The Business Guide

Building a Brand on a Budget: Low-Cost Branding Strategies

• Jonathan Wagoner • Season 1 • Episode 9

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Building a brand doesn't require a hefty budget! Today, I share how I started my business from the ground up with minimal marketing dollars. From harnessing the power of online reviews on Yelp and Google to staying ahead of market trends, you'll discover how prioritizing customer feedback can cultivate a positive reputation and set you on a path to significant growth. Tune in for practical advice on leveraging digital tools and encouraging customer engagement to make your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Authenticity and vulnerability are key when networking within local groups, and I'll explain how setting realistic expectations and over-delivering can help build trust. Learn the value of participating in town halls and local expos to provide free, valuable information, establishing your brand presence without breaking the bank. We'll also explore the power of educational content and small promotional items in brand-building and the importance of patience and consistency as you cautiously invest in advertising to maximize your impact.

Avoid costly mistakes in website development and SEO with lessons from my personal journey. Discover how vehicle wraps can boost visibility and how low-cost social media ads with precise targeting can enhance your business presence. I'll share practical tips on local sponsorships and long-term, cost-effective strategies that ensure your brand is easily found when potential customers need your services. Join us for an episode packed with actionable advice to help you build your brand on a budget!

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, it's Jonathan Wagner and I want to welcome you back to another episode on our podcast, the Business Guide. Thank you for joining us today. Today's episode is building a brand on a budget and the low-cost branding strategies. Now, this is something that speaks to me. When I was first in business, I did everything I could and I completely understand. When you're in business, our marketing dollars are very sparse. We've got so many expenses between employees and our overhead of maybe our shop or our vehicles, whatever it is, and I know that our marketing budget can vary, but it is so important and so detrimental to your business that you need to make sure you are always on top of it. But how do you build it if you don't have any money or you have very little money? I'm going to go over everything today on what I did, some experiences there and I hope that it helps you in your business. Some experiences there and I hope that it helps you in your business.

Speaker 1:

So, starting out, obviously spent a ton of money on getting my vehicle dialed in so I could essentially I had to put a carpet cleaning machine in it. That was very expensive, loaded up with chemicals, really spent all of my money and left very few marketing dollars available to myself. So getting going in business I've talked about this before on a couple of the other episodes I had a very positive experience starting. Lots of friends and family definitely used me from the start, but after a month or two goes by, when you really start needing those real clients to start coming in and you need those clients finding you you really have to get creative. So one thing that I did is I reached out to my former boss. He was a small business owner in the field that I had chosen and I talked to him about a couple things. I talked to him about his marketing strategies. Of course, any competitor is not going to give you every single thing that they're doing. But you know, he told me something very I want to say very important, because it definitely benefited me and the community later, and I'll go into that.

Speaker 1:

So one thing that he mentioned was at the time, you know, online reviews were starting to kind of come up right. People were not really adapting with them. They weren't really embracing them. How are you going to make money off of online reviews? And this particular gentleman didn't have so much of a web presence. He was an old school kind of yellow page advertising kind of guy and that was dying out and his sales were seeing that and he was not adapting to the market. But he said something that really stood out to me. He said you know, there is a site called Yelp. It is where people go on and review your business and I have nothing but bad reviews on there and it has really harmed my business and harmed my sales. Now, years later, talking to him, it wasn't actually the negative Yelp reviews that he had gotten that had harmed his business. It was the lack of him adapting to new changes in the market and it going more digital and him not embracing that.

Speaker 1:

In my situation that night or excuse me, let me rewind he said if I were you I would do everything in my power to make sure that your business never shows up on Yelp. That night it was the first thing that I did. I said gosh, if other business owners are scared of this Yelp or negative reviews, I wanna give such a positive experience that my business would really stand out and I could use that as marketing. Now, little did I know. Once I was on Yelp and started getting reviews, I quickly became the highest rated carpet cleaner in my county very quickly and I only did that at the time with 12 reviews, because nobody was. You know, everybody had two or three reviews and they were negative. I really pushed everybody going on Yelp and saying, hey, could you leave me a review? Therefore, once I started to build that traction, I was always light years ahead of my competition and even speaking to my competition later that, some people that actually trailed behind me as I had 50 or 60 reviews, I would start meeting some of my competitors that were at 10 or 20 or 25, 30. And they would say, look, I can't keep up with you. You have so many good reviews that every time I get some you're always ahead of me. So I was ahead of the curve on the reviews at the time. That really made my business stand out. And when my business stood out, little did I know that people were actually now searching Yelp for my service and I was showing up and that was turning into dollars. So for a solid two or three years I was making a ton of money off of just having a good reputation. I wasn't spending any money, it didn't cost me anything.

