28 Aug One of the Biggest Branding Mistakes Startups Make

So, you’ve created your startup and your heart thumps with emotion when you think about your new business and all of the endless possibilities

“Start a business” ‘they said, “it’ll be fun,” they said.

Creating a startup is a stack load of fun, your heart skips a beat when you think about your new business model and all the rose-tinted promise it holds in revolutionizing every person’s life that is lucky enough to have crossed paths with your new product/service.  Oh, to be young and free. There’s just this one teeny tiny issue you’re having, you’ve thrown yourself in head, heart, and soul, you’ve created this awe-inspiring product/service, yet you can’t seem to grab anyone’s attention, or worse, find anyone who even cares! You feel like that pimply 14-year-old teen again, trying desperately to get the attention of that cute boy (or girl) who sits in front of you in history, but its like you’re invisible and its breaking your bloody heart.

High school analogies aside, while startup challenges typically show up once a business begins to heavily invest in marketing, the problem is typically not the marketing itself. 9/10 (the random statistic that I pulled from thin air but am willing to back with the mortgage on my house), the problem is flawed branding.

Why am I spinning you this tale of branding despair you ask? Great question, it’s fabulous to know someones listening…because we first need to understand our failures (or potential failures) to be able to steer our metaphorical ship of a business towards our true North Star, towards our desired success story that we’ve played over and over in our heads.

One of the biggest mistakes startups tend to make in the early development of their business is only going skin-deep on developing their brand. Branding seems to be severely undervalued and underrated amongst the flurry of other costs involved when starting an infant business, and heck, I get it, you’ve got a million things to invest in and bills to pay on top of that, but let me ask you one ‘teeny tiny’ question…(drum roll and impactful cinematic theme music)…how much would it cost you to create an amazing product/service that doesn’t engage with and attract your ideal target audience? How much will it really cost you to not earn their trust, respect, and loyalty? Aren’t they the whole reason you started this in the first place?

Let me break it down for you, Michael Jackson style. Creating a brand is much like you moving to a brand spanking new city where you don’t know a single soul and having the overwhelming task of making new friends. Now, let me tell you from experience as someone who has done this multiple times. It’s not the easiest thing to make new friends at 35, but what’s the first thing you would do? Where would you start? Hopefully, you would attend group activities that you’re interested in or head to a new community yoga class downtown (if that’s your jam), join a community project that makes you feel excited or do a pottery class. What I’m trying to get at is the way to make new friends is to get yourself out there and hang out in places that you genuinely love and do activities that feed your soul and make you feel alive. At our core, we are all created for community, we all want to belong and be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

It’s no different for your brand.

You see, if you embody to who you really are at your core, dress in a way that mirrors your self-expression, communicates with people in a way that is authentically you, hang out in places you find stimulating, you will start to attract friends who get your vibe and want to be a part of what you have to offer. If you instead chose to dress in a way that made you feel uncomfortable in your own skin, or drove a car that made you cringe (hello Fast and the Furious with all your fast as fire paraphernalia and bright red spoilers – just me?), you run the risk of attracting a very different demographic.

This is why its imperative to define your brand strategy prior to creating your brand identity, because how would you know how to ‘dress up your brand’ if you don’t yet know who your brand is?

A great place to start is to turn your brand into a person. What celebrity or historical figure would this brand be? Is it Angelina Jolie? Is it George Washington? What car would it drive? What brand of clothing would it wear? Do you see where I’m going with this?

This exercise can then be used as a reference point for you to start shaping which approach your business takes moving forward. It will become clearer where and how to market your business, who your ideal brand partners are and who you can kick to the curb. It all starts with really getting to know who your brand is, just as you would get to know a good friend over the years. Soon you will kick back with a tea and relish in the amazing new friendships you have found, and the feeling will be mutual.

Hello success, my elusive saucy friend, I can almost taste you. Like a gluten free freshly baked raspberry muffin.