Growing Your Brand On A Small Budget

We’re surrounded by world-renowned brands like Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, and the like so often, we sometimes forget there are millions of small businesses in Australia and New Zealand that create two-thirds of our jobs. SponsoredLinX has grown by expanding these businesses, often by taking a leaf out of these giant brand’s handbooks.

Being inspired by someone like Apple is easy, however, having a small budget makes it difficult to implement their strategies. We believe that ‘small’ brands and businesses are poised for expansion despite today’s saturated marketing environment.

In that spirit, we’re offering some tips on how to build your brand voice when you can’t afford a TV commercial in prime time or a billboard on the highway. Let’s look at things your small business can do that even some of the larger players can’t implement.

#1 Offer Something Different. Offer Something Superior

Your local brewery can’t compete with XXXX’s marketing budget. It’s beer, however, is locally made, tastes distinctive and feels much more authentic. Such beer should be targeted at locals and connoisseurs that seek such craftsmanship. Remember you’re not going to dominate the larger market, and that’s okay. You’ll never need to. Your strategy is to secure a niche of local buyers and leverage the uniqueness and quality of your products to command a price premium.

People aren’t against paying for quality!

This same tactic can be utilised by any artisan-made items such as artwork, small-batch whisky, olive oils, and the like. If your production is small (temporarily), take the time to write personal labels by hand. Yes, it’s time-consuming and won’t scale, but handwritten means authentic, and consumers love authenticity.

The smaller your budget the more you rely on your point of difference. Often, being local can be your strongest selling point over larger competitors. In cases like this, it is important to make your local roots clear and reposition the bigger brands as strangers, or far away disconnected rivals.

 

#2 Make Yourself Useful

Meaningful content is the great equaliser, lifting profiles to that of much larger competitors, and many haven’t taken advantage of this. Creating content (like this blog) isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly cost-effective and it pays off. People value free ‘how to’ content that helps them deliver on their projects.

To have an impact, your content must be informative and express actionable and innovative ideas that matter to your customer base while at the same time relating to your brand’s voice. Persistence is the key to success; whether you maintain a blog page or multiple social feeds, it’ll take weeks even months before you notice any traction. Therefore, try to produce content that’ll be valuable to your audience long term. “5 tips to lose weight in the New Year” might be prevalent now, but not in July.

If education isn’t your end game, then simply showcase what you do and do it well. Clean Skin Coffee Co in Brisbane produces cool videos and images that feature their beautiful coffees and cakes, and their Instagram boasts almost 20k followers. And if that number doesn’t impress you, check out your local grocery stores following (assuming it has one),

Ensure you develop your content with consumer intimacy in mind, this is key versus large brands.

 

#3 Invest Online

Yes, it may seem a digital agency telling you to invest in online advertising feels obvious. But it’s because we know it works!

Your marketing budget should be focused on online growth. Whether that be through Google Ads, SEO or, social media management, traditional advertising is going the way of the dinosaurs and everything is shifting online.

In 2021, more than ever, your content creation plan as well as your advertising dollars need to be totally focused online. And, if you’re a small-medium business then we’re ready to offer you a tailored solution.

I’m not going to delve deep here if you keep scrolling our blog pages you’ll find hundreds of tips and tricks to help your business expand online. They’re waiting to be read!

 

Call SponsoredLinX today on 1300 859 600 today for your small business solutions! 

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