13 Branding Ideas for Small Businesses

As a small business owner, it’s important to invest time and money into developing a unique, compelling brand identity for your business. It’s a wise use of resources: Branding represents your company internally and externally, sets you apart from the competition, and tells audiences who you are and what matters to you. 

An established brand identity can boost brand awareness, attract potential customers, and encourage audiences to form an emotional connection with your company. But branding has little value in a vacuum. To make a lasting impression on potential clients, you need to use different tactics to get that brand identity in front of your target audience. 

Read on to learn more about branding and read about branding ideas that can inspire you and help your brand gain more visibility and connect with your audience. 

What is branding?

Branding is the process of constructing a unique identity for your company. It involves establishing a collection of visual elements (like logo, color palette, and imagery) and nonvisual components (like voice, tone, beliefs, and values). These elements are meant to distinguish your company from the competition and create memorable interactions between your audience and your business. Branding creates a distinct identity for your business in the minds of your target audience and the world at large.

Branding often encompasses the four Vs:

• Values. Your brand’s core values—such as integrity, reliability, and consistency—govern how your business operates. That informs company culture and how you interact internally, as well as how you interact with customers and the public.
• Vision. A company’s vision outlines its ideal future state. For example, a vision statement might sound like, “To be the world’s leading provider of hypoallergenic dog shampoo,” or, “To transform global fashion into a carbon-neutral industry.”
• Visuals. Your visuals include your company’s logo, color palette, typography, and image or graphic styling parameters. Remaining consistent with your visual branding also helps with brand recognition.
• Voice. Your brand voice is how your company speaks to external audiences. It communicates your brand personality and encourages audiences to connect with your company. Businesses typically include a description of their brand voice in their brand guidelines.

Your business’s branding strategy will outline what each of these elements looks like for your company and how you use them to build engagement. Branding work often overlaps with marketing, which involves communicating your brand identity to the market. 

13 branding ideas to differentiate and grow your company

1. Share your brand story
2. Partner with influencers
3. Run online ads
4. Create valuable content
5. Start a loyalty program
6. Create brand videos
7. Invest in custom packaging
8. Solicit user-generated content
9. Collaborate with other brands
10. Commit to a cause
11. Show up in real life
12. Prioritize brand consistency
13. Create branded merch

Branding helps audiences understand who you are, what matters to you, and what sets you apart from other businesses in your market. Here are 13 business branding ideas to help you strengthen your brand, boost sales, and increase engagement:

1. Share your brand story

A brand story is a brief narrative that explains how and why your business came to be. Many businesses use them to substantiate key elements of their brand identity. 

Brand stories often cover the following:

• The event, experience, or idea that inspired the company or its first product
• Core principles and processes that guide activities like product development and testing, hiring, and customer service
• Background on the founding team, including experiences or personal beliefs relevant to the brand’s values 
• The company’s growth journey to date 

Spice company Diaspora Co. shares founder Sana Javeri Kadra’s personal journey as a means to demonstrate its commitment to empowering South Asian spice farmers. Sana grew up in Mumbai; as a young adult, she moved to California to pursue a career in food justice and began to reflect on the echoes of colonial exploitation in the contemporary spice trade. “I was slowly discovering that not much about that system had changed,” Sana writes, pointing out how current practices shortchange farmers and produce inferior products. “Farmers made no money, spices changed hands upwards of 10 times before reaching the consumer, and the final spice on your shelf was usually an old, dusty shadow of what it once was." 

Diaspora Co.’s brand story shares how this realization motivated Sana to launch her company:

[In] 2016, I booked a one-way ticket home to Mumbai and signed myself up for 7 months of highly unpaid market research, 40+ farm visits, endless unanswered phone calls, a squishy motorbike ride through rice paddy, and one life-changing meeting with the good folks at the Indian Institute of Spices Research.

A lot of processing of doubts and fears later, [I] founded Diaspora Co. in the fall of 2017 with just one spice—Pragati Turmeric—sourced from an equally young and idealistic farm partner, our now dear friend Mr. Prabhu Kasaraneni.

Diaspora Co. publishes its full brand story on the company’s About page. You could also weave key passages through your homepage or product details page, include excerpts or a concise summary on product packaging, and generate social media posts, blog posts, or thought leadership content based on your brand story.

