Foolproof brand design tips for small businesses

Luckily, you can put your struggles behind you because you no longer have to sacrifice your brand’s design because cash is tight. All you need are a few brand design tips for small businesses that won’t empty your pockets. And guess what? That’s exactly what we have for you.

Design your brand around your target audience

Your brand exists to serve your target audience, meaning you have to design it around them to sell to them. You achieve that by defining who they are and then defining your brand to suit.

Your first step for creating a brand that consumers relate to is building a customer persona to understand your audience. This is where market research comes into play, and all it costs you is time. 

You figure out who your target audience is by researching the platforms they use when searching for brands in your market, their demographics, such as age, gender, location, education, and employment, and discovering their pain points, the what and why they need a brand like yours.

When you discover who your target audience is, it will guide your branding strategy, resulting in a brand people will organically gravitate towards and trust. And those are things money can’t buy.

You can use these tools to help you discover your target audience:

• Keywords Everywhere: It’s a free keyword research tool that provides CPC information on a chosen keyword and its search volume. It’s an excellent way to uncover which keywords your audience use when searching for your products or service.  
• Facebook Analytics: Provides numerous demographic information pertaining to your current customers.
• Social Mention: Tells you when your brand is mentioned, and across 100 social media networks, so you know how customers perceive your brand. 
• Statista: Provides invaluable statistics in graph form on over 600 industries.

Developing your brand identity and voice can save you money

One of the most important brand design tips for small businesses is defining your brand identity and voice. Once you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to establish a strong brand identity so you stand out from your competitors.  

When you create your brand identity, you give it a voice, the tone you’ll use to communicate with your public. Your tone consists of your brand values, goals, what they represent, and ultimately how people will feel when they first see your brand.

Give your tone of voice some thought and what it is you want your brand to say. If you’re in a professional market, then you should use a sincere and authoritative voice; on the other hand, if you’re an outdoor adventure brand, then your tone would be exciting and rugged.

Once you have your tone, create content that supports it. Such as your blog, emails, social media, and web content, as the secret to a brand voice that gets its message across is consistency.

Build a high UX website cheaply

Gone are the days when you had to mortgage your house to build a high UX website because now you create a drag and drop website and build one relatively cheaply. 

And these sites enable even the most technically challenged business owners to build one in a matter of days, and depending on the size you need, even hours. Making them the perfect solution for businesses on a budget.

Here are four sites that can make your brand look like it invested heavily in your website design:

• Simbla: If your business has technical needs, this is an excellent choice with an online database and integrated application. 
• Weebly: An easy-to-use platform that offers highly responsive web design.
• Strikingly: If all you need is a clean-looking landing page with a CTA (call to action), Strikingly provides a polished, optimized, single-page design.
• Wix– You’ve probably heard the name before, and for a good reason. There’s not much you can’t do with their intuitive interface, and their customer support is legendary.  

Create a logo design brief

A logo design brief traditionally outlines the fundamentals about your business that you’d provide a designer, including elements such as market, target audience, and logo style.

Logos are an essential element in branding because they’re a visual that instantly connects with our emotions and can create cohesion throughout your marketing platforms. So much so that large corporations spend tens of thousands designing theirs to ensure their brand is instantly recognizable and stays in the viewer’s memory.

However, you can cut out the expense of hiring a logo designer and instead use a logo creator, you can create a professional logo at a fraction of the price – usually about $20. 

These innovative AI machine learning tools can create market and consumer-relevant logos in minutes. All you have to do is answer niche-related questions and then click and drag until you have the one you feel represents your business. You can try this using free logo maker tools.

Use visuals with your branding

90% of information transmitted to our brain is visual, and we process them 60,000X than written content. It’s why visuals are now the driving force behind successful brands, and social media platforms like Instagram enable brands of all sizes to use them for their marketing campaigns.

Visuals create the look and feel of your brand, and your goal is to use ones that match your tone of voice. 

You find the right visuals for your brand by creating a brand style guide. A brand style guide is an excellent way of bringing all the visuals you’ll be using together, ensuring they suit and complement one another. Elements you should include are your logo, color palette, infographics, photography, and video. 