Speaker 1:

So if you are new in business and you are starting out. You absolutely need a review listing. You need to do that on Yelp. You need to do it on Google, depending on different platforms. You know if you're a restaurant or you're a you know home service business. There are a couple other avenues that you can go down research best review platforms, but Google and Yelp are top. What I have seen with Yelp people have. You definitely have people that still use Yelp, but Google is such a huge platform. A lot of those reviews people really digest. So you definitely want to be on both of those platforms and it does work.

Speaker 1:

Now don't be discouraged that maybe your competitors have more reviews than you, because sometimes people will choose the newer business or whatever it is. So offer incentives to call you. Give a discount, not for leaving a review that violates most policies of either Google or Yelp or most platforms. Don't leave a you know $50 off for this review. That is a big no-no. Absolutely don't do that. But if you have a section where you can offer on Yelp, there's a section that you can put you know $50 off your first service. So you're encouraging those particular people to call service. So you're encouraging those particular people to call you. So, while your competitors may have more reviews, maybe you have a better deal and now you're interacting with that platform's reviewers. So that helped my business out tremendously in the first couple of years was reviews.

Speaker 1:

Now, I have said in previous episodes, there was something else that helped my business and it was print media. It was newspaper. That was a free article. That was done at the time, didn't cost me anything and brought me in quite a bit of business. But I was able to adapt. I knew that print wasn't going to work because once I started getting some business, I invested a couple marketing marketing dollars in print and that didn't really work for me. People were receptive of this free article and what it represented For me. It was who's new in business. So moving on from there and being able to advertise in print, it didn't work for my business. May work for yours, didn't work for mine and I moved on very quickly. So I then embraced the online platform.

Speaker 1:

So, as a small business owner, you need to get creative, you need to be crafty. You don't need to spend a lot of money. Google and Yelp they're free. They do have different paid things that you can do on it Google ads you can do. Google ads On Yelp. You can do ads, you can pay for different verified licenses, things like that, but you could definitely start very low budget if not free. Moving on guys.

Speaker 1:

Actually, before I move on, I want to say something about Google. Google is so powerful I think. The Google search engine, I think, takes up like 80% of the market. Use that to your advantage. When you have these Google reviews that says, you know best carpet cleaner, google is gonna take those and merge those later with your website and your presence and they're gonna make you come up better organically for best carpet cleaner. So it is important as you get those reviews, it is actually helping out SEO content later, and I will talk about SEO later in this episode. So I need you to know that these reviews are starting the foundation for your business, and if you're a business that unfortunately has a ton of negative reviews, or you plan on getting negative reviews, then this isn't going to work for you, okay. So another thing that worked pretty well for me when I was new in reviews then this isn't going to work for you, okay.

Speaker 1:

So another thing that worked pretty well for me when I was new in business, and this is so primitive, but so many people still do this was door hangers. I think at the time I got maybe you know 1,000 or 2,000 of them for 100 bucks, 200 bucks, and I know if you go online you can probably design them up and get them even cheaper. Now the door hangers that worked for me that were pretty successful and again this is adapting to everybody's business here. The door hangers that worked for me were educational door hangers. Now again, remember when I started business and I've spoken about this in the past I started as a carpet cleaner. That was a service that I knew people needed. In the past I started as a carpet cleaner. That was a service that I knew people needed. So when I was putting out door hangers, I was reflecting a discount on that service and an expiration date. Another service that I had offered was dryer vent cleaning. Now, for whatever reason, people did not care about a discount and I couldn't really give a super deep discount on dryer vent cleaning because I already had it set at a low price.

Speaker 1:

So what I did is I put out educational content. I put out how many homes have fire damage because of dryer vent fires. I put out educational content for these people old school on these door hangers. Now what I found was in older communities it didn't matter. I put out educational content for these people old school it worked tremendously. But in communities that were busy, maybe regular 30s like myself that have to go to work have to get the kids a little bit, if you would whereas the educational content worked for the people that could sit down and read it and take a moment to digest everything.

