Brand Building Strategies For A Startup Budget

Companies live and die by the strength of their brand.

When customers and investors know who you are and what you’re all about, it becomes that much easier to secure distributors, attract new customers, and overall ensure that your company has a strong identity in a crowded marketplace.

But here’s the truth. Startups don’t exactly start out with Scrooge McDuck levels of cash at their disposal.

If you’re like most startups, you’re operating within tight budget constraints and most of your existing cash flow is going into product development, salaries, and your first attempts at marketing. We make a huge difference for many brands at Speedlancer by offering a great way to generate marketing, sales and other content in a streamlined and affordable.

So building a strong brand identity in the first place might not even be a huge priority. But it should be. And the good news is that you don’t need a large budget to start building your brand.

You can literally start right now and by incorporating these strategies, you’ll be one step closer to creating a powerful brand that resonates with customers, investors, and your team.

Content Is Still King

You’ll hear it time and time again. The key to building a strong brand is content. This includes blogs (like this one here), eBooks, podcasts, YouTube videos and more.

But let’s be clear. You have to do more than just post a bunch of blogs on your website. The content you post must be relevant, intriguing, and offer your customers a clear brand identity.

Don’t just blog about a new product you’re developing. Content that offers something of value to readers, such as giving readers new tools and strategies they can incorporate in their daily lives.

A consistent voice, whether authoritarian or humorous, is key as well. You may be hiring dozens of different writers (or writing some of your content yourself in the very early days) but ensure that your tone is at least somewhat consistent to better establish the strength of your brand.

Social Media

Like content marketing, the strength of social media marketing (and building your own brand identity) depends on developing a consistent voice and offering something of value to your potential customers.

Not only is social media inexpensive (in fact, without factoring in hiring someone to manage your social media endeavours, using social media is free), but it offers you access to millions of customers who can now interact with you directly.

And sometimes, interacting with customers through social media is exactly the kind of thing you need in order to establish a strong brand. You’ll be able to see how your target audience interacts with your brand. Be active, post often, and use relevant hashtags that speak to your targeted industry. Follow brands like GoPro on Twitter- they manage to do all this while establishing a unique identity for their brand over social media.

Customer Service

And sometimes, building a strong identity for your brand involves ensuring that your customer’s interactions with your company are overall positive.

Quality customer service not only ensures that customers view your company favourably but help encourage the development of word of mouth advertising.

Ensuring quality customer service every step of the way won’t cost extra, but it’s priceless when you consider the value this leaves for your customers and for your brand. When one customer loves your product and the service they received, it not only establishes your company as a credible brand but ensures that your customer will have nothing but good things to say about your brand to their friends, family, and, potentially, social media followers.

[This post by Jon Westenberg first appeared on Medium and has been reproduced with permission.]