Honing the Essentials of Great Branding for Your Startup

It takes consumers between five and seven impressions to remember a brand and over 70% of brand managers believe that building an audience is more important than converting sales.

As a startup, getting your logo, website, fonts, merchandise, and other aspects is vital, since you may not have the budget that more established companies do, to expose potential audiences to your brand.

When building your brand, planning, strategizing, and testing your ideas are key since you don’t want to have to invest in major re-branding a few years down the line. Keep the basic tenets of branding strategy in mind but make sure to adapt them to the needs of your startup.

Around one-third of the world’s top 100 brands have the color blue in their logo. Why? Because blue is the color of the sea. It is a universally calming, meaningful color that exudes security, loyalty, and professionalism. Of course, the right colors for your logo will very much depend on your industry and your specific products or services.

The basic elements of your logo – including shape, color, and (if you use text) fonts, should above all represent the ethos of your brand while also creating an instant connection with your target market. According to research undertaken by Rederforest, logos are the most recognizable brand identifier, followed by style, color, and uniqueness of voice.

Fonts, meanwhile, can alter the entire look and feel of your text, influencing your audience’s perception of your brand personality. Your branding efforts should be consistent across everything from your website to your merchandise, emails, and even your business sign.

With the vast number of websites available, remaining competitive very much depends on how visually appealing, content-rich, and accessible your website is. Customers usually take just 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about your site so, from the word go, it should be consistent with your brand, appeal to your target market, and be mobile-compatible.

Statistics show that around 88% of customers who search for a type of business on a mobile device contact or visit that business within 24 hours. Just a few features you should include on your site include easy navigation (the three-stacked ‘hamburger’ is ideal), a simple background, an intuitive interface, easy-to-read typography, and clear calls to action.

Website and online marketing specialists can help with ensuring your website is found. Take time to find a partner to support your business’ local SEO, paid advertising, and marketing campaigns if you do not have expertise in this area yourself.

Branded merchandise is a promotional tool that can be invaluable to a startup wishing to promote consumer awareness of its products and services. There are many options when it comes to ‘merch’, including branded mugs, pens, T-shirts, and the like.

When making a choice, prioritize larger, wearable pieces of merchandise that can reach a larger number of eyes. Knapsacks, bags, and T-shirts are ideal because you can add a motto or describe your services or products underneath your logo.

You don’t need to rely on an expensive company to create items you can give away during workshops, conferences, and exhibitions. You can make T-shirts with personal heat pressing equipment and easily sew knapsacks and drawstring bags with little more than a bit of fabric and a small sewing machine.

SEO is a key marketing strategy but also a means of attracting new customers when your products or services are completely new. Plan your SEO strategy well, allocating a budget of between $500 and $5,000 a month for this strategy.

This amount will be needed for expenses such as purchasing high-quality content that is evergreen enough to show up consistently in search results and that contains keywords in a natural, organic state.

You will also need talented staff to boost your authority via backlinks, target commercial, and niche keywords, and utilize analytics to discover more about bounce rates and well-received content.

Branding is important to all businesses but it can be particularly vital if you are starting out and you need to spread the word about your products and services. Start out by identifying your ethos and those of your customers.

Build a beautiful, attractive logo that sums up the ways in which you can enhance your customers’ lives, and make SEO a priority. Set aside a small budget for merchandise. It will help build brand loyalty and potentially reach a large number of people.

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