Speaker 1:

So you have to get creative when you're building your strategy and you have to know that you're not going to just do it and it's going to work. You need to have a plan of if this doesn't work, what am I going to do? Those door hangers worked very well when I was new in business and now, in the business model that I have, which is a restoration company, door hangers just don't work. So you have to customize it off of what works best for you and your business.

Speaker 1:

Now, another free thing and I've spoken about this in the past is networking your network of the circle that you belong in and the groups that you belong in are so crucial. But it can be low cost, it can be free and it is more of a long-term approach. But those people that you meet. If you genuinely build real relationships with them, they will use you from years to come. Now I've been in business a little over 12 years and some of those people that I have met from day one in business still use me and I use them to this date because we built an actual friendship. So networking groups are a great resource for you when you're new in business.

Speaker 1:

If you happen to have an in-demand service, they may work a little better for you right off the bat because you know, like in carpet cleaning, if somebody had dirty carpets they could call me versus restoration. They don't know when they're going to have a water or fire damage if they will ever have that. But building a relationship with them throughout the years maybe now their friends and family have had it or they've had it they have reached out. Versus when I was first in business and that carpet cleaning was a very in-demand service, they were able to use me right away. I could give a coupon.

Speaker 1:

Guys, don't be shy either when you're new in business. If you're in a networking group, stand up and say I am new in business and I don't know what I'm doing, but I know that I have a product and I know that I have the best product or want to be better, and I need your support. How can I get that? You'd be surprised at how many people will actually step up and help a fellow entrepreneur out to support the art of being a business owner. Don't be shy about that. And remember deliver what you're going to sell. So many times throughout business, I've heard people promise the world but they don't deliver. I like to set expectations low and over. Deliver. You should do the same. Moving on Now, in my situation, I'm going to tell you that this is something that is a free thing to do.

Speaker 1:

In my situation, where I use it. It doesn't always, it doesn't happen regularly, but this is where you, as a business owner, need to be creative. So I'm going to use this. I'm going to dub it as the power of town halls. Now, town halls could be obviously a town hall if something happened and your business could be there to support uh fellow and neighbors. Or it could be as simple as a club or a group in a certain area, and I will elaborate on that like a senior citizen community. So me being in the emergency service business, we unfortunately have catastrophic events, catastrophic event being maybe a downfall, a rain downfall or a catastrophic fire. Like I've said, I'm in California. We get wildfires so quickly.

Speaker 1:

There are normally town halls that are put together that give information to homeowners and we have positioned ourselves to move very quickly on that, where we give out free information very quickly to homeowners that need it. Now do I see a return in business on that? Absolutely. What am I providing my time? I go up and talk. I have some documents that have maybe been printed out. Now, through the years, we have put together actual marketing material that looks good, but essentially it's free material. You would be surprised at how many people say, wow, this person came out, they gave free information that I was able to digest and use and now, in return, I need their service. I'm going to call them. It works very well.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that we'll go to are and like I mentioned, what do I call them? More like expos. So they're not so much town halls but they're expos, and this is actually going to go into my next section, which would be local events. But these are events that get a group together, clubs or, you know, expos, where different businesses will come into those. You may have to pay for Some of the ones we do are free and you go out and you can provide educational content.

Speaker 1:

Now remember, we're not just immediately thinking our phones are going to ring. We are also trying to build a brand while we're doing this. So the Google reviews, the Yelp reviews, that is slowly building a brand of who your business is. It's not going to turn into phone calls overnight. Now, the door hangers, those might turn into some phone calls, but you're not so much building the brand. People are going to see your name. But how many times I've rolled up to my house and there's a couple business cards on my front door from somebody just walking by? They've put time and effort into it and they just threw a business card on my car or on my door that normally goes in the trash.

Speaker 1:

So if you're going to invest time and the resources to doing this, you need to do it right. You need to get creative. So again, networking group building a brand. You are slowly building a brand without spending the money. Everything that I've offered right now can be done free or very, very low cost. Some of these networking groups might have a $5, $20 buy-in. At each meeting you go to Town halls, you might have to put out some marketing material. The reviews are free. Door hangers are going to cost you, but this is slowly building a brand. So what I like to do at these local events and again, these town halls are very similar is I will provide educational content and, depending on if I have some little free chachis lying around or I've ordered some chachis for that event, I'll pass those out. I am slowly building a brand.

