If you've just started a business, you'll know first hand how expensive it can be to get things up and running. Whether you have the funding or you're backing yourself, it can be hard to know how to spend that limited startup budget to your best advantage. These ideas will help you make solid choices and build a strong foundation to ensure your future success.

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A Beautiful, Intuitive Website

Investing a portion of your limited startup budget on a professional-looking website is a must as soon as you can afford the spend. Getting your own website is not cheap, so it makes sense to use a template at first, allowing you to do the work yourself without having any coding experience. But if you offer a specific service or you're trying to sell a niche product, your generic template is going to become a little frustrating before long.

You won't have that much freedom to customize the look and functionality to suit your needs exactly. At this point (or right from square one, if you can afford to), it makes sense to take the plunge and hire a web designer to create the ideal site for your business. It will be pricey, but after a few months, it will have paid for itself in terms of sales and brand reputation building, and you'll be glad you've done it.

Brand Identity 

If you’re looking for ways to build trust in your business, your brand identity plays a crucial role. Whether you're promoting your company through social media channels, or in small ways in the real world by sticking your logo to your Poly Mailers, it's crucial that your brand's logo, copy, images and color scheme all line up to create a consistent brand identity.

At the earliest opportunity, it's recommended that you hire a well-regarded branding agency to ensure that your website, communications, and marketing materials accurately convey your company's vision and what your brand stands for. A solid brand identity is one of the main factors that sets established businesses apart from more provisional-feeling startups. Once you have a solid brand, you can start to build a reputation worthy of your amazing product. 

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Hire a Social Media Specialist 

Social media can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool if you know how to use it properly for business, and the fact is, despite using social media in our daily lives, most of us don't know how to get the most out of it. Whether your audience hangs out mostly on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, unlocking the potential for engaging with your customers and finding out about their preferences, interests, desires, and pain-points is crucial if you want to compete with other businesses who have successfully harnessed these platforms. Not only can you gain valuable insights on your customers, but you can actively elicit feedback in a friendly and approachable way. You will also benefit hugely by the free exposure, building brand recognition, and credibility. 

Launching a startup is nothing if not a learning curve, but you wouldn't have taken the plunge if you weren't obsessed with learning new things and challenging yourself. These tips will help you use your tight budget wisely and stay the course for those first exciting few months.