Getting your product or service recognised
Branding for Start-Ups
In amongst all the growing and building every start-up goes through, there is one constant that can help keep your business focused and maintain its integrity, and that is branding.
Far from being a matter of superficial colour and design, a strong brand runs right the way through your business-like DNA. It reflects and unites your values, your practices and what you started this epic journey for in the first place.
Prioritise your brand from day one
When you are in the early days of your start-up, brand strategy might seem like a nice-to-have as you focus on getting products out the door and bringing in income to prove your worth to investors. But the nature of your brand is not something to overlook, particularly in those crucial early days.
Brands have a way of emerging and evolving spontaneously unless you make the effort to define them and control them in a conscious way. That is something that is much easier to do when your business is in its early days and your team is small and open to current ideas.
Developing a coherent brand is not just about futureproofing, though. It can also help you stand out in a crowded market and make your business more memorable to potential customers, right from day one.
Define what influences your brand
Your brand is your business personality, and like a human personality, it is expressed in multiple ways. It will be reflected in your logo, your brand colours, your graphic style and your tone of voice.
Then there are your brand values – the traits that characterise how you do business and how the people within your company think, feel and behave.
Of course, you are not robots, which means your brand is going to be nuanced and changing as it reflects the people and personalities that make up your business.
It can be helpful to think of your start-up’s brand guide as a summary or description of who you are at your best, rather than a set of rules about who you are supposed to be at all times.
Target audience
Your start-up’s brand has both an internal role and an external one. On the internal side, it helps unify your business goals and give staff a sense of connectedness and purpose. Externally, your brand determines how your business is perceived in the minds of your target audience.
You have probably already got a sense of the kind of people who are likely to be interested in your products, particularly if you have recently gone through the process of developing a business plan. They will make up a big part of your target audience.
However, there are also some audience groups you may not have thought of. These could include people who might want to work for your company, who may be more interested in your way of doing business and the kind of skills you use than in your products.
Then there are journalists, bloggers and influencers who may want to feature your business in a story or collaborate with you on some content.
BRANDS HAVE A WAY OF EMERGING AND EVOLVING SPONTANEOUSLY UNLESS YOU MAKE THE EFFORT TO DEFINE THEM AND CONTROL THEM IN A CONSCIOUS WAY.
View from an objective perspective
Objectivity is an important quality for start-ups. It is easy to fall in love with the idea behind your business and skip over any other reactions people might have, such as confusion (‘what is it?’), not recognising the benefits (‘why do I need it?’) and mistrust (‘who are you guys anyway?’).
Focusing on the whole brand experience, including the product concept, sales journey and interactions with your marketing channels, is crucial to getting your start-up’s branding right.
Connected branding strategy and marketing
Your marketing strategy and your brand will naturally dovetail together, so when you are starting out it is a clever idea to develop the two in parallel. As a small business, you have a natural advantage here, because you will have a smaller number of personnel and will be more agile compared to a larger company – everyone will fit in a single meeting room, for a start.
Working together, you will need to think about the marketing channels you will use, such as social media platforms, email, website, events, speeches or content marketing, and what kind of role they play in your plans.
Each of these channels will express your brand and bring in useful information from your audiences about how your business is perceived.
There are many ways marketing can influence how your brand comes across. For example, the design of your marketing materials, the frequency of various kinds of communications such as emails or tweets, the topics you cover in content marketing activities such as a blog or video channel, and the tone of voice you use. That is why putting together your start-up’s branding guide early on can be extremely useful to ensure consistency.
Marketing channels can have a brand management role, too. Increasing your brand awareness, i.e. the level of understanding your consumers have of your brand and how they interpret it, is often a strategic goal for new businesses.
OF COURSE, YOU ARE NOT ROBOTS, WHICH MEANS YOUR BRAND IS GOING TO BE NUANCED AND CHANGING AS IT REFLECTS THE PEOPLE AND PERSONALITIES THAT MAKE UP YOUR BUSINESS.
Make your brand from your competitors
Your brand reflects who you are as a business, so it is going to be uniquely you. But there is no denying that certain industries tend to develop a common brand ‘language,’ where certain colours, fonts, illustration styles or even a tone of voice are typical across multiple businesses.
That does not have to be a bad thing, but it’s definitely something to be aware of and make a conscious decision about when devising the brand strategy of your startup. You need to decide whether you want to tap into your industry’s brand trends or break the mould with something truly unique.
Auditing your brand
Once you have developed your brand and your business has been up and running for a while, it is a clever idea to check in regularly with a brand audit every six months or every year. A brand audit is an internal process that helps you keep track of how consistently your brand comes across, how well it aligns to the way you do business, and how it is perceived by your customers.
Your brand is a reflection of how you do things, and all being well, your start-up will have blossomed into something bigger, bolder and brighter over the space of a few years.
YOUR BRAND IS A REFLECTION OF HOW YOU DO THINGS, AND ALL BEING WELL, YOUR START-UP WILL HAVE BLOSSOMED INTO SOMETHING BIGGER, BOLDER AND BRIGHTER OVER THE SPACE OF A FEW YEARS.