Speaker 1:

I do not expect my phone to ring overnight. That is something that you need to recognize as you go out into the community and you start building your brand. Your phone is not going to ring that night. Now there have been times where a couple days later, I actually get a phone call because it's like, hey, I saw you at this event and, ironically, I experienced this. Now, remember, my business and my business model is something that somebody may not ever need. Maybe their friends and families might need it, but they may never need it. So I'm consistently building a brand that I am there when you need me.

Speaker 1:

These local events, things like that, may work better for you. Let's say, you have a cookie baking business. You might be able to go to these events at a relatively low cost and sell your and you would immediately make money. So I know that there is a local cookie company that goes to these events and they're at every single one of them and they're at more events than I am. They are one building a brand. Obviously they want to sell cookies, so they're making, they're recouping some of their money there, but they're building the brand for when you need corporate event cookies or cupcakes for your wedding or cakes for your wedding, and that is where they're not only making money but they're building the brand. Now, moving on, when you actually start generating a little money, it is time to spend a little money without breaking the bank. Now, remember, advertising goes into so many different areas and, as small business owners, we don't have millions of dollars to spend like these big companies, so every dollar matters. Be very careful as you tiptoe into these different ventures.

Speaker 1:

Number one you need to invest in a website presence. Everybody needs a website. You don't know how many businesses that I've talked to in this day that we're in and they don't have a website or a performing website. They can't track any maybe of the customers that are calling or interacting with their site. They can't see the pages that they're interacting with or engaging with. It is very important to put a nice website. Now, for a service-based business, where we go to the client, it is very important that our website acts as our showroom. Think about opening up a tile store. You would invest a ton of money into maybe different tiled products and inventory and you would build out a showroom that reflects the beautiful tile that you are going to sell. You've spent a lot of money doing that. In the service-based business, we don't have that, but we need a great showroom for our clients to find us. So you need to invest in a good website. It's not something that you just throw together.

Speaker 1:

Once you've invested in a good website, it's time to start investing in SEO. If you don't know what SEO stands for, it is search engine optimization. So in my situation when I was a carpet cleaner, I needed to show up on Google for carpet cleaning in the city that I was located in. That is what SEO, or search engine optimization, ultimately does is. It takes your web page, your storefront, and it puts it on Google, and sometimes you show up on the third page or the second page and your ultimate goal is to get on the first page and sometimes, and hopefully the first position of Google, because we also live in an age where people aren't clicking. When was the last time you went to the fourth page of Google to find something you normally don't? So you really need to be on that first page.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately and I have been in this situation where I have spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars I have had so many people over promise and not deliver on my websites and my SEO, so you can really lose a lot of money. Every dollar counts in a small business, so that is one mistake that I made was I did not properly vet the people that were doing my work. Now, years later, in a business venture that I have gone into is I have actually excelled at everything online webpages, seo, ads so I am really good at doing that. You never know where your strong point's going to be, so if you find yourself tinkering around on your website and it works, that's great, but you need to do your research. If you don't know how to do these things, you need to do your research because we have a low budget where every dollar matters and SEO takes time. You're looking at maybe six months, so do you want to get to that six-month mark where you've spent all of that money to then realize it doesn't work.

Speaker 1:

Do your homework. Do your homework on the people that you hire. Look at their case studies, look at the results, look at their track record. These are important because this is a long-term approach. Now, for me in my business now, when I throw an ad out, it is very expensive for somebody to click that ad. For SEO, which I've built throughout the years, it is essentially free. I look at that as free. When we combine the two and I get an online lead now my cost per lead is much cheaper. So this is an approach and it's a long-term approach and also helps build your brand.

Speaker 1:

Something else that is very easy, especially if you're a service-based business. We should not have this argument, but I almost think that every single business should have this Wrap a vehicle. If you are driving for your business, wrap that vehicle. That is building a brand and gets people to see your name over and over again. Now, when I first started my business, I did something unique on my van and it really popped. I only had one van now at the time and as I started growing and clients were using me, they'd say, oh, I see your vans all the time, how big is your fleet? And it was just because I had a van that stood out, didn't have a lot of noise and it caught their attention and they just happen to see it all the time. So you can build your brand relatively low cost and vehicle wraps are not expensive. Now they do cost money, but once it's on, it's on.

