Entrepreneurship is running in your blood and you’ve also managed to get great individuals on your team. You’re riding high after opening an office in a posh business location and dreaming you’re ready to take over the industry.
All this sounds quite fascinating, but you may be missing out on something that’s quite important for your startup to take off on the right foot from day one. You may be missing out on custom branding.
Custom branding is what creates an image of your startup in the mind of consumers. It’s what creates the reputation of your business, and defines the industry you operate in. A custom brand isn’t created overnight. It requires repeated hard work, dedication and engagement with clients, customers and anyone in particular related to the startup.
Here are some custom branding tips for your startup business:
1. Differentiate from others
This has been mentioned a million times, but still many startup business owners fall into their ego bubble and tell others what a great office they’ve build, how awesome their employees are and how their technology is the number one in the industry.
This is not how you differentiate as a startup business. Customers want to find out themselves why your products and services are better than others. Custom branding helps startups to differentiate themselves.
Apple is a fantastic example of a company that uses custom branding to differentiate itself. As a startup business owner, you should put effort in establishing a brand for yourself by having promotional products. Some of the options available to you at the start include custom printed shipping boxes, letterheads, custom invoices, business cards etc.
2. Invest in free of cost branding personnel
You don’t need to carry out every task yourself. Delegate tasks to your employees and trust them with it because their expertise is the reason why you hired them in the first place. You should also focus on your startup as a whole. Concentrate on things like sharing of business processes, project management and culture at the company.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with custom branding. The thing is that at the start, your employees are the only thing your startup has. There’s no product or service at the start except for expectations of the future.
Your employees will be the custom brand at the start. How they deal with customers, clients etc. will be the source of custom brand image that gets created. Some companies are successful today just because of their customer service. A good example is the popular web hosting company Hostgator that relies on its staff to create the custom brand. ‘Friendly and knowledgeable staff’ is what attracts people to this company.
3. Leverage the power of mobile
The mobile industry continues to grow and startup businesses have a great opportunity to use mobile to create and promote their custom brands.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Lenovo’s ThinkPad are two good examples of how both companies utilized the industry to create custom branded products that managed to capture hearts of many.
You may not have enough resources to make such big investments, but your startup business can thrive on custom branded apps and custom mobile advertisements. For example, you can get a custom app made that empowers your customers to shop for discounted products and services through mobile.
Don’t make the mistake of ignoring your brand at the start because custom branding has the potential to be your most competitive business asset after a few years.
Article contributed by Jenna Smith