If you got here, I assume that you are a startupper. You have an outstanding idea and you wrote your executive summary. You are done with your elevator pitch and read all the articles about how to build your team. You are planning to take the big step and set up your company, so you could develop the perfect product. Great! Now you only need to figure out, how you can create your own brand. In case you happen to be a newcomer to this field, have no or small understanding of how to build/develop a brand, you came to the right place. Here are a few tips that can help you reach your aims.
But before we go deep, let's clear something up. You have a product and you want to have a brand. Of course, you can say that your product is your brand, but that would be a huge mistake to think so. Your product is what you do, it can be a service, a physical or virtual product, a software, anything you want to sell. But a brand is more than a product. It is the picture others paint about you in their mind and what are their expectations towards you. Your brand is not only your logo, it is also the tone of voice how you communicate, how you present yourself on social media, what causes you support, how you treat your customers and team members, and many more. All of these together build up the experience what others see of your brand. Your brand is the promise essentially your products hold. Your product is only the maifestation of your brand, or at least it should be. If you have a restaurant you do not sell the food. You sell a nice, stress-free evening spent in a cozy environment with a special person. If you manufacture instruments, your product is the piece of wood you carefully selected, crafted and set for use, but you sell the feeling of being a rockstar. And your brand talks 'showbiz' itself.
Now let's see the 10 ingredients, what you will need to build a brand!
Have a niche:
niche is all about focus. In fact a narrow focus. To find your niche, you have to narrow down your focus. Ask yourself a question: 'Who will use my product/service?' 'What special features it has?' 'Who can benefit from using it?' After you answered honestly these questions, you would see that your focus is already narrower, your target group - the people who eventually will buy and use your product/service - is smaller. If you do it well, it will be very small. Let's stay with one of the above mentioned examples. Imagine that you are a restaurant owner. You like steak and you know a lot about it. You have contacts to the best butchers all around the world and you happen to know someone from Kobe or Argentina. Would you make a curry restaurant? No, obviously you would make a steakhouse. Would you build a menu based on fish? No, your main product would be delicious meat right from the grill.
Research on your customers:
when you have your niche, you can start to research, research and research. Figure out who your potential customers are! Get to know, how old they are, where they are located geographically, what they do while working and when they finished working, what are their needs, what are their desires, what motivates them, how they like to communicate. When you know almost everything about your customers, try to think like them. Imagine, what you would like and dislike in your brand if you were them. Be brave in tailoring your brand to your niche. It will pay off. In case you are planning to produce guitar amplifiers, try to figure it out who will buy it. Is it a hobby-musician or a professional? Will the buyer use it for the jamming sessions, in small concert halls or arenas? Do they have a tight budget or you can sell luxury? Or an easier question: 'What kind of music they listen and play?' If they listen to jazz, neither your potential customers, nor the influencers will not be from the metal scene.
Apple and Apple Watch/iPhone/MacBook are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Research on your competitors:
after you know who will buy your product/service, check out your competitors. Who they are, what they are selling, how they communicate, how they brand themselves. These will all give you an insight of the market itself and helps you to find your own features that will differentiate you from them, what will make your brand unique. Let's see an example. You own a sports brand and you are manufacturing outdoor clothing. Some of your competitors will be for sure industry giants, some mid-sized professionals with a network of retailers and few newcomers/small brands. This market is complex. But who said that the field where you enter will be an easy territory of success. Make a list of your competitors, check out what they do well and what they don't, what products they have, and measure your qualities to them. It will show your brand's place on the market, give you an estimate on your pricing and explain you some standards that exists on that specific market. Know your competitors, be inspired by them, understand them, but important is that you never copy them. Why? Because your brand is unique! So as theirs. Or at least should be.
Have a story:
at the previous point we said that your brand is unique. Yes, it is! So, think it through, what makes it so special. Ask the question 'What brought this brand to life?' Remember the moment when your great idea was born. Write it down, tell it to yourself, puzzle it together that it would be a story. Be honest and authentic. If you are a food-truck owner, tell it what made you choose this particular lifestyle of cooking. Why you chose the exact food you sell, what makes the taste of it so great. Tell the world what makes your brand different than any other on the market.
