How to Brand Your Fledgling Business

Who Are You?

As a fledgling company, it’s essential you think long and hard about the sort of image you want to portray. You need to establish attributes and demonstrate the qualities that will help you to stand out. Take a moment to think about one or two powerhouse brands and ask yourself — what are they known for?

How Will You Make A Great First Impression?

There are no short-cuts when building your brand — it’s going to take dedication, proactive interaction with customers and a lot of work! That’s fine when you have time and money to spare — but when you’re a start-up, you need to hit the ground running. That means making a positive impression from the off. So how do you market your brand to ensure it has an immediate impact?

Create a Unified Vision

This means getting everyone onboard. You need to make sure every single member of your organisation fully understands who you are and what you have to offer. From Joe the janitor to Sam the sales director, it’s essential your core message is received, digested and absorbed by all.

You can do this by bringing as many key people together as possible for a natty session designed to enthuse and strengthen your team. All you will need is a huge pack of post-its and marker pens and the obligatory refreshments to keep everyone happy and alert.

Identifying Core Values

This is a chance for everyone to have their say. What are the main characteristics and qualities of the brand? Brainstorming encourages ideas to be brought to the fore, and you want your team to really feel motivated to join in the discussion. You could set a rough time limit to encourage concentration and focus. This is about participation in the main — so keep it light and get everyone involved.

Ask team members to jot down words or phrases that define the brand, e.g. fun, upmarket, just for you, etc. Post-its can be stuck on a table or wall for all to share. Inspire the team to think outside the box by jotting down one or two more controversial ideas, e.g. complicated or over-priced, to spur conversation when you come to discuss the ideas provided.

What Works and What Doesn’t

There are no right or wrong ideas — the more the team jots down the better. Once that’s done, you can work together to decide which words and phrases fit the brand and which don’t. A simple tick and cross should suffice but do encourage a healthy debate.

If you come to a word or phrase that’s proving tricky, get things moving again by talking about it more. You could identify and discuss similar words and see if people have stronger feelings about those. It’s also important to remind everyone that words and phrases will only make the grade if they can be determined as a core factor — will they strengthen the brand? If you need to add in a “maybe” column, then do so. This will provide further time for contemplation, and you can always revisit certain words and phrases again.

Map Your Ideas and Analyse Your Findings

Now’s the time to explore the post-it notes in your “tick” column. Ask the team to start grouping words or phrases together, e.g. luxurious fits nicely with well-appointed and plush. You might see groups popping up quite quickly. Ideally, you want to be able to form ideas relating to the look of your brand, the voice of your brand and what type of brand you are, e.g. serious, fun, etc.

Define Your Brand

Now you should have a succinct outline of what your brand is all about. This should encompass your core values, personality, look and voice. This will give you an excellent starting point. If you feel a helping hand would be wise, you can employ the services of an expert marketeer or brand consultant. The key is to believe in what you have, who you are and what you do — and to make sure your audience knows all about it!

Related posts:

El 7 de enero de 1915, en algún rincón del solar Pan con Timba, detrás del Cementerio de Colón, nació Luciano Pozo González. Los sonidos del toque de santo de ese día –acelerados, precisos, poderosos…

For a few years now (four to be exact), there has been a proliferation of Confederate flags in my community. Interestingly, what many would consider the Confederate flag that we see in present day…

Watching Simon Sinek's TED talk about how leaders inspire action, I remembered Merovingian discourse about the power of why Merovingian: Oh yes, it is true. The Keymaker, of course. But this is not a…