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How to Grow Your Brand On A Small Budget

While big brands like Google, Amazon, or Apple continue to dominate the consciousness of many people across the globe. Big companies with big budgets are often difficult to emulate or follow, especially for small businesses. But let’s not forget that there are millions of businesses in Australia and New Zealand that create two-thirds of our jobs.

Get More Traffic primary focus has been to help these small businesses achieve their own successes, often by taking inspiration from some of these bigger names and brands and implementing similar tactics and strategies that better fit the small business model.

In this post, we want to continue to help by taking a deeper dive into 3 ways that you can build your brand without having to spend a huge chunk of your budget on prime time TV commercials, or highway billboards.

 

Step 1: Offer Something Unique and Superior.

Author and marketing expert, Seth Godin often talks about how marketing is all about being remarkable (something worth being made remarks about).

Being remarkable is more than just finding small gimmicks, though. It’s about being different enough and special enough for people to take notice.

A local bag maker might not compare with Louis Vuitton’s marketing budget. However, that same shoemaker can leverage the fact that their products are locally produced from high-quality materials, and are lovingly made by an exceptional artisan. 

Remember, you don’t need to dominate your industry. Instead, focus on serving customers within a niche market. Focus on local buyers who are after premium products. People are more than willing to pay for quality craftsmanship.

Artisan products may be time consuming and may not scale, but having something made by hand with extra love and care creates a sense of authenticity that factory-made products can reproduce. Also, having that item personalised increases its value even more for the customer that’s paying for it.

Being local has some powerful advantages against the larger competitors. In cases like these, it’s important to stress those roots, that authenticity, and intentionally distance your brand away from mass-produced products and rivals.

 

Step 2: Make Yourself a Trusted Expert

Content remains an integral part of every marketing campaign, whether for big brands or small businesses. Creating content (whether a blog, vlog, or podcast) can do wonders for your brand, especially if you position yourself as an expert and make it a point to always be helpful towards your audience.

“How to” content, specifically, has always been popular. Just look at Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, a book that was published way back in 1936 and has sold way over 30 million copies worldwide, naming it one of the best-selling books of all time.

Audiences love free tutorials that can help them become pick up new hobbies, or improve certain skill sets. Make sure your content is informative and actionable, relevant and practical while still containing the distinct voice that’s unique to your brand.

If educating others isn’t exactly your jam, you can always simply feature what it is you do, and how well and amazingly you do it. Nick Pedullá is a furniture craftsman based in Sydney who shares videos of how he goes about building and finishing his custom-made furniture to his 18,000 followers on Instagram. Cutting Edge Country has gained a following of over 22,000 on Instagram, sharing the quality of their boots, jeans, hats, and other fashion & giftware items.

 

Step 3: Invest in Online Advertising

What makes digital marketing and advertising worth it is that you’re able to find and target the people that are most likely to be interested in your brand and your products. You can target locally or country-wide, depending on your customer base, and serve ads to only the most engaged audience.

These days, it’s more important than ever to establish a footing online, especially for small-to-medium businesses. We understand, though, that diving into Google Ads, SEO, or social media can take a lot of time and effort. Thankfully, agencies like ours exist.

If you’re interested in taking your business to the next level, increase your brand awareness, and gain more customers, leads, and sales, call us today so that one of our agents can discuss how we can best help you and your business.

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September Digital Marketing Industry Updates

Google Display Ads Now With More Automation Features!

Automation is becoming increasingly important these days as algorithms continue to learn and develop over time. As a result, Google is helping advertisers maximise that potential by adding more automated options for Display Ads. Advertisers will be able to choose their preferences in terms of the level of automation applied in the bidding process, the creatives, and the choosing of audiences. Advertisers are still promised the best reach and performance even with regards to the automated options, and these automation preferences can be changed at any time without having to create a new campaign. Over time Google is certain that these automated targeting systems will only keep improving, and will continue to deliver the best results for ad campaigns versus those that are setup manually.

Facebook Also Improves on Automation to Counter iOS Update

Apple’s update that allowed users to choose whether they would allow activity tracking on their devices continues to affect marketers and advertisers. To counter the change, Facebook has also been developing automated features for Facebook Ads. One such feature they’ve developed is the Targeting Expansion. Targeting Expansion makes use of Facebook’s algorithm to show your ads to a broader audience than just the ones that you’ve selected for your campaign. The algorithm will diagnose and determine if your ads would receive a better response with targets beyond your scope, and deliver ads to those users based on its diagnosis. With Facebook’s algorithm being as powerful as it is, it should be worth testing to improve Facebook ad results.

Google Confirms it Auto-Generates Titles for Search Results

Google has made a recent change to its search results pages. Before the update, search results titles were based upon the string of words typed into the search bar by the user. Now, with the change, Google is using a system that generates titles based on the page titles and headlines. Google reassured users and content creators that rankings are not affected by the title changes. It’s important to note, however, that because Google is now pulling titles from your <H1> tags, you must optimise them for when they do appear on the search results.

Instagram Testing Out New “Favourites” Feature

Instagram is testing out a new feature internally called “Favourites” to help improve the overall experience of its users. The feature is very similar to Facebook’s, wherein a user gets to choose 30 friends and pages they would like to hear from first before scrolling through the rest of their feed. This “favourites” feature on Instagram is ideal for businesses, influencers, and content creators that are looking to build a dedicated fanbase on Instagram, as it should place your content above the rest of the feed, giving you incrementally more reach and impressions as you build your audience. The feature is still being tested, and there are no clear indications on whether Instagram will roll it out, but it is definitely something to look forward to if it does.

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