7 To Do’s for Startup Branding

Define yourself and your product

Before you go out to your customers be specific and honest regarding your purpose. What are you going to provide? Clearly define your product/service in detail. Think what are the benefits for the potential customer, what’s the need that you cover.

Know your customers

… and know them better then anyone else. Know their needs, their habits, their way of life. Every decision you make from the style of your homepage to locations of your ads will depend on who you are targeting. This is not simple task, but it must be done. Start by describing for yourself the person who would be most likely to need your service or product.

Position yourself and your business

Who are your competitors. How are you satisfying your customers better/different that your competitors

Maintain Offline Marketing

Studies show that the best way to build a strong brand is to incorporate both on and offline marketing. Use the offline marketing to support your website by always placing your URL on your printed materials.

Interact with Customers

The Internet has made communication instantaneous and simple. You can communicate with customers, asking them for their feedback and answering their questions. This is only a good thing if you intend on responding to the needs that your customers take time to share with you. So make yourself available, and respond quickly to show that you value your customers.

Concentrate on one domain, not 10.

A lot of people think that developing a strong brand means keeping your site extremely narrow in topic scope. As a result, they decide they’ll need 10 sites to cover all their related topics rather than just one. But ‘branding’ means much more than being narrow in focus. So get the full benefit of all your marketing and promotion efforts by focusing on one slightly broader domain rather than breaking your topic into 1.

Become THE Authority

If you print business cards, then your site should have all of the information required for uploading and ordering the printing of business cards. But do not stop there. Offer your customers tips and insider tricks for creating the best business cards. You can start forums and information sharing on your website. The object is to make your website the place to go whenever someone wants to know anything about business cards.

Startup Branding Mistakes

Believing that Brand Matters more than Product or Customer Service

Never ever put your branding in front of your product or service. Your product is the star, branding is a help, a tool to place it in the mind of your audience. Never launch an “unfinished” product thinking that branding will keep it alive until you polish it. Never start promoting the product until it’s ready to go up on the stage.

When folks say “We need to market more like Apple” often what they are getting at is that people will buy Apple products, even if they are more expensive and have lesser features, because of the Apple “brand”. But startups would be foolish to think that they can win in the market with inferior, more expensive products because their marketing looks better. Apple didn’t. The beautiful marketing alone without highly differentiated products, a great in-store customer experience, the reputation they have built over decades for innovative, easy to use products, etc. etc. would not have been enough. There’s no shortcut to building a great brand. You still have to do the work of building products that people love and providing customers with service that keeps them happy over time.
If you do a great job with customer service and product, later on when you are flush with cash, you can hire some fancy consultants to come in to give your brand a face to match its soul. Your company isn’t Apple. At least not yet it isn’t.

Ensure That Your Startup Can Deliver!

Your brand is the set of promises that people associate with your product/business. At this stage in your company, you should be aware of what promises you want people to believe and perceive.

There is absolutely no point in spending scarce resources to develop an image which your business can’t live up to. While, there are definitely some aspects to a brand which are influenced purely by design, there is another aspect which is far more important as it is dictated by the performance of the business. Do not waste time and energy in building a certain brand image that does not reflect the true capabilities of your startup business – this is equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot! If you stick to what is realistic and consistently strive to build brand awareness within the marketplace – your business should reap the benefits.

Branding is important but not as important as releasing rev 1.0 and getting customers. Your initial customers, really don’t care about your brand — they care about your product.

Believing that you have Control over your Brand

Again, your brand is what people believe about your company, and it’s products. As such, it’s something that a company can try to steer in a direction but buyers will ultimately control. For example, in the past week I’ve heard Microsoft described as “evil”, IBM as “stodgy”, Oracle as “mean”, and Apple as “arrogant”. I’m sure none of these companies is spending marketing budget to support these. What a market decides your brand is about is the direct reflection of their experiences with your product and company. By focusing on those you are focusing on your brand.

Confusing Branding with Design (and Forgetting about Awareness)

Design (particularly for your website) is important because it has a direct impact on your conversion rates and how easily people can find what they are looking for. Branding on the other hand is about what people believe about your company, product and/or services. For most startups, the problem is not that people have misconceptions about your brand, it’s that they don’t think about you AT ALL. If nobody ever finds out about you, your beautiful logo, amazing crafted “brand values” and meticulously thought-out “brand image” won’t matter (please note: Apple does not have this problem). In order to have a brand, you need to be known. The best way for small companies to get known is to have an offering that a market loves (and ideally loves to talk about).

