Advertising 101: How to get started with Brand Building
The way to get started with branding is by knowing your mission, your vision, and your values. It goes beyond a logo, and beyond a color scheme, it’s about what you stand for. The many different ways that it shows up in your work and when you put yourself out there. Your brand and your branding are more about how your customers feel about you and what they experience when they interact with your business.
Documentation Is Important
This is why documentation is important. You should document the details of your unique processes. Remember that you are a superhero and you need to document your origin story, and how you help people. The other hero of your story is your customers. Ask yourself who your customers are and why they come to you, why do you work with them? If you’re able to document that and know exactly who you are and it’s going to help you as you put yourself out there.
It’s a similar thing with Under Armour and Nike. They sell the same product, but they have different messages and a different spin to their work. How they show up in the marketplace is quite different, and that is the difference a brand makes.
The next thing you want to do when it comes to advertising is to just start. You can pay someone to help you begin, but if you don’t have much of a budget, you can do it yourself by just hitting the promote button on Instagram or “boost this post” on your Facebook feed. After you get it started, you can go in and start customizing it.
Photo Credit: Rik at Old Souls Custom Creations
Budgeting Strategy
Begin with a $50 budget or whatever you can afford, and just develop your strategy from there. It’s about testing out your ideas and getting more people to follow your Instagram. That’s how you start getting your name and brand out there, and especially if you make good content you’ll show up on the explore feed and you’ll start to attract the right people.
That’s it, know yourself, know your brand, and start testing things out. Put $10-$50 towards testing your advertising methods, try out some ideas and see what works.