2. Partner with influencers

Influencer marketing is the process of contracting influencers to promote your brand. A successful influencer marketing strategy accomplishes two goals: It boosts brand awareness by helping you reach new target audiences and influences how those audiences see your brand. Promotion by an influencer who drives current trends in the beauty industry suggests that your business is innovative and relevant, for example. 

Brands typically commission influencers to create and share content that features the brand. They might simply document an experience with your brand—such as an event—or give a direct testimonial about the benefits of your products and publish that on their social channels. Some businesses also choose to give influencers complimentary products in the hope of earning a mention on the influencer’s social media page. 

Healthish, a wellness company that promotes hydration, used this strategy to launch its signature water bottle. “We just [sent products] to many subsections of the market,” says cofounder Nathan Chan in an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “We sent [it] out to fashion bloggers. We sent [it] out to fitness influencers. We sent [it] out to vloggers. We sent [it] out to people that were in all sorts of different niches and markets. And then we could see when somebody posted what that result would be, and we refined it.”

To pick the right influencers, use a tool like Social Blade, which outlines the growth of content creators’ accounts. Nathan suggests not looking at how many followers they are gaining or losing every day, but prioritizing working with someone with an engaged audience. “It’s not the size of the following,” Nathan says. “It’s the relationship that that influencer has with their audience.”

3. Run online ads

Paid advertising can quickly build brand awareness and increase your business presence in key digital spaces like social media, search engines, and publications. Create ads that say something about your brand identity. For example, a bold, unconventional sock brand might run a full-screen neon green ad that reads: “We don’t sell socks,” relying on the unconventional ad size, color, and message to drive clicks to the site and communicate the brand’s in-your-face personality. 

Common online ad types include search engine ads, social media ads, and banner ads. To purchase online ads, determine your budget and goals and select one or more online advertising platforms. Social media networks (like Facebook and TikTok), search engines (like Google and Yahoo), and display networks (like Google Adsense and Propeller Ads) are all examples of online advertising platforms.

4. Create valuable content

Creating high-quality content that provides value to your target audiences can help you establish a strong brand identity by positioning you as an expert in a particular subject, showcasing the unique viewpoint that sets you apart from the competition, or giving audiences a chance to connect with your distinctive brand voice. This type of content doesn’t promote your products; it exists to solve a problem or otherwise provide value to the reader. Consider content marketing strategies like starting a blog, hosting webinars, distributing an email marketing newsletter, or sharing thought leadership on social media channels.

If expertise is a key part of your brand identity, create content that goes deep on nuance and detail, and tailor it for a niche audience group. Lars Lofgren, cofounder and chief growth officer of the marketing agency Stone Press, recommends focusing on little-explored topics within your industry. “You have to be able to say something that hasn’t been said before,” he says. “The way you make this way easier for yourself is you pick a niche that’s small enough and targeted enough, and the bar comes way down.”

5. Start a loyalty program 

Customer loyalty programs recognize and reward your business’s most loyal clients. You can use them to build customer loyalty, increase sales, incentivize repeat purchases, and encourage your fans to promote your company to others. They’re also a chance to build your brand identity: Starting a loyalty program reinforces brand messages about your commitment to customer service and your investment in customer relationships. 

A loyalty program also provides additional branded touchpoints for customers: Your loyalty program materials, which could include exclusive email messages, website pages, and even an app, are chances to showcase your brand’s visual identity and voice. 

Common types of loyalty programs include points-based programs, tiered programs, paid programs, and values-based programs. 

6. Create brand videos

A brand video is a brief narrative video that promotes your brand identity, your products, or both. Many companies use them to share brand stories. For example, a sustainable seafood retailer might create a brand video where the founder shares how her twin passions—marine ecology and sushi—inspired her to start her business.

Sharing brand videos on your company’s website, social media platforms, and other digital marketing channels can help you boost brand awareness and engagement. They’re particularly valuable for companies targeting younger consumers and those with audiences active on video-first platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Best practices include telling a compelling story, incorporating strong branded visuals, and having a clear call to action. 

7. Invest in custom packaging

Custom ecommerce packaging adds a branded touchpoint to an important moment in your customer journey: the moment they receive and open a product. “A lot of brands think of marketing purely in the digital sense these days,” says Britt Martin, head of partnerships at the custom sustainable packaging company Arka. “But the box and the packaging is really an opportunity to do that offline.” 

Packaging can also help you make a strong first impression. “It’s your first physical touchpoint with a customer,” Britt says. “A lot of people think about what’s in the box as the [customer] journey, but a huge part of that journey is what’s on the box.”