If you already have a website, ensure any visuals you’ve chosen complement it, as your site is often your leading business real estate, so your overall marketing look has to be consistent with your shop front.

Starting a blog is a great investment

Not everyone’s a born writer, and most of us don’t give blogging much thought. But it’s well proven that a blog can be hugely beneficial to a brand, especially one on a budget, as all it costs you is time. That’s why you will it’s good to learn the basics of good small business blog writing yourself. But if you don’t have the time or blogging isn’t your forte, you can outsource at an affordable price.

Paying for traffic using ads and using high-tech conversion strategies aren’t cheap, so one of the most beneficial brand design tips for small businesses is driving traffic on your website by writing relevant, helpful content over advertisements every time. 

Create valuable content and reap the rewards

Content, however, goes beyond your blog.

Content marketing is still the driving force behind the internet and everything on it, especially when building a brand. It provides you with a golden opportunity to establish yourself as an industry expert and go-to resource in your marketplace. 

When you achieve that, people will trust you and choose your brand before your competitors. 

The key to a successful content marketing strategy is creating relevant and helpful content that your target audience needs. It also comes back to our earlier tip relating to your brand voice and using it throughout your content, as this reinforces who your brand is, why you exist, and how you can benefit your audience. 

Social media is free, use it to your leverage advantage

Social media is an essential brand design tip for small businesses on a tight budget. It’s because social media has quickly stepped forward and become a leading platform for brand marketing. There are numerous ways to use it to increase your brand awareness, run marketing campaigns and connect with your target audience.

Such as affordable Facebook ads that specifically target your audience’s demographic, encouraging people to like and share your brand posts and product images, and using links to connect your visuals to your website.

And now, there are free tools that enable you to consistently promote your brand and interact in real-time with your customers. Like a social media manager that automates your scheduling calendar and plans your post-release times on all your social channels, ensuring you post at the times your audience is most active. 

Conclusion

There are amazing brand design tips for small businesses that will only cost your time. Being curious about new trends, learning new skills, and improving your knowledge is “the secret” behind the success of your small business. Knowing you have to be the man behind everything might sound overwhelming at first, but implementing these tips will make the process easier and entertaining.

First-hand tips for using TikTok marketing for small business

Small business owners agree that with TikTok’s growing popularity, trending content, influencer marketing, and advertising, you will capture an audience and even grow your brand. Although TikTok attracts a young audience, using TikTok marketing for small business can put a spotlight on your brand, as it is the most widely used social platform.

Not sure how to do it? Here is the best first-hand advice you can get, from small business owners who are already down that road. Keep reading to learn from their experience.

Because TikTok’s algorithm heavily rewards momentum, some small businesses experiment with external growth tactics to kickstart engagement. While organic growth should always be the long‑term strategy, creators who feel stuck sometimes look into options like buy TikTok followers to create initial social proof. This doesn’t replace authentic content, but it can make a new account look more established, which may slightly increase profile clicks during the first few weeks of posting. 

Be brief and to the point in your messaging

TikTok lets you be very strategic in your audience targeting and gives smaller advertisers and content creators the same tools as the bigger spenders. My biggest tip to businesses looking to break into using TikTok is to be brief and to-the-point in your messaging.

Rob Freedman, VP of Marketing at Fourlane

Don’t overspend on production

As a platform that places increased emphasis on younger demographics, it is an excellent way to attract 16-24 year-olds to your product or service. However, do not expect an immediate ROI. Rather, use it as another source of validation along the customer acquisition funnel. 

Specifically, small businesses should utilize music to successfully do TikTok marketing for small business. More than anything else, however, don’t spend an extensive amount of your marketing budget on production. The most effective source for TikTok is lo-fi mobile phone videos that are simple, 15-30 seconds, and easy to understand.

Ryan Craver, Co-founder of Mallary by Matthew

Be and look comfortable

You need your videos to be shared and liked so that they continue to reach more people. If you look uncomfortable or forced, the content won’t work for TikTok. TikTok is less about refinement and more about personality.