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• Trust – can you deliver ‘on time?’
• Security – Does your program focus on client’s privacy and security?
• Relationship – Can clients IM you, ask questions, follow the project step-by-step?
• Increase Customer’s Potential – Can you offer something no one else can offer?
• Social Standing – Can you make them look wealthier, sexier, more influential?
• Power – Do you have what it takes to increase your client’s power?
• Free – Consumers who are motivated by price can feel they are being ‘treated right’ if they give their clients something real. Not an ebook – but a membership or passing on an association newsletter.

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When an entrepreneur brands his or her product, business or concept, inadvertently the entrepreneur himself often becomes associated with that brand.

Basically the decision is to determine which company relies most on you personally for its brand recognition.

When it comes to building a powerhouse brand, the little guys have a huge advantage over the big guys because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not suffer from organizational inertia and usually the vision of the founder of the company is closely linked to the essence of the brand and embedded in the organization.

Entrepreneurs have a chance to build entire businesses based on a powerful brand promise while large companies tend to drift away from the original promise that made them compelling and then they foolishly spend millions to try to “re-brand” which may or may not be possible.

Entrepreneurial branding is about being: hands-on, holistic (looking at and trying various branding techniques, not just one), taking responsibility for lots of things, being really open-minded, understanding the overall business you work in as well as affiliated businesses, and so on. Of course, most branding jobs would require these skills / attitudes / approaches, and, yet, certainly, the bigger the organization you work in, the more you have to work on other things i.e being an expert in your job role, focusing on thorough success in your job role, and so on … the focus being on ‘your job role’ in the sense that the scope to do other things isn’t so great (compared to a smaller organization) and you will be judged more on ‘your job role’ than what you do outside it.

In today’s world where advertising is becoming so much more complicated, where digital and traditional advertising are merging, and so on, it is even more important than ever for people looking for jobs in this industry to have this entrepreneurial branding approach.

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Karen Post, author of Brain Tattoos: Creating Unique Brands That Stick in Your Customers’ Minds

Your brand is not your logo or tagline, but the sum of what your business does every day. It’s what the market thinks, feels, and expects from you.

If you want to make the buyer’s choice easy and finish first, you’ve got to be truly distinct and communicate those attributes on all touch points every day.

Bill Schley, author of Why Johnny Can’t Brand: Rediscovering the Lost Art of the Big Idea

Small businesses can do this better than giant corporations, because they have the passion for their business, an understanding of their business, and live or die for it. There are no layers of bureaucracy between them and a great brand idea, like in big organizations

From SmallBizResource.com

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Name: the First Step

How different would you be if your name were Clem or Matilda? Your company name sets a tone for your brand, right from the start. Names can be generated from invented words (Xerox), initials (IBM) and founder’s names (Johnson & Johnson). Some of the best names, though, communicate a benefit (U-Haul or Budget Car Rental).

Logo: Your Company’s Symbol

A logo is a distinctive symbol or mark that visually represents your company. To get one that passes muster with the quality police, I recommend hiring a design firm. Because your logo is one of the first visual brand elements your buyers see, put some time and money into it.

Taglines: A Memorable Definition

A tagline is simply a short description of a business’s reason for being. It could incorporate elements of its expertise, its target audience, even the markets it serves. A tagline can be both direct and subtle—whatever it takes to get the prospect to say to themselves “Oh, I get it.”

Fonts and Typestyles

Using the proper fonts and typestyles also define your brand. Try to standardize fonts and typestyles that appear routinely in your marketing materials. Use only a select few.

Colors: Creating a Mood
How do you feel when you walk into a yellow room? When you see a sign with a red background color, what is your first reaction? Colors generate emotional reactions, and it is important to carry that over into your branding program.

The Sounds of Your Brand

One company I frequently call on the telephone plays rap over its on-hold system. I don’t know about you, but I believe there is more to music than three bad chords and rotten lyrics. I hate being on hold with that company. And their relationship with me suffers ever so slightly each time I call. If your business has on-hold messaging, or your retail store has background music, make sure it is appropriate.

Even though I find all elements absolutely needed in creating a brand image for a (small) company I find the whole view of things somehow superficial.

I always believed that branding is more than a logo or a tagline, even though sometimes it cannot survive without them. A brand involves blending the image, purpose, and focus of your business, with your core marketing message, and coming up with something which will stick in the minds of people who encounter it. A brand is promise. A great brand is a kept promise.

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Getting a professionally designed custom logo and an easy to remember punch line are some of the very important elements of branding a business. A logo is not just a symbol or a piece of graphics; it is actually your corporate identity. A properly designed logo can leave long lasting impression on your clients and will never let your business slip out of their minds.

So, if you think you are tired of being a “small business” and its time to grow up, take the first step; establish your brand!