Britt recommends using custom shippers and mailers to provide brand continuity and set yourself apart from the competition. For example, you might send mailers in your brand’s signature magenta or print custom welcome text on package exteriors. 

8. Solicit user-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is any content your audience creates and shares about your brand. It can include product photos and videos, social media comments or posts, and reviews posted on your companywebsite or on third-party review platforms, like Google Business and Yelp. 

Effective UGC campaigns use formats like contests, giveaways, and hashtag campaigns to prompt users to create and share content featuring your brand. To maximize the benefits, include parameters that encourage the types of content you want. 

For example, a sunscreen brand with a carefree, cheerful brand identity might run a contest that rewards the best photo of a day at the beach or encourage users to tag them in Memorial Day barbecue content, for example. Other best practices include engaging with customers in the comment section, responding thoughtfully to reviews, and resharing quality posts from your company accounts.

9. Collaborate with other brands

Strategic partnerships with other brands can help you build your brand identity and reach your target audiences. 

Co-branding and co-marketing are two popular strategies:

• Co-branding. Two or more companies collaborate to create a unique product offering that combines the strengths of the partner brands and shows the influence of each brand identity.
• Co-marketing. Two or more companies team up to promote each other’s products or services, but the alliance doesn’t produce a new product or service.

Co-branding and co-marketing can increase your brand awareness by providing access to your partner’s audience. They can also increase brand affinity by lending your brand image positive attributes from the other company’s brand identity. 

For example, tinned fish company Fishwife and Sichuan pantry staple retailer Fly By Jing collaborated on Smoked Salmon with Chili Crisp and Smoked Salmon with Sweet and Spicy Zhong. “We saw increased credibility from being associated with this brand that had solidified its reputation a couple of years before we did,” says Becca Millstein, co-founder and CEO of Fishwife. “It marked us as being particularly innovative in this previously stagnant category.”

10. Commit to a cause

According to one recent survey, 61% of global consumers say it’s important that a brand’s core values align with their own. You can conduct market research or use consumer surveys to identify the issues that matter to your target demographic. From there, you can show your commitment to upholding those shared values through your business practices and/or supporting causes that matter to your customers.

You can also develop and promote initiatives that target social or environmental good. For example, clothing company Bombas donates one item for every item a customer purchases.

11. Show up in real life

In-person events can also help you increase awareness and build positive associations with your brand. Consider applying for booth space at community markets or gatherings, opening a pop-up shop, or planning an in-person brand activation like a scavenger hunt or a design competition that uses your products as material. 

Choose an event that reinforces a key element of brand identity, provides value to your target audience, and aligns with your business and marketing goals. Consider giving away product samples or merchandise featuring your brand logo. For example, a fun-loving skin care brand that wants to increase engagement among younger audiences might attend a music festival and distribute samples of its SPF 50 body glitter. 

12. Prioritize brand consistency

Repetition is key to building a strong brand identity, so maintain consistency across brand and marketing collateral. “The most important aspect of branding as a whole is consistency,” Lars says. “Color palette, vibe, feeling, your principles, your values, your logos, the position of the company, the value prop, all of it—the only way that has any chance to truly have an impact is if it’s consistent.”

Confirm that your brand guidelines are accurate and current and that your marketing team can easily access them. Lars also cautions against changing your brand identity without a plan to implement those changes. “Even if you have a perfect approach to your branding, even if it’s the best thing that’s ever been created, if it’s not consistent across everything that you’re doing and you don’t also have the opportunity to hit your market with it over and over and over again, it’s not going to matter,” he says. 

13. Create branded merch

Branded merchandise is any product featuring one of your company’s identifying brand assets, such as your name, your logo, or a recognizable slogan. Selling or giving away branded merch can boost brand awareness, encourage brand loyalty, and improve your brand’s reputation. Think of it like a mini version of influencer marketing, where each branded coffee mug or zip hoodie signals the owner’s implicit endorsement of your brand. 

Popular branded merch categories include apparel, office supplies, technology accessories, and home goods. To maximize the benefits to your company, create products that correspond with an element of your brand identity, whether that’s the value you offer or your brand’s distinctive personality. Literary periodicals favor branded tote bags, and Indie tastemaker A24 sells stylish, ironized home goods like a widescreen beach towel and a May Queen tree topper referencing the studio’s folk horror hit Midsommar.