95% of customer purchasing decisions are subconscious, and a great startup branding can motivate that subconscious to go with your business services and products over the competition.
Before we begin, let’s start by agreeing that there is a vast difference between branding and marketing. Marketing is what makes consumers curious and quite captivated by your business in the first place. Branding is what motivates the consumers to keep coming back for more.
A business’ brand should be the representation of who they are as a business. Branding shows potential customers how to perceive and think of you. So in the long term, your product or service can not be marketed successfully if you don’t have a reliable brand identity system.
Pricing, features, convenience, and key concepts like that only work about 5% of the time. The remaining customers will be motivated by how they feel about your company and the factors created by your branding.
Branding isn’t something you should fear. You can utilize its power to your benefit. Small businesses and startups need successful branding. You want a branding strategy that makes people identify your business quickly and choose you over the competition.
What does this entail? No need to worry because just ahead, we will mention the key points to everything you need to know.
Do not get intimidated if your competitors have more experience, better pricing, and a wide range of features; if you master how to utilize the power of branding, then you have an advantage over them.
Start With Why
by Simon Sinek
⏱ 12 minutes reading time
🎧 Audio version available
The Power of a Name
The first step in wielding the power of branding is choosing a name that leaves a mark. When it comes to branding, it’s expected that new businesses jump into the naming process, and they end up with a terrible name because you rushed yourself and your company.
So choose a name with utmost caution. Your business name is how customers will come to know your product, services, and most importantly, your brand.
It’s an integral part of your identity. Before you make a logo and print out business cards, please take a moment to think about what people will imagine when they hear your business name. For example, can it have another meaning in a different country or culture?
And here’s a tip: if you ever need to explain how to pronounce your business name or have to jump through hoops to justify what it means, then this may not be the right name.
Create Your Image
Alright, now you have a name, you know the purpose and mission of your company. It’s time to get started on your image. A business takes a lot of work, but it’s so rewarding in the end.
This means carefully choosing the logo for your brand, the color schemes associated with your brand, and images for your website, etc.
We live in a world that is so focused on social media, one that thrives on grabbing attention across different platforms; then, you need to make sure your brand appears professional and gravitating to your consumers.
Unless you have graphic design knowledge yourself, then the help of an expert cannot be subbed. That image and logo are hopefully going to stay with you for an incredibly long time, so you can’t afford to do something you’re going to regret later on.
Tell Your Story
You have something special that even the biggest companies in the world don’t have. People want relatable, human, and genuine brands.
Before you jump into the market, make your brand stand out by giving it a history and identity. That goes a long way in ensuring that you develop long-term relationships with your loyal customers.
Small business branding should always start with a story. People are wired to want to listen to stories that establish an emotional connection with us. Reading a story touches the same part of your brain as experiencing the events for yourself.
Take advantage of a powerful narrative in your branding strategies for your business. So think about what made you want to create the products or services that you’re offering.
Think about where your company came from, who inspired you. And the more you dig into your company’s background, the more you and your consumers will learn about its values and purpose.
Write a Mission Statement
“We believe in a world where people belong anywhere” is the mission statement to which company, can you guess? It’s Airbnb’s mission statement. Facebook states that its mission is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” Sony wants “to be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.”
The take from all of this is that a written mission statement that is relatable, catchy, and straight to the point is a staple for building internal culture. And if you noticed, all the mission statements mentioned weren’t overly wordy.
The bare minimum was required to describe each business’s impact, and your statement should be the same.
Your startup or business should also have a core message, one that you relentlessly drive home. Even the major ones have that one single slogan that embodies the essence of their brand.
Kind of how Heinz is “the slow ketchup.” Like it or not, all the advertisements grab your attention because they display this message around this central theme.
Be Unique
You’re a startup; here is your advantage over the rest of the companies in the world: you are original and unique. Originality is one of the most effective branding strategies, but it depends on being uniquely valuable to your consumers and communicating in a way that’s easy to remember and understand.
Your business will ultimately build your brand and your customers’ relationships on the value your value offers. So ask yourself these questions: what is your company’s ultimate goal? How is what you’re offering unique?
Understand What Your Competition Did Wrong
There is nothing like powerful branding to attract and engage your target audience. Well-done branding helps you gain more profits and tell your customers a story while making you stand out from competitors.
Never copy what anyone else is doing, but think about it this way. If you find that your competitor uses unoriginal fonts and uninspired color theme and design, you know that customers will be drawn to your amazing image.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency to allocate as little money as possible to branding in small businesses and startups, but this is a fatal mistake.
Branding is one of the most powerful tools that creates a selling point for your business. You don’t have to spend millions on branding, but an effort goes a long way in customers’ eyes.
Studying the competition and the market provides you with the opportunity to discover what you need to do to brand yourself successfully and find out where there is a gap in the market.
Utilize SEO for Your Advantage
And rounding us off is the power of a good SEO strategy. Once you have figured out your target audience, you can begin customizing your online content to reach that audience you know will benefit from your business.
You do that through SEO strategy and content optimization, and truth be told, those can be a little complex for a small business.
But content is “king” when it comes to determining your brand because it will help you communicate your branding to audiences.
So while it’s easy to get caught up in and fret about the technical side of SEO, as the owner of a small business, it’s necessary not just to understand it but to create content.
Whether you can do the writing yourself or someone on your team can do it, you need to make sure that there is always fresh content and material regularly– and pay attention to this– that your material can be linked back to your site.
It’s advisable to go for evergreen content, which is search-optimized content that is continuously and consistently relevant and stays “fresh” for readers over a long period of time.
This is “Branding Made Simple,” so use Google Keyword Planner to search for relevant keywords that you can integrate into your content and also get a feel of your competition on Google. Research, find any writings that seem to be trending from the higher ranking competition. What are their keywords?
An SEO strategy doesn’t have to be as complicated as people make it out to be, but its benefits are remarkable. It will be a beacon for your business as it’s visible to your target audience and attract more attention to new visitors.
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