Does Your Start-up Need Branding?

Sick of your 9 to 5 job?

Are you planning to start your own business?

It does sound like an exciting opportunity to create and run your own business, but there is a huge amount of work involved to bring this vision to life. The path to success may be lined with mistakes and misunderstandings. It is important to make sure you don’t end up moving in the wrong direction. One of the first steps to make your product successful would be to have a brand identity. Even though one can hire a company to do the branding for you, but it may not always lead to positive effects. A well defined branding strategy for a start up is important to provide a framework for the organization and leading it towards growth and success.

Branding is extremely important for your company as it gives it a unique identity. It helps you set yourself apart in a competitive market. The perfect branding will help you stay in the market for a long period of time. It will also increase your visibility in the market which in the long run increases opportunities for the company. And finally, branding also helps you connect with your customers and help them. Social media is a widely used platform by companies to connect with their customers.

Branding is an extremely difficult process. It is important to hit the right chord with the customer to make sure your product is in the market. A lot of decisions also need to be made regarding the name of the company, its logo, etc. We have compiled a small list of what you can keep in mind while creating a branding strategy for your company:

Step1: The first step to any branding strategy would be to know your target market. Begin by asking yourself who would use this product? The answer will not be everyone. There is always a niche group of people to whom the product needs to be targeted. This niche should be quite obvious to you, as you have created this product. Once the target group is identified, try to know more about the group to create a specific branding strategy.

It is imperative that you connect to your target market. The failure to do so may have long term effects. Hence, remember to take feedback to determine how the customers perceive your brand and product.  

Through branding one should focus on building an image of the product with which the customers can easily identify.

Step2: The secret to the successful branding of the product would be the sale of the story of the brand. An initial challenge that is faced by most companies is that people may not be able to instantly recognize with your brand. Building a brand identity will help people focus on your company, its culture and therefore its identity. By identifying the brand on a personal level, the customers would have no difficulty connecting as well as remembering the brand. The motto here could be “Sell an experience before the product”.

Step3: Now, it’s time to focus on the logo for the company, and the colours and designs you want to associate your product with on the website. Looks are important for the branding. All the elements like font, background colour, font colour, logo, etc contribute towards the brand image and purpose. If you are able to correctly apply these elements, they can be used to define as well as communicate the mood and values of your product to your target customers.

Step4: Create a brand that would be memorable and make the customers hard to forget. Some companies focus on becoming cause-driven. They find a cause that is closely linked to their brand and try to build a reputation as a company that cares and attracts the cause driven customers.

Step5: After creating the fitting story, logo and other elements. It is time to make the brand visible. The company needs to be marketed through various digital channels. A proper marketing guide needs to be formed to campaign for the company. The goal for such a campaign would be reach the target market in a proper manner through multiple channels. Social media is one of the best places to start for marketing.

Branding can be an expensive task if you are start up who does not have adequate funding. Depending upon the tasks that have been outsourced to another agency the prices would differ. Branding would essentially include naming the product, logo, advertisements, SEO, social media, print marketing, etc. These tasks could cost anywhere between $30,000 to millions. This huge range between the costs depends on whether the product is competing on a local or regional level or at the national/international level. Depending upon your budget or requirements, you can approach an agency to perform these tasks for you. If you are good with these activities as well, you could move forward and create a brand on your own.