Speaker 1:

I remember one year I decided because you know, also driving your work vehicle, I have a vehicle that is issued to me. Sometimes you get tired of it because you've always got your name on your business. Well, I had bought a truck and I said this truck for this year, this first year, I'm just going to drive it around with no wrap. It was the first time I had done it in business. I drove 20,000 miles that year and at the end of the year I was really kicking myself in the butt. That was 20,000 miles, that nobody saw my business's name. So I immediately got it wrapped and for the most part, if I can, my employees have take-home cars. It's a strategy. Not only does it help them out to maybe where they're not spending gas or whatever it is, but it also gets me into different neighborhoods and gets me into the same routes where people are seeing my brand. So vehicle wraps are very inexpensive on helping you build your brand.

Speaker 1:

Now moving on, something to play with social media ads. So everybody has seen a social media ad Facebook, instagram, youtube, nextdoor, you name it. Every single person has seen a social media ad. Those are relatively low cost, especially if you do them yourself. Now, you have to know what you're doing. So if you don't find somebody, but for the most part, they're very low cost, especially if you do them yourself. Now you have to know what you're doing. So if you don't find somebody, but for the most part, they're very low cost and you can really dial in your target audience.

Speaker 1:

A billboard on the side of a freeway could be anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. May work well for your business. Works horribly for my business. Business. Works horribly for my business. Now, as cars are passing that billboard, kids are seeing it. Different types of people are seeing this billboard, not your target audience. With Facebook, instagram and all these social media, you can dial in exactly who you need to see your ad and you can do it at a fraction of the cost. Just make sure you have a nice call to action. That's my little tip there.

Speaker 1:

With that being said, I want you to go in and explore a budget that you can put together, once you've got some stuff dialed in, to pilot some social media stuff, and it could be as quick. As you know, if you sell the cookies, take a nice picture of the cookies and say, hey, we've got cookies for sale. Put an ad out there it doesn't need to be anything fancy and later you can hire somebody to do a video. Video is very popular right now, but you can put together a quick, short video and promote that. Keep it local to your area and it would be very inexpensive. Another thing that I would say is low cost.

Speaker 1:

To help build a brand doesn't immediately bring in business Depends. It varies business to business, but would be sponsor a sports team, so right, kind of like the educational content that you put out there for your business or consumers to consume. Ultimately, you would like them to call you. The same goes for anything you ever sponsor. When you start opening up your phones for people to call you, everybody under the sun is going to call you to sponsor something what makes sense for your business.

Speaker 1:

Now, while as business owners, we do it for the good of the community. We also want our phone to ring, and one thing that I happen to like and works for me is I sponsor a sports team. I get a banner. It's relatively low cost. Maybe I sponsor the uniforms and now my company name is plastered on uniforms and a banner. It's relatively low cost. Maybe I sponsor the uniforms and now my company name is plastered on uniforms and a banner. What I've noticed is I do it to teams that are serious about the sport because those parents and those families are committed and they continuously are in the same sport and throughout the years of me doing it, I now have these people that recognize me as a legitimate business that has given to their team and in return they will call me or have called me or refer me to their friends and family.

Speaker 1:

So you really have to see what works best for your business. But that is another low-cost strategy to build a brand. Now remember, today's episode is all about building a brand on a low cost, in a low-cost way. This is not a one-size-fits-all on how to ramp up your business immediately. This is all the long approach. There's nothing really short-term about anything here, other than maybe door hangers. But if you're serious about your business and serious about being in business, you need to start implementing the foundation of how you start building your brand. Remember, we're not Coca-Cola, we're not Walgreens, we're not these big corporations that have millions of dollars in our advertising budget, but we need people to be able to find us when they need our service.

Speaker 1:

Guys, I really hope this episode helped you. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment. Please send me a text message on the. You can see a little send in the text message. I would love to get your feedback on this show and future shows. Moving forward, I'd like to help shape this podcast for what you need. I hope you found everything helpful. Today, again, it's Jonathan Wagner and this is another episode of the business guide. Thank you,

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