
Photo by Styled Stock Society*
Branding is essential for any business. It’s about the face you present to your customers, how you communicate with them, and how they view you. But what if you don’t have a large budget? No problem! Many branding tasks, including some of the most important, don’t cost a lot — some cost nothing at all.
Here are some techniques to get you started with branding on a budget.
This post is written by guest blogger, Victoria Greene, a branding consultant & freelance writer for VictoriaEcommerce.
Be clear about how you are different
This stage is free, but it’s not easy. It is, however, essential, and it is where your branding should begin.
What exactly makes you unique? What do you do that others do not? You need to develop a USP that sets you apart from your competitors. Think long and hard about this because it will become the foundation of your branding.
Is it a family-run business where you and your kids all work together? Or do you source your product materials from sustainable resources? Be authentic with your USP and you will quickly build trust in your brand.
Also decide who your customers are. It sounds obvious, but who are they really? What is their age, income, gender? What challenges do they face? When you know this, you will be clearer about how your brand should feel and what it should look like.
Get a Little Help
Psst! Marianne here with a couple of resources to help you get on your way to getting clear on how you are different…
- Business Plan Perfection Workshop: Complete Your Business Plan in 7 Easy Steps* by Lesley Clavijo
- Plan Your Perfect Website: Expert Advice for Online Success* by Carrie Green
Both of these resources and the rest of the resources listed below are available as part of the 77-product bundle, known as The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit* that is only available now through Monday, October 15th @ 11:59pm ET. Read on for more info.
This post includes affiliate links denoted by a *
Create a mission statement
This also falls into the “free but difficult” category. Creating your mission statement is easier when you know what makes you unique and who your customers are.
It doesn’t need to be extensive. It could be just a few short sentences, or even just one sentence that captures the essence of who you are and what you do.
You can use this on your website, or just keep it to yourself. Then use it as your guide for your marketing and future branding activities.
Get a Little Help
This guide and workbook is super useful in helping you write your mission statement as well as figuring out your USP:
- The WordPress Website Discovery Guide and Workbook* by Marta Goertzen
Create a logo
Designing your logo is the first thing that will actually cost you any money, but it is essential. You have to prioritize when you only have a small budget, but a logo should be at the top of the list.
You can get a logo designed for very little, but it’s worth getting it done professionally. This will become the face of your business. When people see your logo, they will recognize your brand, and it will become a visual representation of your business.
At the same time, try to define your overall visual identity, including the colors you use, the fonts, and more. Create some consistency so you are instantly recognizable, and over time this will help you to build a stronger brand.
Become an authority using content marketing
Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies online, and the good news is that it does not have to cost much (or anything at all). It is also an effective way to build your brand by establishing your authority and developing your voice.
By publishing valuable content that provides help, advice, tips, and information that solves a problem for your audience, you can become a respected resource — all important for your branding.
The more content you create, the more you will naturally develop your voice. Sometimes it is difficult to sit down and decide what your brand voice should be. But as you create more content, this will develop naturally.
Create written blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts — the type of content you create will depend on what you do and who you are targeting. Create content that will appeal to your target customer. Publish guides, ebooks, and mini-courses and give them away for free, ensuring you always provide value.
Grow your email list and use it to send valuable content to your subscribers. Reply to their emails, be friendly and approachable, and build a relationship. Again, all of this is possible on a budget.
Get a Little Help
Create better content and grow your email list using these resources:
- The One Hour Content Plan: The Solopreneur’s Guide to a Year’s Worth of Blog Post Ideas in 60 Minutes and Creating Content That Sells and Hooks* by Meera Kothand
- Write Well* by Rachelle Rea Cobb
- Email Growth & Marketing Bootcamp*
- Igniting Your List Incentive* by Sue Dunlevie
Develop your social presence
You can (and should) develop your brand on social media. Social can be completely free, unless you hire someone to help you or you use paid advertising — but even with advertising, you don’t have to spend a lot.
Start by building your social presence. If you are creating content, share it on your social channels, post images to Pinterest and Instagram of your products in use, and add comments and captions using your unique voice.
Post images that match your brand style, and give every update a branded look. Use a tool like Canva to help you.
Social media is all about engaging, talking to your customers, answering questions, coming across as friendly and approachable, and showing the human side of your business. Keep it fresh, update it all the time, and be consistent to enjoy social success.
Get a Little Help
Here are a couple of invaluable resources to help you plan, develop and execute your social media strategy:
- Social Media and the Law* by Shahara Wright
- Grow Your Email List Using Pinterest* by Kate Ahl
- Facebook Live Strategies Masterclass* by Crystal Paine
- Streamline Your Social: How to Make the Most of Your Time on Social Media* by Tonia Kendrick
- Pinning for Profit: Profit from your Passion* by Jennifer Dawn
Provide amazing customer service
Finally, focus on providing incredible customer service. It is one of the most effective ways to boost your branding, and you will get known as a business that cares about its customers. Provide many channels for your customer service, including live chat, email, social media, and telephone.
The key to good customer service though is speed: always reply quickly, and always try to solve problems as soon as possible. This is a simple and affordable way to grow your reputation, and with the availability of affordable AI chatbots, it’s doable too.
Most online businesses use a chatbot plugin to automate their customer service to quickly deal with customer queries, from blogs to online stores. Indeed, look at any of the self-build ecommerce stores online and you’ll find that virtually all of them use some form of automated customer service widget to expedite queries. It goes a long way to letting your customers know that you’re a brand that cares, and it’s a worthwhile investment.