Khari Washington, Owner of 1st United Realty and Mortgag

Collaborate with smaller influencers

TikTok is a large beast that can fail very quickly from a business content perspective. When advertising on TikTok, utilize influencers. Find smaller influencers and partner with them to help promote your products.

B2C does the best when selling on TikTok, it is very difficult to sell B2B on a platform that is dedicated to mainly Gen Z and younger millennials. If you are not interested in partnering with influencers, stick to either content focused on humor or information. Those are the 2 genres that receive the best engagement on TikTok. 

Anthony Santomo, CEO of Gourmet Growth

Post “work in progress” videos

My advice to people just starting out posting on TikTok would be to stay consistent and don’t get discouraged! Shorter videos are liked better by the TikTok algorithm. Don’t take it too seriously and try to post once a day or every other day! Engage with the community you’re in and interact with your followers.

Chloe Sisson, Outreach Coordinator for Zen Media

Host contests and giveaways

The one piece of advice I would give is to collaborate with TikTok Influencers. You don’t always have to hire the most popular influencers as you can hire micro or nano-influencers who you can partner with to help you get results. These smaller creators may even garner more brand engagement than their larger counterparts.

Sometimes, you may benefit from user-generated content but this will only happen if your business or content is trending. This is why it is important to be very creative while generating content.

Austin Dowse, CEO at Aimvein

Marketing on TikTok with product placement

Product placement with influencers is a special form of advertising for brands that are looking for visibility on TikTok. Unlike traditional ads that interrupt our viewing experience, product placement enables brands to be visible on TikTok in the most “natural” way possible. 

TikTok marketing for small business means you have a chance to create a non-invasive social media strategy, minimize the risk of ad-skipping, and getting the attention of people who may be difficult to reach with conventional advertising.

But as every social media platform has pros and cons, there are some downsides with TikTok as well. Unfortunately, finding the right TikTok influencers to work with can be difficult and TikTok’s dominantly young audience might not be appealing for some brands.

So before spending your time creating your marketing strategy, or agree to collaborate with an influencer, do your research well so you will maximize your chances to achieve the desired results.

TikTok marketing for small businesses can be incredibly effective, especially for those targeting younger audiences like Generation Z and Millennials. The platform’s emphasis on trends, viral content, and authentic, lo-fi videos makes it a unique and powerful tool for brand visibility. However, it’s important to be aware of TikTok disadvantages, particularly its sketchy privacy and safety controls. These concerns have led to bans in some countries and companies, making it essential for businesses to weigh the risks before fully committing to a TikTok marketing strategy. Understanding these potential drawbacks allows you to make informed decisions and take necessary precautions when using the platform.

Charles Bisaillon, Founder of TikTokPlacement 

When using TikTok marketing for small business, content is king

We already know how effective video marketing for small businesses is, but not every brand has the resources to create professional video content.

Therefore, the most amazing part is that TikTok is the new home of homemade vertical video, and as a result, your content does not have to look professionally produced in the same way that a traditional ad would. You can see what type of content is popular by using the ‘Discover’ feature, to check out trending content. 

As with other platforms, hashtags are also a key way of getting your posts in front of the relevant audience – pick three or four pertinent hashtags and don’t go overboard here. If you bandwagon the most popular hashtags but your video is irrelevant, it’ll be ignored, and looked upon unfavorably by the algorithm.

Reece Halkett, Digital Marketing Manager at Better Agency

Is TikTok advertising worth it?

What this means is that there are some routes that can provide major ROI and others that might completely fail. It’s entirely dependent on the business and how it exists on the platform. There are routes like traditional advertising, which places ads in users’ feeds similar to Instagram. These are great for lower-funnel KPIs, where the intent is to drive purchases on specific products. 

So, if you choose TikTok advertising besides the organic social media marketing, is entirely worth it as long as you have at least a few hundred dollars in marketing budget to test and learn. Perhaps more than any other platform, the creative execution of the ads is extremely important, as younger generations are increasingly more adept at tuning out — and calling out — brands who act (and are) out of touch. 

