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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The experts cited understanding of Customer/Target frequently. This mirrors the finding in this report that metrics and brand research are key tools. Communication and Creative effectiveness were also frequently mentioned as critical aspects of successful branding.

These open-ended responses provide a useful counterpoint to the other findings in this report. They reflect the classic tenets of branding and marketing, which are focused on knowing the customer, maintaining a consistent brand in the marketplace, and delivering winning content and creative.

study says.

Here is the list of the top 10 aspects of successful branding, as resulted from the study:

1. Consistency (36.0%)
2. Understanding of Customer/Target (18.2%)
3. Message/Communication (14.7%)
4. Creative/Design/Brand ID (12.8%)
5. Relevance (12.4%)
6. Differentiation/Uniqueness (12.0%)
7. Key Stakeholder Buy-In (10.9%)
8. Positioning (9.7%)
9. Clarity (8.9%)
10. Connection to Customer/Target (8.9%)

Read the study here.

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The strategy is set. You clearly know who you are, you’ve decided on your brand difference, you’ve found folks who want what you have, and you’ve mapped out the great experience you will deliver. Now you must employ the big brand bang and let your message resonate through every point of market contact.

The next step in building your brand is tactical. What specific weapons are you going to launch, at whom, and with what frequency? How will you be heard, noticed, and remembered in a crowded, chaotic playing field, possibly working with less money than your competitors? I refer to this engine as ‘‘speaking loudly even when you whisper,’’ by which I mean making sure that even your smallest effort is on target, relevant, and working to build the brand.

Tactic 1: Visual Identity

The footprint of a brand—your corporate identity, graphic system, or visual voice—can take your brand many good places. It can also head you straight into a wall if it does not accurately project what the brand is and consistently stick to the story.

Tactic 2: Advertising

Advertising can be used to generate leads, sell product, advocate beliefs, persuade, calm unrest, and build brands. Advertising is the act of paying to showcase a message, and more. Advertising gives the brand builder a high-speed lane to the market. On the other hand, it is not immune to falling trees, lightning, bad weather, careless drivers, or an occasional competitor with wings. Smart advertising can fertilize the brand soil and aid in the brand’s growth.

Tactic 3: Brand Partnerships

Sometimes two brands are better than one. Collaboration with other brands, vendors, and distribution channels not only adds firepower and reduces costs, but it ultimately can strengthen a brand.

Partnerships can be as simple as two brands co-hosting an event or as formal as an agreement involving new selling channels, co-op ad spending, joint research, and licensing contracts. When choosing any brand partner, you should adhere to an established set of guidelines that complement your brand and meet business goals.

Tactic 4: Media Relations

Twenty-four-hour news, free-flowing information, and breaking reports offer vast opportunities to get your brand message out with an added layer of authority and third-party endorsement. Despite the cynics, the media has immense influence on the market.

Organizations that don’t take full advantage of this powerful vehicle will miss sales, stature, and a substantial brand bang.

Tactic 5: Community Relations

Community relations encompasses any niche community where having a strong positive relationship is important and valuable to the brand and the market you serve. For many organizations, this includes your category industry and nonprofit interests.

Tactic 6: Sales Promotions/Events

Promotions are any activities that stimulate purchasing. Promotions can work well in both consumer markets and the business-to-business space if planned and executed correctly. A great sales promotion can launch new products, reintroduce new and improved ones, clean out an old line or inventory, synergize co-brands, cross-sell among product lines, arouse loyalty, and entice first-time sampling or trial purchases.

Tactic 7: Customer Service

Serving customers seems like a simple task, yet many savvy business leaders are blind to the huge service cracks in their business. A crack in service is extremely dangerous. One too many rude encounters, another insensitive act, or a downright bitter battle, and your customer will not only make you history, but his rage can spread like wildfire and burn up even the best brand.

Tactic 8: Sales

Selling with brand in hand shortens the distance to the finish line. Selling today is no cakewalk. New products, trillions of choices, and floods of options surround us. Pressure is high, competition is everywhere, and the economy is faltering. So what. Quit your whining. Add some brand to your sales arsenal, and the process gets easier and more effective.

Tactic 9: The Environment and Merchandising

Visual seduction is not just for retailers. Merchandising and environmental branding needs more respect. Once thought of as merely decorative displays or point-of-purchase sale stimulators, today merchandising and the environment are a significant brand-building tactic.

Tactic 10: Online

Building a brand, one thousand clicks at a time: Online technology has catapulted the brand like no other tactic. The impact on all business sectors and models is immense. Small companies can be global. Virtual stores can operate without inventory. Time to market is condensed to a warp speed, and the customer has more options and choices than ever before. As with every new horizon, there lie vast opportunities and difficult challenges

Tactic 11: Alternative and Buzz Activities

Guerrilla or alternative marketing has no rules. The more you can get away with, the better. Such campaigns are nontraditional. They disrupt and surprise. They can be crazy, irreverent, or bizarre, and many times they are extremely potent and effective for a lot less money than the ordinary campaigns

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Here are six suggestions that Howard D. Hill, Ph.D., president and CEO of Associates in Education in Orangeburg is proposing to assist corporations (and smaller companies) in maintaining dominance in desired areas of operation:

1. Relate to targeted markets. Go aggressively after them and protect market interests.
2. Make periodic assessments of market conditions. Businesses must constantly mine market-related data to improve the products being promoted.
3. Study competitors to determine what promotes their successes or failures. Emulate corporate successes and minimize failures.
4. Maintain a focused commitment to customer service. Satisfied customers are assets.
5. Use technology to boost business operations: Web sites, fliers, online purchases, etc.
6. Demonstrate the use of savvy business and advertising practices, detailing how the corporation is better than its competitors. Let this be widely known!

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