Want to nail your branding without breaking the bank?  Not only is it possible, but it also makes excellent business sense! If you have limited resources, you need to make them stretch as far as possible.
That means getting creative about how you approach your branding, and gaining valuable skills as you learn how to do things yourself where possible.

You can achieve a lot when branding on a budget – from designing your logo to creating your own website.

In this blog, you’ll find out why a bootstrapping mindset is so important when it comes to branding and learn some great tips and tools to help you get started.

Branding On A Budget – What You Can Achieve With Bootstrapping

Embracing A Bootstrapping Mindset With Your Branding

Business owners are pretty adept at bootstrapping, particularly in those early days of building a new business. Most of us don’t start with enormous budgets to pour into branding, marketing, and PR, so we roll our sleeves up and figure out how to do things ourselves.

Embracing a bootstrapping mindset is all about a “can-do” attitude. And while some things are better left to the professionals, there are plenty of branding tasks you can take care of yourself.

Maybe you already have some of the essential skills needed to tackle branding on a budget, or perhaps you can commit a few hours every week to develop these skills by watching video tutorials, reading how-tos, or completing an affordable online course.

What Can You Achieve When Branding On A Budget?

At the core, branding is all about defining what your business is about, what you stand for, and how you want your audience to perceive you.
And who better to decide all that than you? Whether you’re creating the tangible or intangible elements of your brand, you can DIY with the right tools and guidance.

Your visual elements can all be developed by you – even if you have zero experience with design. That doesn’t mean you should be okay with producing low quality or unaligned assets. Take the time to get it right by choosing the right tools and doing your research.

Make sure your branding is consistent throughout all the elements. That means paying attention to the details: like creating a colour palette for your brand and using Hex colour codes to ensure consistency.
Let’s look at some of the key branding steps you can bootstrap:

Understanding your target audience

The key to successful branding is creating materials and messages that appeal to your audience. The best way to do this is by understanding your audience's needs, challenges, and interests.

Developing your brand identity and voice

What five words describe your brand? If your brand were a person, how would you talk about them? What language will you use in your written content? What are your values? What do you want to be known for?

Design a logo

Whether you go for a font-based logo or choose a picture, you don’t need a graphic design degree for this. There are plenty of fantastic digital tools to help you. Canva is a great place to start. You can also create a huge range of other brand assets with their free templates.

Choose your fonts and colours

Again, the internet makes this a piece of cake. Play around with palettes and typography on one of the many digital platforms until you choose the perfect style for your brand.

Create your own personal branding photos

You don’t need a professional photographer to create high quality, eye-catching branding photos: all you need is a camera phone and a willingness to learn. Check out my courses and classes that teach you how to turn your selfies into pro personal branding photos.

Build a website and start a blog

Customise your own site using WordPress or use one of the many site builders out there (such as Squarespace or Wix) to get your website branding on a budget taken care of. Then, start a weekly or monthly blog to build your brand recognition and authority. Use free tools like Keywords Everywhere to help you nail your SEO.

Get Started With Branding On A Budget

Ready to start branding on a budget? You can find some more fantastic tools and advice to get started here on my blog. Before you know it, you’ll have a brand you love and a style that fits – without emptying your pockets.

Then, you can level up all those DIY branding efforts with some profesh looking DIY Branding Photos. Check out my online courses here.