Why Branding Your Startup is Important

The world of start-ups is all about speed.

Generating revenue quickly. Hiring quickly. Failing fast, implementing rapidly, and growing to the next level before your money runs out.

But if a start-up grows faster than the development of its brand, this can create fatal instability right at the core of the company.

A company’s digital presence is only as strong as its brand. After all, you need your image to match up to how you want your audience to see you.

By far, it’s more cost-effective and strategic to invest in brand development early on in the start up journey. 

Branding is the process of creating a strong, positive impression of your company with regard to your product and services in the mind of the customers. You can do this by developing the elements that make up your band such as your logo, design style, tone of voice, and your mission statement.

If you’re trying to grow without an impactful logo, defined brand colours, a defined tone of voice, and a strong digital presence — your efforts can look amateur. And you’re maybe even diluting the efforts of your start-up growth by not having that coherent brand identity in place.  

Developing a brand takes work. You’ll need to find the right creatives to guide you, and you’ll need to collaborate with them closely to co-create a brand identity that will stay the course, and last for a number of years at the least.

Creating and running your business at the same time is both immensely challenging, and enlivening. There are risks ahead for any entrepreneur — but taking care of the brand development piece as early and as comprehensively as possible empowers your company’s growth in a few different ways.

1. Strategy

By creating a well-defined and well-funded startup branding strategy, you’re also developing a roadmap that will help grow your business into the future. Brand strategy planning has so much crossover with business development planning — you can’t really pull them apart. So plan your brand, and watch the strategy come together.

2. Differentiation

Branding is essential for differentiating you from your competitors, and refining your offer so that customers choose you. If your brand portrays a true, distinctive representation of who you are as a business, then it’ll be much easier to stand out in the market, and attract your people to you.

3. Marketing

Marketing and branding go hand in hand. And without a slick brand, your marketing material isn’t going to look very professional. Having an iconic, memorable brand will instantly elevate your marketing material, and make it easier for audiences to connect what they might be seeing in terms of your content with the rest of your company.

4. Engagement

Additionally, branding can build a strong image of your business in the minds of your customers, and act as a vehicle to help you find solutions to your customers’ issues. With your brand’s presence on social media platforms, you can use your brand to directly connect to your customers, engage with them, understand their concerns, and resolve them. You’ll be able to build trust and loyalty from your customers, and even attract new clients.

As a final word, sorting out branding is going to increase your visibility. If you’re going to ask for your audience’s attention on a regular basis, you want to give them something sleek, polished, coherent, and well thought out to look at. 

So it really is essential to do this work as early as possible in your start-up journey. Business owners who leave it late often regret it when they scroll back through marketing material or previous brand iterations that didn’t live up to their vision, and desired impact.

So don’t be like them. Get your brand together from the start — and empower your business with a strong brand identity. 

Before you go!

Nonprofits, charities and purpose driven organisations trust us to build powerful brands to reach for their goals, and tell a powerful story. We help businesses navigate the nuances of branding, helping your message be heard by crafting an unforgettable visual identity.

If you’re looking for a creative agency for web development services — send us an email using our contact us page or drop us a line.