As with all advertising and marketing services, it, of course, helps to hire an outside expert to execute on the platform if you’re able to afford it. If not, simply learning more about the platform and its potential can get you started. In no time, TikTok will be as essential to your marketing spend as Facebook and Instagram. 

Sam Hoffman, Freelance TikTok consultant

The 3 golden rules for TikTok Marketing

TikTok brings a lot of opportunity and visibility for businesses, especially the B2C ones. If done right, TikTok can even be a launching platform where someone can test an idea and have a community before they even have something to offer.

This is what happened to my project, I started TikTok before I had anything to sell, grew my account to 170k followers, then started to monetize it.

Here are 3 tips for businesses on TikTok:

Don’t rush it!

TikTok is a new way of communicating, this is why you should take the time to understand it before posting. In order to gain visibility, you must adapt your content. Reusing an old marketing video might not fit. Spend a few hours just observing, scrolling the for you page.

It’s not Instagram

People want the entertainment, the “quick win”, to have fun or learn something. Showing off isn’t enough, you need to bring value.

Follow the trend

Keep an eye on what’s trending and adapt it to you. Don’t be scared to dance or be silly, this is your chance to show your human side. Do challenges, use the viral songs, but make sure TikTok owns the right or it’s free to use.

Claire-Lise Laplace, freelance TikTok consultant

Conclusion

All in all, TikTok marketing for small business has proven extremely effective for B2C businesses whose target audience are generations Z and Y. So if you have the dance moves and don’t mind showing your humorous side, this platform is perfect for you.

However, you should take into consideration that TikTok’s sketchy privacy and safety controls and practices are the reason why many companies and countries have banned it.

12 steps to being a better boss

Being a better boss tomorrow is often easier said than done, but you have us. We searched the globe and managed to find the best advice on how to be a better boss from people who are indeed bosses themselves.

As experts in this field, they all shared the most important things you must do in the name of being a good boss. And don’t be so sure that you know what they are, keep reading. Most of them will surprise you. That’s a guarantee.

Be supportive

Employees are people, and they can make mistakes. How you handle mishaps reveals who you are as a boss. If you are asking yourself how to be a good boss – recognize that employees benefit from support and mentorship, but most of them are more likely to use a reward/punishment scheme to deter bad conduct. 

If an employee excels in a particular field, the talent should be recognized and grown. The ability to harness the strengths of others to accomplish a shared purpose is one of the most important qualities of a successful boss. 

It’s important to take care of each employee’s strengths and weaknesses and guide them individually. Rather than targeting skill gaps, focus on filling them by guiding employees through their flaws and increasing their confidence in new areas.

Pranchil Murray, Head of Customer Success at Malwarefox

Have a clear vision

Well, I believe that being a good boss requires having a clear vision. A boss’s ability to successfully lead his or her team depends on having a clear view of what they want to do at work and where they want their team to go.

A good boss is someone who guides a group of people in the same direction, whether that direction is towards getting more customers or increasing sales volume. If you want to know how to be a better boss, first you must understand the big picture of the organization, including its vision, purpose, and strategic objectives, before determining how your unit, department, or team fits into the overall company vision.

Jason McMahon, Digital Strategist at Bambrick

Listen

YY Lee, Director of Zoewebs

Employees want to put more effort in with bosses who are passionate about all aspects of the business, including employees.

Elliot Kim, Co-Founder and Finance and Operations Head at Brevitē

Be patient

Greg Berry, Founder and CEO of Municibid

Trust your employees

Give your employees trust from the start and do not make them earn your trust. By doing this, you are being a better boss and you are empowering your employees to demonstrate that they are individuals, with unique ideas and perspectives to add to the company that feels the freedom to be independent thinkers and not micro-managed.

If an employee feels like they are walking on eggshells to earn trust before they can really blossom then everyone loses. The caveat however is that if an employee breaks your trust as a boss, there are few ways for that employee to redeem themselves from my perspective and they likely are not a long-term fit.

Jaclyn Strauss, CPA/Founder at My Macro Memoir

The ability to trust their employees is one of the traits of a great boss. Trusting the employees will not only empower them but also will give them a sense of value, which in turn will make them more productive and sincere with their job.

