Branding for Startups: How to Build a Brand from Scratch

The Complete Guide to Creating and Launching a Remarkable Brand

Creating an awesome brand can be a daunting task for many entrepreneurs. First things first, no brand can be built overnight, but you can create a solid base for your brand’s first steps and with that, be a step ahead of your competitors. With these 10 steps, you’ll be well on your way to developing your new brand and launching it in the market:

This article is about how to create a brand in 10 steps. It provides a step-by-step guide for building an awesome brand.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

Step 2: Research The Competition

Step 3: Brand Analysis

Step 4: Create Visual Identity

Step 5: Brand Visuals

Step 6: Develop Brand Guidelines

Step 7: Brand Launch

Step 8: Establish Your Social Media Presence

Step 9: Select Your Marketing Channels And Tools

Step 10: Develop Your Marketing Strategy And Plan Of Action

Define Your Target Audience

For any brand or business, it is very important to know who you’re talking to. Who is your primary and secondary customer. When building a brand from scratch, it is not an easy task to define the target audience, but take a closer look at the potential consumer of your service or product and create personas to help you on the process.

A persona is a fictional character created for the purpose of representing a group of people with similar needs, goals, and behaviours. Personas are used by companies as a way of understanding their customers better and designing products and services for them more effectively.

An example of a persona for Brandstudio is Greg. Greg is a 44 year old man living in London, he works as a brand manager at a mid sized healthcare company and he is in charge of developing strategies for new product launches. Greg is a proactive guy, always creating ideas in his head and reaching out for experts to make his vision a reality. On a more personal side Greg likes to run in the morning and keeps a healthy life overall.

The main idea behind creating personas, is that it helps to relate to your customer in a more realistic way. Therefore, making a clear picture of your potencial consumer and the way you need to talk to get his attention.

Research The Competition

We should research our competitors to know how their customers perceive them. We should also find out their strengths and weaknesses and see where they have the most traction.

A company should always do research on their competitors in order to understand what they are doing and how they are doing it in order to provide the best service to their customers.

When researching the competition, you might want to look for the overall patterns and how each brand stands out from the others. For example, a sports brand will always have a sports feel to it, but nike and adidas are quite different when it comes to brand strategy. That is why, before stepping in the game, you need to create a solid competition study, and make a brand analysis.

Brand Analysis

Every company needs to analyse their brand once in a while, to make sure that they are still on the right track. This is especially important for startups who need to keep up with their competitors. A brand analysis will help you:

– Define your brand vision for the future – Search your competitors and analyse their strategies – Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your brand.

Startup branding is a very tricky thing. You have to create a unique identity for yourself, but also be able to stand out from other companies in your industry. That’s why it’s so important that you do a thorough analysis of your company before starting any design work.

A brand analysis identifies the areas in which your company is focusing on. It assesses who your customers are, what they’re looking for and what they can afford among other factors. The analysis also looks at who your competitors are and how you fare against them.

If a company has a big marketing team and is already doing great research to figure out how they want to set themselves apart in the market, it’s no wonder that they might already have a brand analysis done. Brand analysis is a great way to get a better understanding of how your company stacks up against the competition, or to help with a rebrand.

Brand analyses can be seen as the foundation of your business – a way to make sure your strategy and systems reflect what you want to accomplish in the long and short term.

A brand analysis covers each of these areas:

• The company or brand background

• Brand goals

• The brand main vision

• Brand target markets and audiences

• Customer personas (remember Greg?)

• The brand voice (the written style of language and tone you use)

• Competitor analysis

This will enable you to start shaping the look and feel of the brand and therefore the visual identity.

Create Visual Identity

The keyword here it simple. Keep things simple. You don’t want your logo or visuals to be too complex; that can make it hard for people to remember your company’s name and what you offer.

The visual identity of a brand is the first thing that people will see. It is important to keep it simple and clear. It should be consistent and look professional.

A graphic design agency can help with the creation of a visual identity for your brand. They can do everything from logo design to packaging design.

Brand Visuals

The first impression is the last impression. That’s why it’s so important to get the branding right. Graphic design studios are an integral part of the branding process, and they can make the difference when creating a brand’s visual identity.

A graphic design studio is responsible for designing a brand’s logo, color palette, typography, and other visual components that will be used in all of your brand’s marketing materials.

A logo is a company’s identity and the first thing people see when they are considering a purchase. It is important that the logo be recognisable and memorable, but also authentic to the company’s values.

Colors play a crucial role in creating the brand’s visuals. A color palette should be used to unify the various elements of branding, including logos, packaging, signage, and website design. Colors should not only represent an organisation’s personality but also evoke emotion from consumers.

Typography is just as important as the color palette of your brand. A curvy typography will show a playful and relaxed tone, while sans serif fonts can come across as more formal and professional. Typography must be aligned with the tone of your brand.

Patterns or graphics are another way that companies can create their own visual identity and reinforce their voice by using them on social media or packaging materials.

They also provide branding guidelines to ensure consistency across all channels.

Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are an essential part of a brand’s visual identity. It is a set of rules that helps to create a unified look for all branding materials.

Brand identity is not just about the logos, colors, and fonts. It is also about the tone of voice, the personality, and the values that your business represents.

A logo alone can’t tell your brand’s whole story. Your brand needs to have an established look to make it recognisable in any medium or setting. A strong visual identity can help create a personal connection with customers and make them feel like they know your business on a more intimate level.

To ensure your brand usage is consistent, design agencies create a brand visual identity manual.

A brand visual identity manual is a powerful tool, and like any other technical manual, it must be consulted before making design related materials. This manual will help ensure your brand’s consistency.

Brand Launch

The brand launch is a crucial moment for the success of a new business. It’s the time when you have everything set to step into the market with a fresh new look. The launch allows you to introduce your company, products and services to your audience in a way that will leave them wanting more.

Establish Your Social Media Presence

Social media is a powerful tool for brands and consumers. Brands can use social media to engage with their customers and consumers can use it to voice their opinions.

Nowadays social media is one of the main touch points for brands and consumers. So keeping that in mind, social media presence is crucial, especially for product or individual service brands.

It is important for brands to have a strong social media presence in order to stay relevant in the market. This means that they need to be active on all platforms, provide content that is relevant, and be aware of the trends.

Select Your Marketing Channels And Tools

The marketing channels and tools that you choose depends on the type of business you are in. For example, if you are a startup, then it would be wise to use Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to promote your brand.

Marketing channels and tools should be used to reach your target audience and convert them into customers.

Think of this as the roads to your door. Your personas are out there looking for your brand, but they need to see how to get to you. Establish roads to your brand.

For example one of our marketing channels is our blog or our founder’s medium page where he writes about the importance of design for businesses. When people see the articles, they are curious in how brandstudio can help them.

Develop Your Marketing Strategy And Plan Of Action

You might want to find a partner for this step. But basically, you need to create a plan, like a business or financial plan, marketing plans are crucial for a brand success. How much you’re going to spend? Where are you going to invest in ads, how often will you post on social media. And remember, always check your competitors to see what they’re doing and how you can learn from their mistakes or successes.

On a final note:

Brands are always evolving, changing and adapting. This is important to keep in mind. Anything you do now, might change in the future and that’s ok. Just understand who your brand is, what it stands for and adapt along the way. Maybe you’ll be the next Apple, who knows, it all starts with a vision.