A Complete Guide to Branding for Freelancers

Branding for freelancers? Isn’t branding something for big companies, corporations, and institutions? The simple answer is no. What works for them can work for you too! And you don’t need a big budget or staff to achieve it.

In this post, we’ll walk you through what branding is, why it’s important, and how you can do it for your freelance business.

What Is Branding in Business?

Maybe you associate branding with cowboys burning a mark into the side of each cow in their herd. In business, it’s not that brutal or painful – in fact, it’s not at all brutal or painful. But it does serve a similar purpose: to show a consistent and readily identifiable image across every part of your business.

Branding incorporates everything you see, hear, and read about a business, including its logo and the tone of its social media output.

Why Is Branding Important for Businesses?

In a competitive market, you need to make sure your business stands out if you’re to be successful. Your audience needs to be able to find you, trust you, and remember you. Branding is an important part of that process for any business.

First impressions count, however much we might wish otherwise. Strong branding can immediately set the tone for your business, establish your professional identity, and set you apart from competitors.

Having attracted customers, a strong brand will reassure them of your reliability by showing consistency across all your interactions, and it will help them recognize and remember you in the future.

How to Brand Your Business

So now you know what branding is and why it’s important for your freelance business, how do you do it? Let’s guide you through it in ten steps.

1. Choose Your Business Name

Selecting a business name is the first critical step in establishing your freelance brand. It is, after all, the first thing your audience will see.

Maybe you already have a name for your business. Maybe you’ve been trading under your own name. But is it the right one from a branding point of view? If need be, it’s not too late to rebrand.

While it may be convenient to use your name – perhaps so you can use your existing network – it may not appear in searches by new customers. Their searches will be based on the job they need done, so including a word that clarifies what your business does will help them find your site.

As well as indicating what your business does, the name you choose should be easy to remember. For some detailed guidance, have a look at our post How to Choose Your Freelance Business Name.

2. Buy a Website Domain

Your choice of name may, of course, be dictated to some extent by the availability of a matching website domain. Tools like Namechk can help you check the availability of names across various platforms simultaneously.

Choose a domain that matches your business name as closely as possible. Opt for a .com extension if available, as that’s the one most people will recognize, remember, and trust.

When you’ve made your choice, use a domain registrar to buy it. You might also want to consider purchasing variations of your domain to protect your brand.

3. Open Social Media Accounts

Social media is a powerful tool for you to connect with potential clients. You might think you’ve got it covered by having your account on various platforms, but your personal accounts are unlikely to follow your business brand.

While, as a freelancer, you are the face and voice of your business, you deserve some downtime. You might not want those late-night posts from your bestie’s hen party to be seen as indicative of how you do business. Opening social media accounts specifically for your business will allow you to keep your business and personal life separate.

Create accounts on platforms where your target audience is most active, such as LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.

Branding relies on consistency, so ensure your handle is consistent across all platforms and reflects your business name. The tool you used to check the availability of your business name will likely check this, too.

Now that you have a name and places to put it, you need to work on the creative bits.

4. Choose a Color Palette

You may be wondering why this is up here at number four on the list. However trivial it may sound, your color scheme is vital to your business’s brand. Together with your choice of font (more of that later), it sets the tone for your business’s visual identity.

Choosing a color scheme is one of the simplest things you can do to make your business’s image cohesive and memorable, which is what a brand is for.

Keep your color palette simple. Pick a single main color – it could be your favorite color, or one that reflects your type of business – and then choose up to four secondary colors. Use tools like Adobe Color to find complementary or contrasting colors that convey the right feeling for your business.

5. Choose a Font

Before reading the above, you may have questioned why this comes in at number five. But you’ll be including text everywhere, so font choice is important.

You need your message to be clear, so pick a font that’s readable and reflects your business’s personality. Sans-serif fonts work well for a modern and clean look, and serif fonts for a classic and professional feel.

As you did with the color scheme, try to stick to just a few fonts within the same family (typeface). It’s easier to apply, looks less cluttered (if your communications look disorganized, your customers might think your business will be too), and will more readily become associated with your business.

6. Design a Logo

A logo is the visual representation of your brand. It should be simple, memorable, and convey your brand’s personality. You’ve played the logo game, right? Those golden arches, for example, are instantly recognizable and associated with the burger chain (surely, we don’t need to include a link for you to know the one we’re talking about?).

For it to be successful in helping to create and reinforce your brand, your logo needs to reflect your business and be easy to replicate in different formats and sizes. And having chosen a color palette and font choice, you can incorporate those into your logo.

It doesn’t need to cost much – or anything – to design a logo. Adobe and Canva, for example, offer free options. If design really isn’t your thing, you could hire a professional designer through platforms like Fiverr.

7. Get Good Quality Headshots

One advantage you have as a freelancer is that your customers will be working with an individual, rather than a faceless company. That individual is you, so make sure that your face is on your business!

Providing a service that’s personal doesn’t prevent it from being professional. Incorporate this into your branding by getting some high-quality headshots. It’s worth paying to have them taken professionally if you don’t know anyone who could take them to a suitable standard – the photos will need to be used in different formats and sizes, so the quality needs to be able to handle that.

Pay attention to the lighting, the background, and what you wear. Remember how fascinated we all became with people’s bookshelves during lockdown Zoom calls? Make sure you present an image that’s consistent with your business and how you would like your customers to see you – including the color scheme (we said it was too important to leave until later).

8. Use an Illustration

If you are particularly averse to having your photo taken, how about showing your quirky side and commissioning an illustration or cartoon image?

This may not work for all businesses. For instance, you may consider a cartoon inappropriate if you’re a grief counselor, or an illustration might be an odd choice if you’re a portrait photographer. However, if your work is within the creative industry, this could be a great choice, and it will be memorable.

As with our advice on headshots, make sure that the color scheme you use for the illustration aligns with your overall choice.

9. Decide on Your Tone of Voice

Your business’s tone of voice – your brand voice – is how you communicate with your audience. It will determine your style and word choice. To establish a brand, your tone of voice should be consistent across all platforms and materials.

Based on your target audience and industry, decide whether your tone will be formal, casual, friendly, authoritative, or playful.

10. Be Consistent

Having gone to the trouble of choosing a name, font, and color scheme, designing a logo, deciding on your tone of voice, and getting a good headshot or cartoon… use them on everything! Consistency and repetition across all your platforms and communications will help to establish and reinforce your brand.

Keep a note of your choices so that you can keep track of them and ensure that you apply them consistently across all your platforms and communications.

Becoming A Freelancer

Now you know the benefits that strong branding can bring to any business – and that it doesn’t have to cost a fortune – it’s time to apply it to yours.

If you’re starting out on your freelancing career, or wondering whether it’s for you, why not try one of our courses? They’re a great way to kickstart a flexible and fulfilling new venture – and you can try a couple of lessons for free!