Budget-friendly ways to build out your SMB’s brand assets

Brand strategy often begets business success. That’s partly because consistent branding creates trust and recognition. However, it’s also important for building long-lasting relationships with your current and would-be customers.

Strong branding is how good businesses differentiate themselves from the competition and how great businesses create endless opportunities for growth.

From the earliest stages of starting your business, it’s important to establish a few key digital marketing assets.

Creating basics like a logo and a website is the best place to start when building your brand. These low or no-cost branding resources make them easy and surprisingly inexpensive to set up.

First things first, your business needs a website. Regardless of your industry, no matter your size, you’ve got to have an online presence. It’s your megaphone to the world.

Not sure how to start building your website? Setting up a site can be done in as few as four steps, really!

1. Pick a hosting plan. Web hosting is what gets your site online. All the content associated with your URL is stored on servers maintained by the web building platform. Many offer free secure hosting options while others charge a monthly or annual fee.
2. Choose the perfect domain name. Your domain is essentially the name in your site’s address. (e.g.: www.perfectdomainname.com). Make sure it’s memorable, professional and represents your brand in a simple and succinct way. Most web design sites will help you check to make sure your preferred name is available and register it for a small fee. In most cases, you will need to pay to have your domain name renewed once a year.
3. Set up your site. Popular, inexpensive website building services like Wix, Squarespace and WordPress offer free, pre-built templates to help customers easily create their sites. They also make it easy to drag and drop elements so you can build a website without needing to know any code.
4. Design your logo. This business identifier is an essential symbol for any brand. Most companies use their logo to anchor their site and solidify their branding efforts. Some organizations choose to let their web builder design their logos along with their site, but it’s certainly not the only option.

Gone are the days when you need to hire an expensive graphic designer to create your logo. Now, there are tons of high-tech resources for cheap or free online logo designs:

1. Logomakr uses logo templates and user-friendly features to help you create and download your free logo.
2. Free Logo Design is an online software that works similarly. Choose from pre-established templates then use your cursor to move or resize text and images as needed.
3. Canva’s Online Logo Maker offers drag and drop design tools that even professionals use. The site also includes royalty-free fonts and stock images to make it your own.

If you want the option to make aftermarket changes to your logo, consider inexpensive logo design options like GraphicSprings and Designimo. Both allow you to utilize their design tools for free, but a payment of $19.99 and $29.95 respectively is required to download your logo.

Branding is the core of your marketing strategy. Clearly establishing it from the outset builds the foundation on which your entire enterprise will grow. With these attention-grabbing, impression-making marketing assets in tow, your OneAffiniti campaign is destined for greatness.