5 Reasons Why Brand Building Is Necessary For Your Start-Up

The earlier you start building a brand the better

The earlier you start infusing your brand elements into your business, the better. Brand building is necessary for your startup. It’s a process of creating step-by-step activities that will help people build greater perceptions about you and ultimately grant you a good reputation among the people you are trying to reach.

It is very advisable, and I cannot over-emphasize the fact that the earlier you start, the easier it will become to build that reputation that will turn your business around.

If you think that you need to become a major player in your industry before creating a brand, you’re operating in error because you certainly won’t become a major player without a quality brand.

And if you think branding doesn’t apply to you just because you are a start-up, you better think again.

Your brand is what makes you a player in the game. According to Jeff Bezos, it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room. Brand building is necessary for your startup.

Branding plays a huge role in the success of every business because it not only helps you convey your message to your target audience, but helps you enjoy a competitive edge in a crowded marketplace.

Listen to me, you are setting up your business in an industry that is extremely saturated (because I can’t think of any industry that isn’t) especially in Nigeria.

The rate at which new businesses spring up, before you catch your breath, you’ll be drowning in the sea of various ventures.

So what do you think will set you apart? how will you reach your audience and how will they connect with you?

In this blog post, I want to discuss with you 5 reasons brand building is necessary for your start-up.

5 Reasons Brand Building Is Necessary For Your Start-Up

First, let’s talk about what branding is not

1. Branding is not burning an identifying mark on animals, even though that was how it started. In business context, it involves putting a distinctive brand identity on goods and services and shaping people’s perception of your business.

2. Branding is not a logo, colours or packaging of your products and sleek business cards. Although these elements are important to create a brand identity, a recognizable feature for your business. They are not the only things that matter in brand building.

3. Branding is not the cute name you give your business, but naming your business is a very important determinant in how successful or not your business will be. A brand name is the first form of communication to your potential customer.

As much as it’s good to know what branding is and is not, you must also learn the donts of building a brand.

Here is what infusing branding at the get-go does for your startup

1. Competitive Advantage

According to this article in Investopedia, Competitive advantage refers to factors that allow a company to produce goods or services better or more cheaply than its rivals.

Branding helps you build a competitive advantage.

A good brand serves as a competitive advantage in any industry that you are serving. There are 2 ways you can create a competitive advantage for your brand:

By offering really affordable products or services that are way cheaper than other businesses in the industry that you serve

Or by differentiation; branding is one way of differentiating your offerings from other people who offer the same thing as you.

So you can stand out from competitors either by being cheap or by being different, but I tell you, the former is the fastest way to chase yourself out of business.

A competitive advantage over your competitors sort of speeds up your business and sets you far apart from the rest.

2. Brand Reputation

Truly, you have little control over how people perceive you, but the little control you have can help you shape their perception of your business right from the start.

When you show up on social media, how you relate and engage with your audience, the kinds of content that you post, your tone of voice, i.e the way you speak through your copies, your content, your videos and even your customers service are huge determinants of your reputation.

So by carefully controlling all of these things, you control and shape people’s perceptions about you. When you are faced with crisis, do you sweep it under the rug or do you confront it?

If you can properly resolve a customer’s issues, you can shape their perception. That’s why some brands often go out of their way to make sure that a customer is satisfied.

Consider this story of an Amazon customer, after ordering for a book on their website and completing payment, this customer waited for ages but didn’t receive any book. When Amazon found out about it, they not only refunded the customer’s money, they sent the book as well.

Amazon is obsessed with their customers, that’s why they have been been able to shape people’s perception about their brand and have become the best in the world.

3. Builds Trust & Loyalty

It’s easier for people to buy a particular brand of a product because they trust that brand and are more familiar with it, especially when they have no idea of other brands offering that same product.

For instance, sometime ago, I wanted to buy a shoe polish. I just got these black shoes that I wanted to start wearing to Church, and honestly, I use a clean clothe and water to wash my shoes, LOL.

