your own blog calendar, you can find plenty of free online blog editorial templates that typically include content scheduling tips. While these blogs can help lure more qualified traffic to your website, make sure to keyword optimize new blogs, and use the narrowed down list of keywords you found on Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends, to effectively help your site rank higher on Google organic search results.
#5 Become Customer Service Focused
Make sure to recruit or train talented individuals for your firm that way you can have excellent customer service. By having a customer centric approach you are more likely to give your customers a reason to rave about their engaging and happy experience. This helps you attain earned media that in turn affects and increases your overall good reputation in your community. The minute you improve your brand’s core approach for customer service, those same clients will appreciate the time and effort you put into providing them exceptional service. As a result, two good things will happen to your brand. First, the probability of customers speaking more about your brand through word of mouth will inevitably increase in your favor. They will tell their friends how good they were treated by your brand on their job, social media channels, and social gatherings. Second, customers are more likely to leave a good review on their own or when you casually ask them to leave one before they go on with their daily activities.
Altogether, keep your budget low by adding these five tips to your branding strategy. Once you utilize this friendly advice your chances of receiving qualified customers will rise at a reliable rate over time. Remember that branding consistently will create a perpetual connection with your target audience. I wish you much savings on your future marketing and advertising endeavors. Feel free to share or bookmark this blog with your friends on social media.
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