Big businesses understand how important it is to build brand awareness, especially if they sell directly to the consumer. Small business owners need to be conscious and proactive in building their brands as well. Unfortunately that is not always the case. More often than not we encounter business owners not doing even the simplest of things to build their brand. For example, not having a website or branded email address are critical failures. As a business owner, not having an online presence and promoting that online presence with an email address containing your websites url in it is a major failure since it is likely one of the most widely used methods of communication and will lead your email recipients to your website. Having a branded email address means you own that virtual real estate, your name or your businesses name (or if you’re smart, both). Just like it’s possible to post signs on physical real estate you can use virtual real estate to advertise your business as well. The best part about a custom url and email address is that they are virtually free! A domain name can cost less than $10 a year and with applications like Google Apps a business can run their email, calendar, contacts and more with a custom domain name for free! It’s not hard to set up and can scale up with your businesses growth.
There are many more ways to build your brand. Some offline, in the physical sense, like clothing with your logo on it, branded promotional products like mouse pads and coffee mugs as well as wrapping your vehicle’s with custom advertising messaging. We tend to lean more towards online brand building and management as it’s usually more cost effective and easier to scale up and grow virally through referrals and sharing. Things like custom Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter backgrounds and YouTube channels are free to use every day and are great ways to engage with people who might be or are interested in your products and services. Consistency of your brands image across all mediums is key to promoting a trust and credibility. With today’s social media environment consumers feel like they’re on more equal ground with brands and like that, making it easier and more transparent to engage and convert as well. The saying goes, “build it and they will come”. That is still true today and make no mistake about it. If you aren’t building and monitoring your brand, someone else could be talking about you and you wouldn’t even know.
To get more information about building your brand and for a free consultation contact us today!
