Growing your business and building your online brand

Sponsored Article

As any small-business owner knows, marketing your business and building your online brand is vital. With the relatively cheap, and often free channel that is the internet giving businesses another arm to reach their customers it becomes paramount to differentiate your brand from the competition.

Often, your best business and branding asset is yourself. Nobody is a better advocate than you.

Giving your online brand or business a personality is one sure fire way to help cut through the noise of everyone else. Like Dollar Shave Club and Frank Body did from the very humble beginnings of their businesses, creating and implementing a personality for your brand can be a simple and strong strategy for growing your small business.

Since you’ve most likely started your small business because of a personal passion or interest, growing your small business should come as second nature.

As we talked in our post about the skills you need to start a small business, the key here is really finding a unique perspective. This can only come from you knowing your business inside out. After all, no one knows your business like you do.

If you feel that your marketing skills could do with further training, then perhaps it’s time to consider investing in yourself with a qualification. Registered training organisation Upskilled offers online courses and national recognised qualifications in marketing that you can complete around your busy schedule. Flexible study is a great opportunity to put into effect in the other aspects of your life the things you are learning through your study.

Your business is also a great testing ground. While it might be risky, rewards come to those who dare. Being able to immediately execute your new training and education is a rare experience for many but through studying online, you get the chance to do just that.

Of course, this isn’t all to say that jumping online is the best and easiest way to market your business and build your brand. It’s a combination of efforts.

The most effective way to successfully market your business is through integrated marketing. Whatever channel you are marketing on, online, in print, TV or radio – whatever your budget allows – you need to ensure that the messages are all the same and complement each other no matter where a customer might be seeing it.

Building out a personality for your communications is a really good way to ensure continuity in all your messages. If you try to do much in too many places your message can become a bit mixed and hard to understand so the simpler everything is the better it will be. Focus your efforts where you think you’ll best reach your target audience and customers and communicate with them in an honest and personable way.

After all, the best businesses engage with their customers online because it helps ensure brand loyalty and high-quality leads continue to flow in. What’s more, opportunity abounds for advocacy to be created.

So how do you think your business is faring online? Are you currently already doing some of or everything we’ve discussed above?

Perhaps it really is time to invest in yourself with further education and training before you put into practice the things you’ve learned. Your business will thank you.

Brought to you by Darby Larner, Design and Communications, Upskilled