20 Business Branding Tips for Beginners to Transform a Startup into a Brand

20 Branding Tips for Startups: Find out How to Build Brand Strategy for your Start-up

More and more new businesses are created everyday and many could not survive and close down. However, when it comes to startups these days many enthusiasts who fail to recognize the importance of building a brand value shut down faster.

Unless and until you have credibility, a rapport or a value for your brand in the market you will not be able to outshine. This is the reason even big players continuously keep working upon building their brand value and fight competition.

A well-defined brand is what differentiates an amateur from a pro. It is not all that easy, but fret not. In this article, I will guide you through the branding tips for small business owners and new businesses.

 

13 Branding Tips for New Businesses development ideas-728x402
What techniques to use for Branding your Newly Opened Business?

 

Branding Tips for Startup Businesses

 

1. Name and Logo

 

A unique, clear and a great logo is the first step to building a great brand. It is required to put your logo on all pieces of communication for building your brand. Put it on your invoices, newsletters, directories, business cards, all advertising and promotion materials to be circulated.

Read here some tested logo designing tips for a unique logo

 

2. A Professional Website for your business (even if your business doesn’t need one!)

 

A professional website further adds to your authenticity in online space. In this digital era when all businesses are going online for businesses with no online visibility fails to build trust among the customers. You must have a website for your business even if it is not related to an online business service, sales or ecommerce. A greatly designed website with all the necessary functionality may attract more leads to your business without doing any big investment.

There are some great benefits of having a website for your business (even if it does not require one). Read the following:

A website for your business works like a visiting card for the virtual world where people may get to know about your business as much as you want to let them know. It gives you a great power to showcase your business and explain whatever you want to convey about it at any length. You have to do it only for once unlike the real world where you have to explain everything all over again to each customers. This is the magic of online world!

Having a website greatly helps in promoting your business. Suppose, you want to add promotional details about your business into local directories, Yellow Pages, Citation portals, Press Release Platforms, Social media platforms, and other media portals then it gives your business greatest possible exposure and visibility if you add your website name there! After reading your promotional and advertising copies from such platforms the visitor may visit your website for more details. That’s the point! Now, you can convert your visitors into leads easily if they visit your website after reading about your business because that shows that they are curious/interested into what your business offers.

 

Tips to Promote and Market your Business Blog

 

 

3. Vision for Your Brand

 

Creating a defined vision for your brand is very important to create a unique differentiated idea in the mind of the customers. You need to keep the customers bound at different points to have them a clear idea about your goals and core purpose.

 

4. Personify Your Brand

 

Find an authentic personality who resonate with your brand vision and give a face to your brand. It helps people to relate to your brand and imagine it in real life use of your product and/or services.

 

5. Humanize Your Brand

 

Humanizing the brands give the customers a positive feeling about it. They feel more connected. Humanizing means you open up your doors to let the customers in and connect with them at different levels to give them a complete feeling of security.

It turns your customers, employees, vendors and all associates into your goodwill ambassadors and even evangelists for your brand.

6. Marketing Materials

 

Get all the marketing collaterals made keeping in mind the taste of the market. Brands usually come up with different designs for different regions in which they operate. The theme and design should be able to connect to the regional ecosystem to get noticed more.

7. Network and Network

 

Network as much as you can. Reach out to the influencers and famous personalities in you industry and try to build rapport with them. You can do it through various personal mediums, however, social media is universal.

 

8. Unique and/or Buzz

 

Be unique to create a  buzz or create a buzz by being unique. Being different and interesting than others will automatically gain you limelight and more attention. While there are many boring things happening around and going unnoticed, it does no good to any brand.

 

Being honest and clear about your offerings will earn you more trust and more trust means loyal customers. Playing around with things fo short term gains bad for your rapport and brand.

9- Be Responsive

 

Answer queries through your website, moreover be active on social media as it keeps you connected with your customers and help you grow your network of customers. Respond to inquiries and provide outstanding customer service.

10. Be Consistent

 

Be consistent with your brand building activities and your vision. Don’t be or sound confused or lost to your customers. They are never going to trust you if you don’t have faith in your own brand.

 

11. PR and Media

 

Media people are always on a look out for a story. Create a positive story about your brand and send across to the major national and regional print and digital media. It will gain you free publicity and help you build your brand identity.

12. Go Global but Don’t miss Local

 

Keep your expanding goals high and don’t miss out the global or national markets whichever you are targeting but don’t lose hold of the regional market. Participate in local events happening in your city and keep the influencers in your region in your loop.

 

13. Collaborate, Associate and/or Sponsor

 

Collaborate with related agencies for cross promotions. Associate your brand for good causes or charitable events, etc. Sponsor charitable events and other events and shows which can help you get mileage. Weigh and analyse the worth of events before you invest.

