6 Writing Tips to Build a Branding Strategy for Your Startup
Posted by Andres Aguerrevere on
Starting and subsequently branding your startup business is one of the most exciting things you could do for your professional development. Building a startup is also hard work, and it’s deceptively easy to fail to captivate your target audience.
According to recent findings, 82% of business owners are confident in their abilities to manage a startup, however, 90% of new startups fail to succeed. Marketing a startup properly is extremely important, from branding to delivering the right emotional triggers and CTAs to your target audience. Let’s discuss how you can write a solid branding strategy for your startup and help bring your business to its feet more successfully.
Benefits of Building a Solid Branding Strategy for your Startup
Why should you spend precious time and resources by writing a branding strategy instead of diving straight into content marketing and paid advertisement? As we’ve mentioned previously, a large percentage of startups fail for a variety of resource-related reasons.
Small teams are eager to prove themselves to their industries and the public, and they opt for a “fast and furious” approach to marketing their brand. Instead, it’s better to take a more calculated approach and plan your brand strategy. What makes your brand different from the existing ones? What can you provide your clients with that they can’t get somewhere else? What is your 10-year roadmap like, and how do you plan to expand your business?
Have a chat with your colleagues and co-owners and start building a branding strategy before you go public. There are plenty of good reasons to do so for your startup, including:
- More effective management of available resources
- Consistent brand messaging and appearance across all channels
- Better internal management of ongoing marketing campaigns
- Build trust and loyalty with your startup’s early adopters
- Ensure that your brand is unique enough to carve out its niche
- Experience ROI faster than you would by choosing ad hoc marketing
Writing Tips to Build a Brand Strategy for your Startup
- Make Sure to Brand your Marketing Content from the Start
The first step in ensuring that your startup’s brand is noticed by potential leads is to brand your marketing content properly. Whatever logo, logotype, and brand name you’ve landed on have to be on each piece of content you publish online. The same applies to the corporate colors or style guide you’ve defined for your startup.
Make it so that people associate the blog posts, infographics, and other content with your brand without fault. This will improve your website traffic, generate buzz around your business, and make sure that you have plenty of leads warmed up for launch day.
- Define your Value Proposition and Target Audience Early On
Your business’ value proposition will determine how interested people will be in your brand. What exactly is your startup’s product and why should people care about it? Additionally, how do you intend to service your clients and what bonus value can you provide them with?
Make sure that your marketers and content creators understand the products or services you’ve created. You need to believe in the tangible value of your good before asking anyone else to pay for them. The same applies to your target audience, meaning you will have to define who exactly to market your startup to.
If you’re a business intelligence startup, marketing your services to people interested in eCommerce goods or design services won’t make an impact. Define who you want to attract early on and create content specifically for that audience profile.
- Do the Things your Competitors Aren’t – Differentiate
The advantage of starting a new business is that you don’t have to abide by any marketing rules early on. You should take some time to research what other startups in your industry are doing in terms of branding and marketing. Then, do something different, unique, and unexpected.
For example, if a lot of your competitors publish marketing content on LinkedIn, tap into other social media channels. Use live-streaming, giveaways, influencer marketing, and other creative means to market your startup. You can also invite contest winners to visit your startup, help you create user-generated content, and then market them online. Don’t do what everyone else is doing and break the proverbial mold. Your stakeholders will appreciate it and keep an eye out for your startup.
- Come Up with a Catchy Slogan, Phrase, or a Brand Mascot
You’ll want to create something for people to latch onto when they see your marketing content on the web. In this aspect, having a catchphrase or a brand mascot can help considerably. While not a startup, McDonald’s is a great example of a brand that adopted both a slogan and a mascot in its marketing.
This has made the brand memorable and very difficult to mistake for a similar one. Your startup can achieve a similar level of recognition if you brainstorm with your coworkers and come up with something unique and catchy. Whatever you decide on should be implemented into all marketing materials moving forward for the sake of brand recognition.
- Establish a Solid Social Media Presence for your Brand
Social media platforms are one of the best channels of communication when it comes to reaching any target audience. Whether you favor Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, odds are that you will find interested B2C and B2B leads there.
Small businesses and startups as a whole should invest time and resources into social media marketing from day one. These platforms are easy to manage, and you can directly interact with your audience, unlike with PPC or SERP optimized content.
It’s a good idea to appoint or hire a social media manager from the start so that your socials receive the attention they deserve. This individual can publish new content, update followers on the latest news or happenings in your company, and answer comments or direct messages. All of this contributes to your brand’s visibility and the general “vibe” it gives off to interested customers and clients who are anticipating your products.
- Gather and Market your Social Proof Over Time
Social proof is an excellent way for your startup to prove that it’s a legitimate company worth checking out. User-generated reviews, testimonials, and comments can be used to market your products and services.
You can also invite industry professionals and other startup owners to speak about your brand on a podcast or YouTube video. Collect data that is in your startup’s favor and market it. Numeric data which indicates how well your startup is performing is also a good source of marketing content. By advertising how satisfied other customers and clients are with your services, you will convince cold leads to give your brand a shot.
To Summarize
Even though starting with a branding strategy may seem counterintuitive for your marketing efforts, don’t think like that. You are taking your time to plan how you will advertise your business, instead of risking the loss of very limited startup resources you have available.
Go over your startup’s mission, long-term plans, and branding. Establish which communication channels you will use going forward and start creating relevant, well-researched content. With time, you will attract the right audience profile and have a much easier time retaining these leads than you would through generalized content marketing.
Bio: Jessica Fender is a marketer with a deep passion for all things digital marketing-related. Jessica enjoys writing, both for online outlets and academic assignments involving research papers, case studies, and essays. She especially enjoys loves to work with students who think, “I’d like some help to write my thesis better” because of their sincerity. Jessica reads, exercises, and tends to visit local nature resorts in her spare time.
Image source: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/bearded-male-organizing-his-tasks-using-sticky-notes_13084376.htm
