5Tools for Branding Yourself For Online Marketing as a Freelancer:

 

Smart adoption and adapting to technology that enhances the traditional way of doing things is one way you can ensure balance for survival and success as a freelancer and solopreneur. In my last post, I explored old traditional marketing tools that can help promote your brand offline. In this post, let’s dive deep into tools that help establish your brand online.

The internet has opened all opportunities and possibilities for a solid online presence. Especially in the freelancing industry, where it has opened doors to work remotely anywhere you want, when, and how you find it suitable. All you need to solidify is your online presence, authority, expertise, and connectivity. So here are the most user-friendly and undisputed online marketing tools you need for your business venture as a freelancer, solopreneur, and startup company CEO.

Domain name

That is your online identity. It is the web address of your site, like the physical address of your apartment or house. It indicates how people can google your brand or knock on your online office, which is the website. Therefore, it needs to be well thought out to see whether it relates closely to how people perceive you in your industry and the global market. It must reflect what you do and what you offer. The shorter, the better for making it easy to remember and more enticing to your target audience’s senses and google to satisfy your prospects and client’s curiosity.

It must command presence in your target audience’s mind and be memorable enough to entice them to engage with your brand. Some people have resorted to using their names. However, this needs hard work in establishing the unique value proposition that comes with your name. The most common way as explored is to come out with a sweet phrase that reflects and spells out your industry and niche. A short name phrase will always sound memorable and easy to google.

Website

A website is like an online office of your business. It is the internet connector of everything about your business venture. While an office marks the physical presence of your brand in the market, a website marks your digital presence on the World Wide Web and the global market. It is the online storefront of your business venture. As a freelancer and solopreneur starting from the very basic layout of a website will ensure you enjoy the process of marking your online presence.

The most classic website layout contains a homepage, about us, and contact page. The way around it is to make it simple, navigable, functional, and mobile-friendly. A website makes you think global. It is cost-effective for marketing 24/7 while you focus on other issues. Well managed, it is an all-in-one platform with all your social media handles linked to or from the site.

 It allows easy access to information about your venture and what you are offering. Prospects from anywhere in the world can access your products or services. That way opens opportunities for doing business with big players for high-ticket services.

Brand templates:

Whether for communication about your services or packaging for your products, brand templates play a pivotal role in raising brand awareness and cultivating customer loyalty. Whether it is flyers, posters, or banners, they work better when they are pre-designed from high-quality templates on design platforms like Canva. Whether it is for sales promotions, product descriptions, training programs, and workshops, uniformity and consistency in the presentation can impact brand awareness and customer experience with your business venture.

As a freelancer and solopreneur, this experience is essential for emotional connection with your clients and prospects. The more personalized your communication and packaging are, the better the customer experience. So, your brand templates should be designed to entice intimacy and emotional connection that promotes a long-term relationship with your clients and prospects.

Professional email

Your domain name is the square root of your username and display name that will read as a professional email. Your domain name comes with your professional email address. That will ensure the security and safety of your messages and confidential information. As a freelancer and solopreneur, you already have your Gmail email address. That is okay as you find your way into the industry. However, a more professional email address based on your custom domain name and address is more professional and easier to attract attention for brand presence and awareness.

To create a professional email, you need an email service provider. Besides the free ones like Gmail Bluehost is one provider that most people find practical and user-friendly for business email that matches your domain. Because it comes with the whole package of free domain, web hosting, and multiple email addresses. You can also consider free domain hosting from Squarespace and WIX for professional email inclusion and what they provide. Otherwise, as a freelancer and solopreneur, sticking to Gmail would be okay. But must include a word or phrase of your niche in the Gmail email address. It will always work with creative efforts for your brand.

Google my business:

Once you are online and well established as a business, freelancer, solopreneur, startup company, small, medium, or large-scale company, the thing is for people to access your presence online. Unlike a website, this is just a business profile. That is if you have a physical location associated with your business. Just as good as having your business listed like in the traditional directory or catalog. You can list your business on Google by creating a free Google My Business Account. That helps in being googleable for the physical location.  

It enables you to manage and optimize your business profile for SEO ranking, especially for local people who can access what you do and offer possibilities for reviews as feedback to Google. Be specific with your business profile. Highlight relevant keywords that you want to rank. Must also include these keywords in your descriptions, reviews, and when you are responding to any questions clients might have for you and when you are writing posts for publishing on your site.

So, Google My Business as a marketing tool will boost your brand connection, help customers find you, and reviews will enhance your online presence. As a freelancer and solopreneur, that might sound too involving for the one-man-band nature of your venture. However, you can always take it one step at a time and see what it does to all your branding efforts in the market.

 There we are; your online presence as a brand only starts with these online branding tools that you need to experiment with and see what works and are a good fit for yourself and everything you are trying to achieve in your industry through your brand. Ultimately, these tools blend and enhance each other as you grow into a full-fledged freelancer and solopreneur.