It can be hard for a small business owner to grow their brand, but it’s not impossible. If you’re creative, patient, and willing to make yourself accessible to your customers, then you can achieve a lot even on a tight budget. The following tips will help you to build your brand, no matter what size your company is.
1. Stop Worrying About Your Logo
You don’t have to have a logo designed by a famous artist or major media agency. As long as your logo is clear, clean, and produced in a format that makes it easy to have it put on business cards, posters, printed carrier bags and promotional gifts, that’s all that matters. A simple vector logo that gets your message across and is easy to recognize is all you need.
2. Talk to Your Customers
Your customers want quality products, and they want to feel good about the company they’re buying from. Promotional gifts might make your customers smile for a minute or two, but engagement lasts a lot longer. Consider starting a blog and actually talking to your customers through posts and through comments. If your target audience likes you, they’re more likely to buy for you.
3. Attend Events
Trade shows, consumer fairs, and local events are a great way to expand your audience. When someone is given the choice between two different companies – one that’s unknown, and one that the person remembers meeting at a local event, there’s a good chance that the customer will buy from the company they’ve already met. Having a presence at a trade show makes you look reputable and established.
4. Train Your Employees
Your customers will notice the way that your employees interact with them. Make sure that your employees are mindful of the way they behave when they’re representing your company. If your employees have Twitter or Facebook accounts that look like they are part of your company, or they have a company email address, make sure that they think carefully before they post anything from those accounts.
5. You Can’t Control Everything
You can set the direction that your brand is heading along, but you can’t control exactly what happens. Your customers have a lot of power to dictate the way that your brand is perceived. Try to work with your customers, listen to their feedback, and get your most loyal customers on-side as advocates. In the long term, this will do a lot of good for your brand.
Growing a brand is a long term thing. You can’t expect to have a brand for life thanks to visiting one trade show and handing out printed carrier bags full of t-shirts and posters. If you want your brand to thrive you will need to run regular, sustained marketing campaigns. If you can’t afford major ad campaigns, focus on social media, email, and targeted web marketing. You don’t have to invest in billboards and TV ads to achieve success.
This post was written by James Harper on behalf of UK PrintPrice who produce promotional gifts including printed carrier bags.
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