Branding is an activity undertaken to by a startup to set them apart visually from the others. It involves everything from logo designing to corporate uniforms. It goes far beyond just projection of a business image to showcasing everything about your startup, visually.
Here are 4 factors that you need to determine clearly before you brand your startup:
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Know Your Business Offering
The thumb rule of branding activity is to be well aware about your business offering. This involves creation of a unique name and image depending on your offering. Can you imagine amazon being what it is today without the witty logo and its corporate colors?
Branding aims at establishing a significant and differentiated presence in a manner in which the masses can remember them.
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Know Your Target Audience
Before you pick and choose the brand elements of your startup, make sure you have kept your target audience in mind. Every target group – demographic and psychographic has its own preference when it comes to colors and elements. So if your startup is offering ice creams and confectionaries, then you must go the Baskin Robbins way and pick light and subtle colors like pink and blue and play around with elements like scoops of ice cream. If you offering is a serious one like Price Waterhouse Coopers then representing elements of building customer relationships and provision of solutions should be reflected through the branding.
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Brand your basics like your logo with precision
The logo is one of the most important elements of your branding activity. It is your first visual contact with a customer. So when branding your startup, make sure you spend enough time, energy and money on it. Because in all likelihood, this one will stay with you till the very end. Other basics include your stationery, website, etc which all have to be aligned alongside your corporate colors and logo.
Have you ever noticed the color of the uniform of the person who delivers your shopping spends on Flipkart? The color of his uniform is the same as that of the Flipkart logo. That is branding your basics with precious. One uniform look across all visibility verticals. Next time, do notice the logistics person!
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Once sure, commence branding at the simplest locations and scale up
What good is branding if not showcased? Once when you are sure about the way you have branded your startup, showcase it to the world. You need not spend lavishly unless you have a budget like housing.com who recently went on an advertising spree to showcase that they are “looking up.”
The easier and not so expensive way of doing this is by finding simple avenues like digital advertising, social media campaigns, a single hoarding at a crowded location and so on. Either of these are enough to help understand the sentiment and response of the masses.
The above 4 reasons are why one must brand their startup and take the branding activity seriously. Colors, themes, etc all sounds fun and games but in reality it is a very serious affair. So do take your own sweet time to be sure about it.