Associate your brand with customer service excellence to build trust, and more people will want to buy from you.
Get a Little Help
Another way to provide great service is to make the time to do so. These courses below will help you streamline your workflows so that you actually have more time to take care of your readers and customers:
Branding does not need to be expensive
By now, you should have a good idea about branding your business on a budget. It really does not have to be expensive, but it will involve a lot of work. Creating a brand from scratch is hard and takes time, but it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
(Marianne here with one last quick message…)
That’s Why I Recommend Grabbing The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit
Worth $5,867.88, it includes 41 eCourses, 15 eBooks, 9 printable packs & workbooks, 5 templates, 5 stock photo packs, and 2 membership sites – ALL for only $97. That’s it!
In addition to including all the resources listed above, I’m proud to say that my course, Crush CSS: Code School for Bloggers, is also part of the bundle so you’ll be getting it for 48% off the usual cost plus get a ton of other products to go with it.
But you gotta hurry, because time is already running out!
Ok back to Victoria…
The tips above are enough to get started with, but it’s only the start of your journey to perfect branding. For example, you could give away small and affordable branded products for free, network with influencers and get on their radars, or even become an industry speaker. So be creative, work hard, and build your brand from scratch (without spending a lot of money).

Hi,
I just found your blog via Pinterest and let me tell you its amazing. I love your blog design and your valuable content.
Thanks for the branding tips.
Hi Kristen, that’s so sweet of you to say, thank you! And thank you for visiting 🙂
Hi
Marianne,
You have provided great tips on how to brand a business on a budget. A logo is an identity of any business. The logo is something what helps your customers and audience recognizing your brand through an image easily, so it is very necessary to create a compelling logo for your business.
Social media platforms are one of the best ways to promote your content and reach with potential customers. Here, I have gained much information about branding business.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.
Have a great day.
Praveen
Thanks Praveen but I can’t take the credit for this one, you’ll have to thanks Victoria!
Hi Marianne, I loved your blog and the content you have shared is amazing. Thanks and keep sharing!
I love these tips! This guide could really help small businesses and startups to brand their products even on a budget. Looking forward to your next post.
Such a great guide! Thanks! Glad I stopped by to read your article. Very helpful.
Hey Marianne,
You did a great job, branding with budget strategy. I really like the way you explain all the information. After reading this blog post I can say its well researched and value-driven content.
Thanks
Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. Tips are really good for branding on a budget. Today’s time business promotional products are very useful for the strong brand building and it is in the budget. Businesses apply this strategy and created strong brands.
Nice article on how to build a brand. It’ll help newbies very much. It’s good to see someone put forth recommendations on branding strategies for newbies. As you point out, there are plenty of important tricks & strategies to apply. Great selection! Thanks for the information, it was very useful!
Great source of information. Thanks a lot for sharing this.
Excellent blog, thanks for sharing this with us. Keep posting.
Thank you for the guide it helps me almost with my startup business. By these strategies, I’m pursuing harder on the progress of my business. Creating logo matters. It should look simple, yet it describes your brand as well. Goodluck to us. We meet your blog by purpose.
An amazing article, thank you for sharing your experience! Love the way this useful information has been presented.
I was just searching for such information when I came across this article. And I wanted to say that you helped me a ton. You have offered great tips on how to build a brand.
I share your opinion that “content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies online”, and by publishing good-quality content we can become a respected resource.
Thanks for your input Ryan, glad you liked the post 🙂
Great content. Thanks for sharing this well written post. It’s very informative.
Branding the business is a easy task but branding the business in low budget is very difficult. Thank you for sharing these tips with us. Really helpful and amazing information.
Thanks for your comment and stopping by
Whether our business is currently a small scale business or we own a giant platform, at some point we will definitely feel a need for branding and marketing but due to high budget we refuse it. Besides you have shared great tips on budget. Thank you very much.
Great!!
Thanks for sharing such a great article. I really like this!
This guide could be really helpful for me. I just love your post & looking forward to your next post.
You can really do branding on a budget. You just need to know what constitutes that. This will help you focus on what you need to get done.
Completely agree with you.
Identifying how our company is different from other is the first step step to start branding.
Good logo is game changing element.
I 100% agree with you! “Provide amazing customer service” is the most important reading to perfect branding on a budget. I have pleased to read the entirety of the post as mentioned above in detail. Thanks and have a good day!
this is awesome
Hi Marianne,
What an insightful post! As a marketer, I always believe branding is one of the key factors to stand apart from the crowd. I really appreciate you sharing this guide and helping people make the most of their branding efforts on a budget. I gained several great tips from your resource, and I will definitely be applying them to my process. Keep sharing these amazing and insightful articles with the readers. I really look forward to reading more amazing posts from you!
I have thought so many times of entering the blogging world as I love reading them. I think I finally have the courage to give it a try. Thank you so much for all of the ideas!
great work.Thank you so much.
Normally, I don’t comment on blogs, but your article is so compelling that I can’t help but comment on it. You’re doing an excellent job, Man. Keep up the good work.
I do agree with you! “Develop your social presence” is the most vital one as you described here in detail with some wise words. I hope people will learn a lot through this list. I appreciate you and please carry on.
My opinion is so similar to yours! “Providing amazing customer service” is the most vital one as discussed above here. It’s really helpful stuff. Thank you so much and keep updating us.