Small businesses often have to face a difficult conundrum. They need to build a brand to succeed in a competitive marketplace. The challenge is doing this despite their limited budget, especially when marketing your product or services is often seen as a higher priority than brand building. Fortunately, you can do both at the same time without breaking your budget. Here are five branding hacks for small businesses.

Upgrade Your Social Media Profiles

Social media is an excellent way to connect with potential clients and advertise your business. Unfortunately, too many small business profiles are lacking in this area or simply don’t know which approach they should take.

The first step is to put a professional photo on all of your online profiles. If you can’t afford this, take a flattering selfie and clean up the background with photo editing software. Use the same photo on all of your professional social media accounts.

Then fill in your profile as if it were a job resume since this is what many prospects will see before they contact you. Reference your education, expertise, and experience. Seek references and endorsements. Keep your posts professional, as well. Don’t upload photos of your last trip to the beach to your business profile. Save that for your personal account.

Give Everyone Branded T-Shirts

Uniforms create a consistent brand image while making your team appear to be professionals. However, not everyone can afford a full uniform. But there are alternatives that you could try instead. For instance, you could use custom t-shirts to identify your team members, each of which carries your logo, company name, and brand color scheme.

If you’re looking for top-quality custom tees for your team, Real Thread's custom t-shirts are soft, comfortable, and affordable. You can even order as few as 20 shirts, so it is great for small businesses. The shirts are a great way to foster team spirit as well. For example, having new hires wear the same branded t-shirts as the rest marks them as a full-fledged member of the team. Not only that, but they will be advertising your business wherever they wear the shirt.

Improve the Effectiveness of Your Website

We’re not telling you to upgrade the website. Instead, you can apply classic copywriting advice to improve the effectiveness of your website. Any landing page, as well as your homepage, must clearly communicate who you are, what you do, what you can do for them and what action they can take next to contact you.

This could be a phone number, email address or button allowing them to book an appointment. All of this should be obvious within five seconds spent scanning your web page. It should also be at the top of the page because relatively few people scroll down.

Incorporate Branding into Your Correspondence

Include your company name and job title in the signature line of your emails. Include your company logo and, if possible, the color scheme in mailed correspondence like invoices and postcards. Put your company name and tagline in your social media profile. Better yet, take a picture of yourself in the company uniform and use it as your social media profile. Then your branded T-shirt is visible in every message you send through the platform.

Connect with Your Customers with Branded Material

You can generate brand awareness and customer loyalty with one act: giving away free branded items to your biggest fans. Give them free branded T-shirts they’ll happily wear in public, increasing awareness of your company. Give them stickers, bags, and practical items carrying your logo and company name, and they’ll become brand ambassadors.

Another option is handing out shirts at events you sponsor to members of the public. For example, you could have custom T-shirts made for the festival or charity event you’re sponsoring. Include your logo and company name on the event shirt. If you want to sponsor content with an influencer, have them wear your branded T-shirt or other branded items. It will leave more of an impression than the speaker’s mention of the brand.

Conclusion

There are a number of ways you can build a more professional, consistent and public brand. Many of these methods can overlap with each other as well, so make sure that you use all the tools at your disposal to get the best results.