But I wanted to use a polish this time because it was a new and really expensive shoe and I wanted to start wearing it to Church, so I decided to use a shoe polish instead.

Get this, I have never used a shoe polish before, but from my secondary school days, I remembered there used to be KIWI polish. So I got to the supermarket and started looking for Kiwi.

I saw a variety of shoe polishes, but the Kiwi polish was already imprinted on my mind that I get it and went home, not even stopping to check for the new brands.

You too can create this kind of impression on your customers by infusing building your brand from the get-go.

4. Employee Morale

Even if you start with 1 employee and employ more as you grow, your brand helps to pump up your employee’s morales.

Employees love it when they feel that they are working for a common goal, especially when the company they are working for has a great brand identity and a good reputation.

Part of building a great brand is building your employees up, treating them well and ensuring that they know they are highly valued.

Read this again, your employees will treat your customers right if they are treated right, and they will treat your customers poorly if they are treated poorly.

Also, building a great business brand also involves creating mission and vision statements that will guard your business operations as you go along. And when your employees catch your vision, you boost their morale and motivate them to do well.

5. Increases Visibility

As a startup, visibility is what gives you customers, customers are what gives you traction and good traction equals profit.

You’re entering the marketplace, filled with a plethora of people doing what you do, the space is overcrowded, you need visibility.

Good branding makes your business stand out in the crowd, it introduces you to your target audience and to shareholders and investors.

Your brand gives a personality to your business and that personality is what people connect with and it forms their perceptions.

When I come across a new product or a brand name, I first search for that brand online, if their website is pleasing, I go ahead and search on social media and more often than not, I meet a visually appealing platform.

If not, I don’t bother connecting with the brand.

This takes us to few things I want you to note about building a brand from the get-go

1. Invest In Quality Website

I’m not even saying you should get a website because you know that’s undebatable. A website is a must. But make sure that you’re using a platform that will benefit your business.

Pay good money for your website, and oh, before you choose a web developer, ensure that you check out their portfolio first and see what they’ve done.

Someone reached out to me asking for my price list, after I gave it to her, she said her budget was just 12k. It was appalling because 12k won’t even get you a landing page.

You get what you pay for, so pay quality amount for quality service.

2. Have a Distinctive Colour and Fonts

Make sure that you have a colour that reflects your brand and differentiates you from the competition. Consider Cadbury’s colour- Purple, you recognize it anywhere. Coca-Cola is red and white and so is Zenith bank.

In fact, I particularly love the Zenith bank’s story. Many people were against the founder’s decision to use red because, apparently, red stands for danger or blood or whatever.

But the colour red is a great part of it’s success story, because it’s a very memorable colour that stands for Power.

Also, when choosing fonts, choose very readable ones that reflects your brand, either in the same fonts family or closely related.

3. Pay Attention to Your Content

It pays to have a content strategy for this, a good content strategy ensures that you are sending out the right, valuable and relevant content to your audience.

Determine your tone of voice and pay attention to that as well, do you want to sound authoritative, calm, playful? etc.

Use good designs for your social media content, and again, pay good amount of money to designers so that you can get quality designs.

Check out this post for brand building mistakes you should avoid making

Conclusion

Often times people are usually very excited about their business idea, all they can think of is the increase in income and the oppoertunity to be called a CEO that they leave vital things aside like researching the future of the business.

2 of my friends recently purchased a car hoping to use it for Uber, without any research of where the cab hailing industry was going to.

Today, they are counting their losses, not because Uber isn’t a profitable business but because they didn’t get acclimated with the industry and the company.

Another mistake I see business owners make is not thinking in terms of where the world is going, especially in terms of technology. Many are oblivious to the fact that digital businesses is on the rise now.

I’m currently working for a brand, managing their social media and the more I work, the more I realize that there’s no plan for digitization.

To solve this issue, I created a Facebook group called The Digital Entrepreneurs’ Community where every day, I speak on digital technology in the business world. Feel free to join.

I also post branding for small business/startups tips regularly on my Instagram account.