Being able to trust their employees also means that they do not micro-manage, which is a hassle not only to themselves but also to the employees as well.

Seb Hall, Founder & CEO of Cloud Employee

Give feedback

Continuous feedback on employees’ performance in satisfying expectations is the answer to how to be a good boss. Assist them in recognizing when they are performing well and communicating when they are not meeting the criteria.

This may be accomplished by routine coaching of personnel. Mention something they are doing well. If you notice something that needs to be changed, make a note of it as soon as possible. Oftentimes, employees are unaware that they are not meeting the criteria.

Coaching and developing them is the manager’s role. The boss is responsible for informing them when they violate customer service standards. For instance, if management overhears staff being nasty to a client over the phone, they should call attention to it and teach them how to communicate more effectively with consumers. If this does not occur, the customer experience may be negatively impacted, and the employee may be unaware that their behavior is wrong.

Mike Chappell, Founder of Formspal

Be decisive

A boss needs to play a constructive and direct role. I believe in a stress-free and healthy working atmosphere, which can be achieved by providing proper and clear job instructions to the employees.

I need to ensure that my employees understand exactly what they are expected to do so that they are not frustrated and overwhelmed by any sort of ambiguity. This results in you being a better boss by increasing worker motivation and morale, which boosts business efficiency. 

Setting clear expectations encourages employees to do their best and be on the same page as me, reducing miscommunication. Finally, when there are set goals and workplace orders, employees experience a sense of pride when they meet the deadlines or complete the assigned tasks.

Jeff Johnson, Owner/Acquisition Manager at Simple Homebuyers

Share the credit

One of the common demotivating things that some bosses do is reaping all the credit and either neglecting or ignoring to accept the input, participation, and effort of others. That’s literally the definition of poor leadership.

Being a good boss means always supporting and appreciating the input of staff and crew members. It uplifts the characters of the team when a boss openly points out the great work and unique contributions that the team has done in creating a particular project a success. It also encourages collaboration and confidence among the team.

Sharing credit among others does not cost the boss anything though it has a great return on investment. When righteous behavior and achievements are honored, recognized and acknowledged, it is possible to be repeated.

Daniel Carter, SEO manager at Property Investments

Offer mentorship

To be a good boss, create a culture of mentorship in your company because it will encourage your employees to grow with the business. One of the best traits of a successful leader is passing down the knowledge they’ve accumulated. You can start doing that with something as easy as recommending business movies or even entrepreneurial podcasts just as a way to show them that you notice them and have a desire to grow their talent within the company.

Having said that, the secret to being a better boss entails further involvement by creating and providing opportunities for personal and professional development within the organization. Create an internal hub where seasoned workers have the opportunity to volunteer by mentoring new hires. Also, develop criteria to become a mentor to incentivize others to work towards it. Accountability is also key for creating a culture of mentorship, as it helps ensure your business’s leaders stay on top of their tasks, progress, and inspire others to strive for advancement.

Nathan Liao, Founder of CMA Exam Academy

Be empathic

Before I hire employees, I make sure that I can rely on them in the future but I don’t forget that they are people too and they are at different stages of their life. Some are just learning and need a helping hand; others are going through monumental periods in their life outside of work, and some have many years of experience.

Being empathetic means you can relate to these employees and understand their perspectives. When something happens or I need to react to something, I take a minute to try and understand where they are coming from and what their situation is. I believe that a good boss should be empathetic and can help build trust, bring the best out of everyone, and build long-lasting relationships that make a difference.

Lindsey Allard, CEO and Co-Founder of PlaybookUX

Be open for communication

How to be a good boss? Simple. Have an open-door system and be ready for juniors when they need you. Convenience is critical; it grants you an advantage because employees seem comfortable reaching out and communicating to you primarily before a problem occurs. Even if you are managing a remote team, make sure your online communication is flawless and you are easy to get to.

That way you don’t end up being a boss who is working around helter-skelter wildly setting out fires because employees were hesitant to approach you in the first place before the fire was inaugurated.

