How To Build Your Brand: Branding Basics For Small Businesses

If you’re building an online business, you need to think about more than what you’re offering to your clients or customers. You also need to know how to build a brand.

A strong brand is more than just a logo and a color scheme. Your brand is the foundation of your relationship with your audience. It’s the feeling your company evokes, the values it represents, and the personality it conveys.

It’s the essence of your business, the story you tell, and the emotional connection you build with your customers.

If you’re new to the online business world, building a brand can seem like the most overwhelming thing in the world. If you don’t have any previous experience with marketing, then it’s even harder. How do you possibly distill your personality and vision into one cohesive package?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t freak out! Yes of course, you can always hire out for someone who can help you create a brand vision for your business.

However, rest assured you can do a whole lot of branding on your own–even without a lot of graphic design or marketing experience. You might even have fun while you do it–no really!

If you’re ready to get started building a brand for your small business, then here are some powerful tips to get you started:

How To Brand Your Small Business: Branding Basics For Small Businesses

1. Focus On Your Brand Core Values

Your brand is ultimately about who you are–especially if you’re a solopreneur. Clearly defined values create a sense of identity for your brand and allow customers to connect with you on a deeper level.

Every strong brand starts with a clear understanding of your company’s mission, vision, and values. What do you stand for? What problems do you solve?

Journal it out if you’re not sure or use this list of words to use as brand inspiration:

For Emotional Connection:

To Show Off Your Personality:

Brand Values:

Brand Perception:

Brand Experience:

2. Know Your Clients/Customers/Audience

Understanding your ideal client or customer is critical to both your business and brand. If you don’t know who you’re speaking to, how on earth will you find them or attract them? So think about it: who is your ideal client or customer? What are their needs, desires, and challenges? How can your business & brand serve them?

Take knowing your audience to the next step by building out a Dream Customer Avatar. Who is he or she specifically? Get solid on where they live, where they work, and what their interests are.

This exercise seems kind of crazy at first but IMO, it’s magical. Here’s your chance to get super specific about the people you want to work with, so that you can actually manifest them into you.

3. What’s Your Hero Story?

At the beginning of most action or adventure movies, we meet the protagonist. However, the protagonist is not yet the hero. They’re dealing with a certain problem or circumstance and they’re struggling with self-doubt and fear. That’s what makes them relatable–and that’s why we keep watching the movie: to watch them overcome hurdles and blossom into the hero of the story.

It’s the same thing with you and your brand. No one wants to be told what to do by some fake-perfect person. We resonate way more with someone who can share their authentic story with us: where were they before? What were they struggling with? How did they overcome it? And how did they turn all of that into the business they have today?

You don’t have to get into every ugly detail of your life! Boundaries are still important. But you are your own best testimonial. It’s time to start sharing your story to illustrate how you can help other people do the same thing.

3. Find Your USP: Brand Differentiation

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is key to building a brand. There are loads of coaches and astrologists in the world already. But what makes you unique and different?
Don’t you dare use that competition as a sign that you shouldn’t be doing what you want to do! Use it as inspiration.

There’s no one else out there quite like you…so what is it about you that’s different? Generic = boring, unmemorable, and probably not financially successful. Better to stand out rather than fade away into the background.

4. Find Your Brand Voice

What’s your tone? Are you friendly and approachable, or sophisticated and polished? Let your voice reflect your personality and connect with your audience.

For most of us solopreneurs, the key is to be authentic to you. If you swear IRL, then make swearing part of your brand. This will let you be able to make authentic content on the fly. Trust me–people can sense when you’re being fake, even through a phone screen.

Your language and delivery might not be for everyone–but that’s okay! Part of finding your unique group of aligned fans and clients is about letting go of the people who just don’t resonate.

Embrace your strengths. Never be afraid to showcase your personality or the feminine perspective you bring to your business.

5. Create A (Simple) Cohesive Design

This is the part of the branding process that everyone wants to focus on first. However, unless you have the other parts down first, you might be designing with the wrong goals in mind.

That means: Choose a logo and color palette that reflects your brand personality. Pick out a few fonts to use. And use high-quality visuals that represent your ideal customer.

While creative vision is important, consider outsourcing design tasks if needed to ensure a professional visual presentation.

However, these days there are many free design tools available to help you create professional-looking graphics, even without extensive design experience. Hello Canva!</a

6. Brand Recognition (Consistency)

Once you’ve figured out the basics, be sure to stick with them. In other words: you shouldn’t be trying out a new font and color scheme every time you open Canva! Of course, things can change over time and in the beginning you might test things out a bit. But your overall aim to be as consistent as possible. You want your people to recognize your brand look across multiple platforms.

To make this easier, consider making a brand style guide to ensure consistency in your logo, colors, fonts, and messaging across your website, social media, and marketing materials. (This will become extra useful down the road when you can start hiring out design work.)

7. Leverage the Power of Community:

Finally, building a brand today often goes well beyond just who you are and what you do. It’s about mission and community building. So think about it: can you get people onboard with your mission? Can you make it bigger than just you? And how can you create a community to connect with your clients, customers, or even fellow entrepreneurs?

This typically takes some time but you can start the wheels in motion now. Share your journey, talk to your people, and collaborate. Aim to foster a sense of community around your brand in whatever way works best for you.

Forget Perfection

One common branding mistake people make is trying to get everything perfect. Of course you want to build a great brand but it’s also important to know that your brand will naturally evolve over time. There’s no need to freak out about getting it perfect and keeping that vision forever. Focus on getting the basics right and then move onto the money-making stuff ASAP!

(Hint: if you’ve spent three days in Canva trying to make the perfect logo, stop!)

So what did you think? Are you working on building a brand for your small online business? Which parts of your brand do you need help with the most?

By following these tips and focusing on building a strong brand, you start attracting your dream clients and turning your business dreams into your reality!

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You might also want to check out this post about overcoming your fear of failure or success, or why you need to learn copywriting.

How To Build Your Brand: Branding Basics For Small Businesses