branding

Startups Should Oil Their Wheels Before Branding Themselves

Business Columns

By Robert Genovesi

You don’t need branding! Imagine that. We’re a branding company saying you don’t branding.

Truth is, there are situations where you may not need the powers of branding to help your company grow. One of those situations is the startup phase of building your business.

What a startup really needs are sales. Money is tight. Time is tighter. You’ve got a laundry list of a thousand things you must do on a daily basis just to keep the boat afloat. Whatever your process is for getting clients in the door, by all means, keep doing it.

You want to get your business to a healthy, profitable place within a year or two before you start thinking about branding.

Also you want to have some road behind you where you’ve hit some potholes, had some clients run you off the road and sometimes even running out of gas. This journey helps you find out who you really are and the niche that you ultimately want to serve. Once you end up in that place, you are ready for the whole branding experience.

When you’re able to take a breather you can focus some of your time on taking your business to the next level through branding.

A proper branding process will help you discover and distill the personality traits of your business that stand tall and proud, stating what it stands for in the world. That stand is going to be the difference between you and all the others out there competing for your audience’s attention. That difference will be amplified in the form of a logo, a branded website, the voice and messaging throughout all communications. It will be what your audience sees you do and hears you say, consistently day after day.

In short, it is the total experience with your company that ultimately makes up your brand.

Your audience is looking for a reason to buy from you. The question they always have is “why should I buy from you?” All things being equal, if you don’t give them a reason beyond what is expected they will default to making a decision based on price.

But you don’t want to compete on price do you? I didn’t think so.

If all you have to compete on is price you will ultimately lose to someone who is bigger and better resourced than you. That’s a short trip to Failuresville for most businesses. You know you need to do something different. And you’re going to sell that difference to your customers because once they find out what you’re all about they will not only buy from you but they will influence others to buy from you as well. Can you say “referral machine”?

It all sounds simple and great, we know that. The process itself takes cash, some serious branding know-how and a savvy design team to execute.

Not exactly DIY stuff.

But like we said, you’ll do this not when you start up, but when you want to level up your business.

UnleashMyBeastBrand.com , rob@genovesiweb.com, (845) 271-2050