Startup businesses can encounter some difficult challenges in getting off the ground. For several early stage entrepreneurs, their primary priorities consist of seed money, product development, and sales. Few if any are thinking much at all about brand building, primarily due to their belief that brand building is simply some sophisticated marketing that they cannot manage to afford.
For startup entrepreneurs, brand building is as important to their initial success as product development and raising capital. They can possess the most innovative and revolutionary product ever conceived, but if they can’t create a well-built foundation for conveying that value to the marketplace, odds are the business won’t go far. Developing a strong brand is vital to the initial success of startups.
The Everyone Will Get It and Will Love It Syndrome
Startups have the challenging and complex duty of communicating the value of their product or service in a way that matters to potential customers, backers and investors. Certainly at the beginning and particularly when startups are seeking investment capital, entrepreneurs have an affinity to assume that everyone will understand “the big idea” of their startup. As a result, they can typically show poor communication of their product or service value.
Like any new startup, learning to walk and stand in their perspective market involves falling and getting up, again and again. But the breakneck stride of the venture capital deal-making engine is not very forgiving to the slips and falls of startup founders, especially when they are not able to convey a compelling narrative of why their product or service matters to anyone beyond their mother.
The core of brand building requires an industry relevant and differentiated value proposition. Entrepreneurs must be capable of articulating why their brand matters to their core audience. The founders must keep in mind that at the beginning of a startup, nobody cares.
What Makes Your Startup Phenomenal And Unique?
About every market in every industry is a slush pile. Every year there are roughly 742,000+ new businesses, products, and services created into an immense ocean of ubiquitous similitude. For a startup to have a possibility of making it beyond the beginning phase, their unique value has to be clearly defined.
It’s an acknowledged and celebrated fact that startup entrepreneurs work for many consecutive hours, long days, weeks and years in their business. Few startup entrepreneurs will work on their business. Brand strategy is the process of working on the business. Possessing the intelligibility and the confidence to define that unique value in a compelling way is the initial step in building and developing a sustainable brand.
It’s essential for entrepreneurs to take an extensive, intense, introspective look at how they will discern and articulate why their business and product or service is phenomenal and unique. Understanding that we reside in a globalized environment of increased commoditization, relevant differentiation of value is the source code for building brand success.
Phenomenal and unique refer to the value the business provides to the world, which must be highly valued through a distinctly defined target customer and not in readily abundant supply elsewhere. When you are capable of identifying what phenomenal and unique is for your business, you will have the benefit of possessing a competitive advantage in the category in which industry your business is operating and being able to demand premium pricing as well.
Brand Strategy Is Not Simply Some Form Of Sophisticated Marketing
A consistent misunderstandings startup entrepreneurs have about brand building is that it’s a marketing endeavor. In fact, even though brand strategy and marketing are interconnected factors they are two separate things. Brand strategy is concerning a startup entrepreneur knowing and understanding the DNA of the value proposition offered to the marketplace, but marketing is the process of delivering the brand message through diverse communication channels.
It makes no sense whatsoever creating ostentatious marketing plans without anchoring those plans into a highly developed guiding strategy about what the brand will stand for in the minds of a target customer. This should be excellent news to startup entrepreneurs, given that marketing is an expensive factor most startups merely can’t manage to meet the expense of appropriately.
Brand strategy requires valid factual market insight and creative thinking, whereas marketing requires cash. Marketing must always be a result of brand strategy and not the other way around.
Branding Begins With A Brilliant Name
Over an undefined period, an entrepreneur’s startup business will develop and grow. The business will acquire loyal customers; it will have fashioned trusted relationships and benefit from a reputation that will translate into greater financial value. All of these things will occur more efficiently if the business starts with a brilliant name upon which to build an excellent reputation.
Nothing is more important and valuable to an entrepreneur’s startup business than a brilliant name that can deliver strategic impact. Start by creating a distinguished name that will generate the interest, growth, and expansion of your business value over the long term.
The Three Brand Components for an Enduring And Strong Startup Brand
There are several definitions regarding what a brand is. Regardless of how the concept of a brand is defined, a startup brand requires three skillfully constructed components:
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Brand Identity:
Is the essence of what the brand stands for to customers. It is “why” the brand exists and “who” the brand is. This is distinguished by the culture and or heritage of the business alongside the symbols, language, sounds and textures.
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Brand Experience:
Is the tangible experience customers obtain in their interaction, relations, and transaction with the business. This is “how” the brand delivers on its promise. These associations are established in actual authentic life engagement with people, product or service, process and places.
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Brand Promise:
Is the benefit and advantages your brand deliver to customers. This is “what” the brand provides that is highly valued and not in abundant supply. These associations are established in the emotional, rational and functional benefits customers obtain from the business.
One might consider these components to be the three methods in building the cornerstone of a strong and enduring brand directly from the beginning. All three of these brand components require development; they don’t materialize on their own. The process of developing all three brand components and bring them together in harmonious symbiotic alignment within the mind of the target customer involves balanced critical discipline. The remarkable thing about the three brand components, if utilized properly and consistently, is that they will enable your startup brand to replicate its beliefs and values to the marketplace and target customer with phenomenal credibility and effectiveness.
A Second Opportunity To Make A Phenomenal First Impression Will Never Come
Everyone has been told, “You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression” before. For startup brands, that statement rings truer and holds even greater significance. Almost no matter what a startup brand is doing, the chances are that they’re doing it for the first time. The first presentation and interaction with a customer, employee, or investor must be clear, straightforward and compelling; there are absolutely no second chances to make a good first impression.
By understanding and strictly adhering to these six guidelines, an entrepreneur will be well on their way to brand success. They will have learned the rules by which the world of brands revolves and evolves, and will be able to find their niche of success within it.