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Answering the question: what’s so urgent about branding, when there are so many things to worry about when growing a business like making payroll and meeting sales goals? the answer comes like this:

Branding a small or emerging business is key to the early success of that business. It is the quickest way for the company to express who it is and what it does. Inaccurate branding of a new business can make it difficult for people to fundamentally understand why the business exists in the first place.

For start-up and small businesses, branding can often take a backseat to other considerations, such as funding and product development. This is unfortunate; a company’s brand can be key to its success. Dollar for dollar, it is as important and vital as any other start-up activity.

Basically you have to know who you are, what you’re doing, where do you want to go and how will your customer find out about it and these are as important as getting the funds to do them.

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1 Perception is the truth

The battlefield of branding is in the minds of the customers. And as far as customers are concerned, perception is the truth, regardless of the facts.

2 Fortune favours the first

Many experts argue that the first mover advantage is a fallacy as there have been many first movers who failed. Being first only gives you the opportunity to lodge your brand in customers’ minds first. Fail to exploit that advantage and your competitors can, and will, catch up.

3 If you are not first, move the battlefield

If you are not first in the market, then you might need to shift the battlefield by creating a new category in which they can be first.

4 Keep a clear focus

If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. Focused brands concentrate on owning one thing in the mind instead of creating line extensions indiscriminately.

5 Differentiate or sell cheap

In the absence of any perceived difference between products, customers will focus on the price.

6 Use PR for brand building, advertising for maintenance

Many companies make the mistake of using advertising to launch their brands. As advertising is a self-declaration, it has near-zero credibility in the eyes of consumers. Public relations, however, involves what others say about you, and hence carries with it the weight of third party endorsement.

7 Find a great name

In the long term, the name of your products is what separates you from your competitors as your unique ideas and concepts can be copied. To ensure greater brand recall, a short, unique and memorable name should be adopted.

8 Be absolutely consistent

Successful branding requires unwavering consistency

9 Find an enemy

To have credibility, you need to have an enemy. What would Superman be without Lex Luthor? Competition between brands creates excitement in the media and with the customer base, thus helping the category grow.

10 You may need a second brand

Your brand cannot stand for everything, thus necessitating the launch of a second brand in order to enter a new category. It is advisable, however, to launch a new brand only when your existing one is a dominant player in its category. If you struggle to increase sales in a category you know well, what are the chances of you doing well in a category you know nothing about?

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The most important thing from a small brands perspective is to be strong in its own defined market. A smaller brand has an opportunity to serve its customers in a more flexible and in a more creative way than its greater counterparts. Most of all that goes for small brands that live and breath closer to its customers than big, global brands. Many of these small brands have a chance to get stronger if they stop having inferiority complex against the bigger brands and start to make their brands more clear and focused, and build their brand in a new and exiting way.

Small companies with local and regional markets seem to have accepted the global brand´s dominance over their customers and live by the convention that branding costs too much money and they are left to compete with product offerings and price. Even though they have realized their opportunity to offer personal service, it is seldom you come across companies that manage to do so in a unique or exiting way. Therefore they do not manage to overcross the hindrance which the credibility of the big brands put up.

You do not build a strong brand only through advertising and media, it is the collected, over all experience that makes a strong brand. This experience is infl uenced by all encounters you have with a brand, how the salesperson act, how other personnel interact with you, service, packaging, public relations, etc. The bottom line is to which degree you manage to satisfy those needs that you have promised to satisfy.

Small companies have flat organisations, the decision making process should be a lot easier and they are physically close to the market they wish to attract. Yes, small companies may have less money to spend on large media, but due to their small sizes a possibility to create a near, unique and possibly also an exciting experience for their customers. In a small organisation it should be much easier to manage and perform a consistent branding strategy. The possibility lays not in thinking big, but to think further.

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A carefully built brand is worth more in actual dollars than all the tangible assets put together and is what will reap monetary rewards when you’re ready to sell your company. The first thing you have to do is decide how you want people to perceive your business, and then figure out what you have to do to get there.

• Consistency in advertising. Decide what you can do for your customers that your competitors can’t and hammer away at those points in every ad.

• Customer service. Only employ people who can get on board with your brand, and make sure that each person understands his or her part in building it. Once a customer is ignored at the counter or treated poorly on the phone, you’ve lost not only that person but everyone else that hears about the unfortunate experience. Word-of-mouth can help, but it can also hurt.

• Public relations. Keep promises you make. See that your customers aren’t disappointed with what they find once your advertising gets them through the door. They should leave smiling. Pay your invoices on time. Be a good citizen. Get involved with community projects where your business can do something positive.

• Use the internet. A company with no web presence is archaic. Even if you’re only interested in local sales right now, your customers are on the web, and they’ll want to see you there, too. Get it done NOW.

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