Startups often struggle to understand how significant branding is. They just emphasize putting all resources together and start selling them out. Making some profit and reaching out to the breakeven point seem their first priority.
Did you know that nearly 90% of startups fail and 10% of them fail within a year?
Unfortunately, this is the truth. Do you know what happens?
To a certain extent, underestimating branding can be a reason. However, all who are in the business lane know how leveraging it can be. But, they just forget to put the effort into branding. Or maybe, they don’t know how to achieve that milestone. The early stage of any business may not allow you to focus on that part. But over time, this is the only thing that can help your business to scale up and earn a name or reputation.
Steps to Create a Brand through Business Research
Branding is a step-by-step journey that has well-defined activities to carry out and create a unique identity for your business. It all starts with a name. Then, it shifts to a strategy, and finally, it moves to implementation.
On the basis of many market research reports and consulting, here are a few steps to set up your own brand.
Step1: Business and Market Research
Let’s start with market research and consulting a unique plan. It’s a key enabler of strong branding. Gather information about the nuts and bolts of your business or products. Get deep into the insights of the target market, competitors, and target audience.
Without understanding these things, you cannot come up with an innovative business plan. This happening certainly disables you to build the right identity & reputation for your own brand.
Opposite it, the report on market research would help you move to the next step with full confidence.
Step 2: Strategize Everything That You Do
A business strategy can prove big support against any roadblock. For this, come up with such plans that can provide a counter-response to any mismanagement, or prevent chaos.
So, this step is to consolidate your business values. Your tone of voice should sound humble and polite. Create a vision for the future. These ways can help your team or staff to understand their job roles and responsibilities. They would innovate and proactively work in accordance with your business identity.
Step 3: Design Strategy for Quick Recognition
At this stage, think about recognition. Create such a branding strategy that people can recognise the signature of your brand. Sit with your creative team and draft innovative ideas that are feasible. The reality should be there in those ideas because they would actually make your brand image unforgettable in the mind of your audience.
Being a startup, it’s actually challenging. Here, leveraging visual elements like your company logo, font colour, and design can help. Come up with a unique tagline for defining your brand’s vision. In this, the marketing team, copywriters, and a graphic designer can help you. They should be ongoing with your digital marketing and advertising campaigns.
Step 4: Now Comes Implementation!
Now that you are ready with all preparations, start making an impact. Reveal how different you are from your competitors. Of course, thorough brainstorming would be required here at this stage.
Start with designing your web presence. However, there are multiple other options. But, this is super affordable and likely to be useful in digital marketing campaigns, which are inexpensive organically.
Apart from this, social media is a better alternative. You can have your own business account. If you deal in services, nothing can beat the relevancy of LinkedIn. And for eCommerce, Facebook and Twitter organic campaigns are extremely affordable. These all will help you to achieve branding without spending too much money.
Implementation Strategy that Really Works
Now that you have read all the steps, let’s take a roundup of how to start implementing a branding strategy from scratch.
Tell Success Stories
Branding is a continuous process. A number of success stories can help in building a brand. Start sharing these stories with prospective and existing customers, investors, and stakeholders. Come up on social media with them.
People actually believe in facts instead of quantity & hollow promises. Start telling a good story to people who are actually interested in your brand. Web analytics can help in market research. You can track customers there & discover their intent and pain points.
Always remember the vision and purpose of your brand. If you have the answer to customers’ pain points and “why you” queries, they will stand by your side.
Build Trust in Customers
Creating a “belief” is not a miracle that can happen overnight. You have to build credibility. Let your customer engage with your brand. It can happen if you value them.
Communication can fill in the gap and helps in identifying their interest. Make social media your own platform to amplify your voice. It can help you engage people. Once engaged, discovering what values your customers look for becomes easier. The best thing is to provide them with values. Be honest while interacting with them and offer the values that they deserve.
Attract Investors
If you have true success stories, engagement would be unstoppable. And, providing values will build trust. This is the time investors will start coming to you for stakes. They will be the ones who prefer the values that your brand provides. Stay steady and firm with your ideas, team, and branding.
Certainly, the outcome is significant. But, building a strong and competitive brand can make achieving that outcome easier. People and like-minded businessmen would start seeing you as an influencer. Now, this is your turn. Outshine with strong branding strategies. Of course, market research and consulting can help you in this matter. This happening would make people fond of your products or services.
But, this is not the end of the branding story. This is just the beginning. Continue to evolve and get better and better over time. Embrace new technologies and methods to turn things easier than before.
Summary
Business research can help in building a brand. It requires multiple steps like market research, strategizing branding, creating recognition, and then, implementation. For implementation, you should have success stories to tell and get connected with customers. When people start asking about or searching for your brand, it is successful branding.