Phrase a message:
I hope you are prepared to tell your pitch in less than 30 seconds. If not, please, do yourself a favour and craft a catchy executive summary. When you are done with that, simmer it down to a short elevator pitch. Now, from that you can phrase your message. Make a simple tagline/slogan of not more than 6 words. Think about the big brands of the world: 'NIKE-Just do it'. 'Apple-Think different.' 'McDonald's-I'm lovin' it.' 'Enjoy.-Coca Cola' This has to be the quintessence of your brand.
Create a brand persona:
persona stand for a person. Imagine your brand for a moment as a human being. After all the research you had made, you have an image in your head about your brand. Is it male or female? Old or young? Extrovert or introvert? Serious or fun? What is his/her profession? What he/she wears, listens, reads? Where your persona lives, what is entertaining for this person? The clearer the profile you make, the closer it will bring you to understand the behaviour of your own brand. To keep the sports example: is your brand persona a healthy-lifestyle-fan, trendy, young woman who is interested in fitness, or a competitive, achievement-driven top manager who loves extreme sports and american football? Creating a brand persona will help you find your own tone of voice, can show the ways of advertising and areas of marketing, so as to indentify influencers.
Ask for professional help:
assumingly your brand has an amazing core value and the products you sell have great features and outstanding quality. Don't let that be ruined by a bad DIY (do-it-yourself) branding or a generic logo, just because it is cheap and tempting. If you have a toothache, you go to the dentist, right? A branding and design professional can tailor the visual appearance and communication of your startup to the exact needs of yours and most importantly to your customers'. All of it stress and pain free. From a generic brand you can hardly expect to be outstanding or appealing to your target group, on the other hand it can serve as a great base for internet memes and as an example for web tutorials on how DON'T DO. Rather hire someone in-house or outsource it to an agency. It is better (and in total cheaper) to make branding right in advance for the first time than to fix it multiple times during operation.
Apply your brand everywhere:
and I mean it, everywhere. Make a list of your brand's appearance, where it will be visible and where not. Apply your brand even there, what you described as a hidden place from the public. Use it on your business cards, letterheads, website, stamp, facebook, twitter, instagram, car, giveaways, app. You name it. If you have a main brand colour, use it all over, but use it esthetically.
Stay simple, stay consistent:
in writing rather be simple, use words that are known for most of your target group and explain everything in short sentences. Keep the tone of your brand voice always the same and according to your persona. Let your whole team know about the common wording you use that they also would share the same attitude. If you developed wearables for cyclists, use the terminology of the riders and tech specialists. If you are running a posh wine bar, you can include the sommelier glossary to your communication materials. In visuals it is also important to be simple and use as less fonts as possible, but always stay under 3 fonts and under 2 type families. Don't forget to give them hierarchy, your headlines shall look all the same and your body text too. Also consider the use of only a few colours, but use them everywhere, consistently. When you happen to change visuals(logo, font, colour, key visuals, etc.), do it everywhere, and do it instantly on all surfaces, if possible. Of course, for logistic companies with a few dozens of branded trucks, instantly can mean a couple of months.
Review your brand constantly, but change it purposefully and after consideration:
Do you still remember the brand persona? As we age we change, we mature, we become different. The same is with brands. When you are a startupper you are fast and flexible, when you grow to be a multinational organization with hundreds of employees your brand values might stay the same, but how you communicate them, can vary a lot. It is worthy to check the relevance of your brand regularly. Does it still has the same tone of voice? Are the expectations of your customers the same like before? Is it consistent all over? For example, if you run a bakery, your product sortiment will most likely not change much and your customers will have the very same need as before. But if you produce toys for children, mascots can change from time to time. When you decide to change an element in your branding, consult with a professional and ask for an opinion if it is really necessary and if so, what to keep and what to replace something better.