A friendly boss is committed more by juniors and develops a culture of high confidence and more comprehensive employee engagement in their work. That waythe employer reduces the stress in the workplace and employees are more comfortable sharing with the boss their ideas, feedback, suggestions, clarifications, and opinions that could be relevant for the success of the company.

Chris Nutbeen, Founder & CEO of Nuttifox

Reward your employees

Offer training opportunities to motivate employees to advance their skills. Incorporate weekly check-ins between managers and employees. Send out monthly surveys to gather anonymous feedback from staff on company culture, work-life balance, and overall attitude towards work. Listen and make positive changes based on the feedback received, so you won’t end up with toxic company culture or/and unhappy employees.

Kelli Lane, Chief Marketing Officer at Genexa

Conclusion

Evaluate your reason for exiting

You will need to evaluate your reason for leaving. Ask yourself, why are you leaving? Are you leaving to follow a dream or have more personal time? These are pull factors, or in other words, these ideas are pulling you in another direction.

Alternatively, are you leaving because you are bored with your current venture, reaching retirement age, or health problems making staying impossible? These are push factors, simply put, they are factors that are pushing you out of your current venture.

Know what type of exit you want

Next is to determine what type of exit you want; this is where you decide what kind of sale you want to make and how much control you will retain when you are done. Here are the different types of exits you may have:

Outright and walk away

This type is where you sell all of your shares in your company and walk away completely. You will have no say or control in anything else that pertains to the company.

If you are going for an outright exit, make sure that you time it so that you receive the most value for your sale. You will need to show prospective buyers why your company is valuable to receive the best payout.

Recapitalization

This exit is where you sell part of your equity and retain control of running part of the company. You would choose this type of exit if you still want to have a say in the future of the company while being able to go after new ventures.

Liquidation

If you are excited because you are tired and do not see a future for your company, liquidation would probably be the way to go. Liquidation means you sell the real assets of the company instead of the company as a whole. This type of exit is suitable when you feel your company may be hard to sell.

Hire a COO

In this exit, you will retain control of the decisions in the company, but a Chief Operating Officer will be running the day to day necessities. Exiting this way allows you to continue to draw a salary, be in control and still have time for the other things that are driving your exit.

Become a chairperson

As a chairperson, you will no longer have a role in the company, and someone else will be making the decisions. Becoming a chairperson means that you will be relinquishing your control of the company yet maintaining your shares and dividends.

Hand it down

This exit is when you give your company to your family to run and control. If your company is doing well, you might choose to hand it down to your children or other family members.

Employee buyout

In an employee buyout, your employees will buy and take over the company. This is an excellent option if your company is doing well and your employees have the knowledge to run and control the company on their own.

Generally speaking, a manager would buy the company or several employees may pull together to buy you out and retain the company and their employment.

Evaluate the value of your business

You will need to get a professional who knows how to value a business to find out the exact value of your company. After you seek the value from a professional, you will need to decide what your company is worth to you. When you have decided on a value, compare it to that of the professional. Then decide if you want to sell your business or try to raise the revenue and profits to increase the valuation.

You will know you are ready to sell when your opinion matches that of the professional valuation. You will also need to consider your reason for exiting. Your reasoning will play a large part in your assessment of your business.

Know what role you want to play after the exit

A crucial part of any exit planning is deciding what role you want to play in the company after the sale. Depending on the type of sale you may choose a lump sum and walk away from the company altogether.

Another possibility is staying on after the sale to allow the new owners time to become familiar with their new acquisition. You will decide if you want to stay on after the sale and for how long you are willing to stay. You will need to consider this carefully. Do you want to stay and receive a more substantial sum, or cut ties and walk away with a lump sum after the sale?

Know what role you want to play after the exit

The final step is setting your achievement goals. What do you want to achieve from the exit of your company? For this, you will need to answer two questions. Is it important that you get the maximum amount for your company and are you willing to stay after the sale and for how long?

If you are financially secure outside of the sale and you want to maintain control of your company, your best option is to hire a COO to handle the daily business of running your company. If you want to walk away or stay for a short amount of time after the sale, your best option would be selling to a strategic buyer.