How to Brand a Company:  Branding Advice for Startups and Small Businesses

There’s always lots of questions from entrepreneurs, businesses owners and even marketing folks about the very simple question, How to Build a Brand? 

While the very concept of brand remains kind of a mystique (ask 10 people and get 10 different answers), there are some definitive steps that MUST be followed in order to get to the final destination – having an actual brand. 

It’s a three point formula that eventually brings you to that point. 

** It’s worth mentioning this is not an exact science and the following is meant as a rough roadmap, not a technical blueprint. 

— Step #1: Brand Strategy – This is where we are figuring out what the brand is actually going to be.  Points of differentiation, gaps in the marketplace, feasibility and profitability of the various brand strategies, and how well the strategy works with the never ending variables of the founder.

— Step #2:  Brand Identity: Take the brand strategy and first design all of your identity/digital infrastructure according to the insights from the strategy.  Websites, logos, cards, deliverables, signage, uniforms, swag, etc.

— Step #3: Branding – This is the act of taking the strategy and pumping it out into the marketplace, through three areas:   Marketing/advertising, customer experiences, and internal cultural/policies.

• Part A: Marketing/Advertising — Figure out how to create public relations strategies, taglines, creative marketing campaigns, email marketing, etc, that weave in concepts from Step 1. 

• Part B: Customer Experiences — It’s best to figure out how to inject the brand into the experience by first breaking up the experience into three separate parts using the “Onboarding -> Delivery -> Offboarding/Support” framework.  Once each part has it’s steps and items listed out, the creative process will allow you to find areas that you can inject some element of the brand strategy into it.

• Part C: Internal Policies/Culture —  Similar to Part B, get it all written down (if not already) and find a way to get the brand into it.  Hiring and onboarding policies and processes, company policies, incentives and events, etc. This is an often overlooked element of branding but very important.

—– Step #4: A Brand (Maybe) – Congrats, you’re well on your way to creating an actual brand. Building a brand is not easy, it takes lots of initial work, investment into the company, and then a dedicated, consistent and patient approach to keep driving it home.

Brands don’t happen overnight. 

A reputation is not a brand. 

Brands are commercial constructs, developed from effort.

Brands are not easy to build, but always well worth it.

Many times – especially in competitive marketplaces – brand is the only thing you have to stand out!

Hope this gets the wheels turning, and always appreciate questions/feedback of any type.