Developing a brand for your small business may seem overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a huge budget for marketing. Fortunately, building a successful brand for your small business can be accomplished without breaking the bank! Here are some helpful tips to get you started.

Understand brand power
A strong brand provides your small business with power and advantage. Taking the time to create a brand that generates an immediate and definitive relationship with your customers is the goal of successful branding.  When people see or think of your niche industry, their immediate thought should be your business brand. As your brand wields its power, your business can also benefit from Google’s SEO benefits.  

Unique brand style and voice
Know your brand’s style and voice, and keep it clean and simple. This will help people to quickly recognize and remember your brand logo. Learn to find the balance between simplicity and showcasing your business and what it stands for. Avoid ambiguity and phrases that have lost their wow factor. Use clear imagery, language, and a smart logo.

Protect your brand
Monitor your brand to protect it from being copied in part or fully. Be proactive in monitoring how and where people use your brand. If not protected, you may find yourself fighting with competitors who’ve taken your brand and adjusted it slightly. You may find websites using your logo without linking back to your business. Worst case scenario, you could find yourself pursuing legal action for brand infringements.

Be consistent
From your website to your social media presence, make sure that your brand message remains consistent. This will prevent confusion among your customers and prospective customers. This consistency needs to incorporate your products, services and brand presentation (name, logo, design, marketing, etc).
The more consistent you are in your message, the more familiarity people will have with your brand, which can help generate trust. Trust can help convert prospective customers into loyal customers!

Always add value
Regardless of the level of your success, be sure to keep maintaining excellent customer service and creating good products. Continue to analyze your products and services for what distinguishes your business from that of your competitors. Scrutinize your brand from all angles to ensure that you are giving your customers benefits and value.

The more value you add to your brand through products, services, and customer care, the more likely your customers will remain loyal and share your brand ideas and product to to their friends and followers!

Marketing your business does not have to break your bank. With some creativity and ideas on maximizing the benefits of the Internet, you can keep your business brand at the forefront of your customers’ minds!

Capitalize on social media and networking
Networking is the backbone of business success. With commitment and patience, networking is a great way to build business relationships and find new clients and customers.

Along with networking, maximize on social media by creating a Facebook Group and Facebook Page to broaden your sphere of influence and generate traffic to your site. Simultaneously, join other Facebook or LinkedIn groups within your niche as a way of contributing relevant information and advice. This will help establish you as a trusted expert in your field.

Have a riveting pitch ready
No matter where you go, opportunities for marketing your business will arise. Be prepared to grab the attention of your listeners by creating a riveting pitch. Research studies have shown that an adult will decide within six to eight seconds if they’re interested in an advertisement or pitch. As a result, your pitch needs to be skillfully crafted to grab their attention within those few seconds!

Freebies, coupons, and discounts
Encourage people to sign up to your email listing by offering a coupon, discount or freebie. This is a quick and clear call to action for visitors to enter your advertising funnel. Research has confirmed that offering coupons is a successful method of expanding customer base and generating return visits.

Articles and all things blogging
Find those magazines within your industry that accept guest articles. Once you have identified those magazines, write articles for them as a way of promoting your business. Your article should establish you as an expert in your industry, while your author bio will promote you and your business.

The same can be done for guest blogging on other people’s blogs or websites so you can expose your work to a new audience. Your author bio should hold a back link to your site to encourage more traffic.

As you follow blogs, leave thought-provoking comments as a way to get the blog owner and audience’s attention. This will continue to establish you as an expert in your field, generate more traffic to your site, and hopefully create more opportunities for guest blogging or article writing!

Many successful businesses use case studies to record the details of their research process and showcase the development of a particular project until its completion. A good case study tells a convincing and engaging story through both content and imagery, permitting viewers to read project goals and view the results simultaneously. Learn how stories and case studies can help build trust and establish you as a leading expert in your industry!

Client consent and participation
One of the more challenging aspects of creating a case study is overcoming client wariness towards releasing potentially sensitive information to the public. Although valid, you can ease your client’s concerns by outlining the case study process clearly from the get go and getting their nod of approval on each draft. Be sure to do what will make your client comfortable, which may include using percentages to illustrate ROI and lead generation growth rather than specific figures.

The cornerstones of a successful case study
Once you have client consent and participation in providing any relevant information, your case study will require the following three cornerstones:
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1. Context – Here you will elaborate on who your client is, the relevant trends, the scope of the project, and so on.

2. Organize your story around your readers’ needs - While the client is providing you with information to use in your case study, you are addressing your readers whose needs are the backbone of your case study. All your information should be used to address your readers’ needs.

3. Objectives – Here you will list ROI and lead generation percentages or other values to the solution you provided. Request that your client provide you information as to who they are and why they chose to work with you. This will help encourage prospective clients.


The essential format elements to a successful case study
For a case study to be successful, several format elements ​ are essential including the following:

1. An intriguing title- This should convey the answer to a need you know your readers have. The title should also contain a keyword which can be shared on social media with a hashtag.

2. A lead quote or testimonial- It can be repeated or used several times throughout your case study.

3. Summarize the problem- This can be used to empathize with your readers and illustrate that you understand their needs.

4. Summarize the results- Use this to showcase how you successfully helped your client. This may include three to four benefit statements to explain the case study and appeal to the readers’ needs.

5. About us paragraph- Write one regarding your company and contact information

6. A call to action- This accompanies any good case study to encourage readers towards becoming new clients. 


Make the most of the Internet
Once your case study has been published, share it on various social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, etc. This will help create backlinks to your company website which may help push your site up on Google ranking and entice prospective clients your way!

For years, brochures have been used far and wide as a means of effectively showcasing business products and services. This printed material provided the necessary information on company brands, products and services to inspire people towards making a purchase. Today, the role of the brochure is changing. What is the future for brochures, and how are they still being used?

Brochures and the engaged customer
The brochure can be a trusted sign that a customer has become an “engaged” customer. This means that the person who took the brochure is interested in sourcing more information other than that already available on a website.
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Supporting purchase decisions
Brochures are popular among companies who advertise high-value and high-risk purchases, in contrast to your everyday products which use online reviews and product descriptions as advertising.
According to market research, brochures play a role in supporting a customer’s decision to purchase, specifically if the item being bought is deemed high value and/or took considerable time to purchase. As such, a brochure has become a way of justifying a purchase, thus reinforcing the emotional reasons behind a purchase.

Complement to digital marketing strategies
An A-5 sized brochure provides people with sufficient content on a business or product that can inspire them to seek more information online. This smaller size ensures that the brochure can be tucked into a bag or pocket for later reading material when the person has time to spare.

Another use for brochures today is to provide the sales team with all relevant major talking points for people to review at a later stage. For those people who prefer to read the paper than stare at a computer screen or tablet, a brochure is a handy way of giving them relevant information.
When all is said and done, the brochure is a tool that complements other digital marketing strategies. Together they can help add value to your business marketing efforts!