7 brand-building tips for startups

Without setting targets for your brand-building campaign, how will you measure success?

Without setting targets for your brand-building campaign, how will you measure success?

By Emma Miller

When you see a famous brand with a beautiful logo and a catchy tagline, you must feel a mixture of awe and envy. And your next thought is that one day your small business could also catch someone’s eye and cause them feel that way. If so, have a look at these great brand-building tips that can help you increase the awareness of your brand.

Send bold messages

There’s no one else in this world who should work more on your brand promotion than you. Simply put, if you want to make a breakthrough and reach your target audience, take a bold attitude. Hand out leaflets, key rings, T-shirts, notepads and other things and become a walking commercial for your business. Moreover, promote your startup in social media and on every social occasion that seems suitable for such promotion.

Set campaign goals

Your brand-building campaign should be a long-lasting process. Therefore, don’t open all your cards at once, but keep a few aces up your sleeve. For instance, if you set too wide a promotion field, such a campaign might not reach even your friends. What you should do instead is set realistic brand campaigning goals. First, determine several deadlines until which you expect a higher traffic rate on your website or higher revenues. Assess your achievements up to each of those deadlines and change them for future if necessary. Second, initiate a closer contact with your targets, like offering promotional discounts or giveaways with your products. Finally, ask those first customers to give you neutral feedback on your branding efforts. Also, have a look at these examples of viral online branding campaigns, published by Entrepreneur.com. Once the brand has been recognized and adopted by your initial targets, you can continue spreading the word to other target groups.

Ensure peer support

If you remember the peer support phenomenon from your teenage years, you know how important it can be for an adolescent. Now, if you perceive your startup as a teenager in the world of big businesses, it’s clear this rookie will need all the support it can get. This is why it’s crucial to establish an honest collaboration with a group of chosen fellow businesses. Mutual support and promotion will improve the status of all the brands included in this kind of cooperation. Therefore, read more about the business benefits that partnerships might yield in a startup-friendly post on Forbes.com.

Get adequate visuals

Your logo and the trademark colors will be the ambassadors of your brand. So, your startup has to be summarized in them. Whatever you do, keep it extremely simple. Think about Nike, Adidas, Pepsi, Apple and other huge brands. They all have utterly simple, yet extremely effective logos. Logo isn’t the only visual side of your business you should pay attention to. There are, of course, promotional materials like brochure printing, flyers, cards, t-shirts…

Create a balanced narrative

A brand can’t be recognized and memorized by their audience if its promotion isn’t consistent. Moreover, don’t think that a logo and a tagline will suffice. In addition to them, your still unknown business needs a convincing narrative that will highlight its unique nature. By telling an engaging story about its origins and its mission, you’ll arouse curiosity in your audience. Look here what the Guardian’s wordsmiths suggest on that matter.

Direct contact with customers

Unlike determining your target audience, establishing direct contact with your customers refers to the process of individualization. Only when you segment your chosen audience into smaller parts will you be able to offer them customized product packages. For instance, such an approach should be applied to presenting your innovations to you important clients. Moreover, reaching out to the local social media influencers with some unique propositions could cut corners to new customers, resulting in better brand positioning in the market, as well as increased visibility for your future business moves.

Participate in local events

Speaking of local influencers, think about becoming one. Those local opinion-makers were once unknown to the public. You can achieve that by taking part in local events and spreading the network of your influence. Such actions could bring you soon to the front pages of the local newspapers. The more you spread the word about your brand, the higher influence you will have on the local business affairs.

Maintain informative communication

No matter if it’s your business page on Facebook or your call center, smooth and sweet communication will earn your customers’ trust. Since your startup will start growing, you won’t be able to perform all these tasks by yourself. Because of that, when hiring staff for those communication purposes, go through these communication tips with them to ensure consistent quality in this department.

The techniques described in this post will add to the popularity of your startup, as well as increase the public familiarity with your brand. Nevertheless, don’t think those tips will automatically skyrocket your business. It will take a lot of hard work, smart financial moves and wise promotion to make your brand stand out. Still, keep up the good work and stay committed to your branding tactics.

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Emma Miller is a marketer and a writer from Sydney. Her focus are digital marketing, social media, start-ups and latest trends. She’s a contributor at Bizzmark blog and a mother of two.

1 comment

  1. RGC says:

    Great Information Thanks for sharing this.

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