 

 

Business Branding Tips for Beginners- 7 Ways to Take your Brand Global

 

Here’s bringing to you 7 ways which will help you in taking your brand global:-

Business Branding Tips- There are huge opportunities for the businesses to prosper and succeed in international markets. Find Best ways to make a brand global.

 

Learn How to Take your Brand Global and get International Level Identification for your Brand.

With the technological advancement everything has become so fast. The messages, information spreads in seconds and everyone is so easily reachable. Today every business/startup wish to go global at some point of time reason being they can interact to people around the world, talk to them, tell them about their brand, products/services, handle their queries and what not.

Now, what can be done to take your brand global, how can you make place for your brand in a different country, different culture, how can you stand out, that’s the discussion all about.

Tips on how to Take your Brand Global International-470x313

Best Ways to Take your Brand Global

1- Research

 

The initial step you  need to take before anything else is research. Know the market trends, the competition, customer behaviour and what will set your brand above all the others existing.

This can be done with the help of surveys, consultants and other sources that can help you in getting the information you require before launching your brand globally. Moreover your focus lie on finding the most favourable, responsive and welcoming market.

Don’t go according to the region’s population as they may also have large number of competitors too. Think logically after doing your research & take calculated risk.

 

 

 

2- Set Norms

 

Planning is vital part of any business and is the first stage. Make sure the word ‘Global’ is firmly fixed in your organization’s culture right from the very start. ‘Think Global’ should be the belief imbibed by all in the company/business.

 

No matter if initially your focus and target is on the domestic markets but in future you can feel the need to go international. Therefore, secure international domains to your company name in whichever market you think you would like to enter or have target audience. Planning needs to be done from the beginning.

As your business/brand grows, a blueprint of what next level to attain must be there to help you move accordingly. Norming stage comes before performing so ‘global norming’ should be the key focus to grow your brand.

3- Positioning

 

To create your brand’s position in the market you need to research about the customers, their buying habits, culture & customs, language etc in the market you have chosen.

You have to understand the competition there. Who all are providing the same products/ services as you in the country. Formulate strategies according to the market you enter in.

Understand the customers and their buying patterns there and how can you stand unique to them amidst your competitors to position yourself for success.

Important Criteria to Choose the right markets to sell your products

 

4- Brand Naming & Translation

Brand is what will represent you in the market. Your customers will know you by your brand. The name should be such that it doesn’t hurt the sentiments of people belonging to any region, country in the world.

Also do consider the translation of the brand name because the name may have a different meaning in some other language.

Taking example of smartphone ‘LUMIA’, Nokia’s new smartphone translates in Spanish slang to prostitute, which is unfortunate.

 

There are various options to choose from when deciding a good brand name:-

 

  • Use the founder or inventor’s name (Hewlett-Packard)
  • Describe what you do (Southwest Airlines)
  • Describe an experience or image (Sprint)
  • Take a word out of context (Apple) “named after one of steve jobs’s fruitarian diets”
  • Make up a word ( Google ) the full form of which is ” Global Organization Of Oriented Group Language Of Earth”

 

 

5- Marketing Uniformity

When you’re building a global brand, sooner or later you will need to open your office internationally. It maybe 2-3 person office in any say Canada, UK or any other country. Later the 3 people office would grow to a team of 6-8 people and later even more.

Now similarly, with the passage of time you would open more hubs in different countries and there you go global. But make sure there is consistency with regard to your brand.

 

Although your marketing activities, marketing campaigns will be managed locally but there should be consistency across the board in all your offices because in order to be a successful global brand, the separate entities of a company should work together as a unit.

 

 

6- Sensitivity Towards Others Cultures

 

Do not ever offend your potential customers. Before launching your brand globally every little thing needs to be considered. The logo, symbol,colors, brand name, its translation and other things must be such that it doesn’t lead to any negative impact on prospects.

Every culture is different from the other. Perception is different, views differ, language difference is there. What it means good in your language might have negative or offensive meaning in other language. Be sensitive towards others cultures where you enter.

 

 

7- Proficient Partners

People you would require to work with to grow your brand must be chosen wisely. Trademarks, patents, licensing and more. Make sure you select the representatives who are reputed in their area of work so that they cannot mislead you or misuse your name.

Take recommendations from your colleagues and organizations that provides information on these and their image.

Why the Brands fail in the lack of these 10 Elements

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One comment

  1. Thats quite a comprehensive checklist for someone who is starting out their branding exercise. We are one of the top branding companies in Mumbai and provide class brand management services. Anyone who is interested can get in touch with us.

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