Startup Branding Checklist
Are you in full-on startup mode? Maybe feeling a little overwhelmed by everything you need to do to before your company greets the world? I feel you - Here is a list for startups for the proper branding foundation of a successful launch.
1. Articulate the Vision
The first item of branding goes to the very heart of why you decided to start a business in the first place. You know why your company exists — but have you articulated the vision clearly and concisely?
If you haven’t seen it already, I would highly recommend the Ted Talk “Starting with Why” by Simon Sinek.
2. Get Clear on the Offering
Chances are you’ve spent most of your time developing your product or designing your service. So it is important to take a step back before you go deeper into building the brand to ensure you have concise answers to the following basic questions:
What is this product or service?
What does it provide or what problem does it solve?
Who should care?
Why should they care?
Simplify your answers to a few sentences and share them with friends or family who would fall in your ideal customer category.
3. Research the Industry
You will always be different from the rest because your story is as unique as you are. With that said, it’s important to look at the “competition” (though I don’t believe in that term) and see the landscape for offerings, price ranges, search terms for SEO, and most importantly how to communicate what differentiates yourself and your product/service. Check out some review sites and find where your industry lacks a specific desire or customer service.
4. Develop Personas
It’s important to ensure that you have a clear picture of your ideal clients/customers and other key people you’d like to introduce to your company.
Personas help you get into the heads of the people you want your brand to resonate with so you can really understand more about who they are and what they care about most.
There are a lot of great online guides for how to create personas, I particularly dug deep in this assignment when I participated in Marie Forleo’s B-School. Make sure to get deep on their personal feelings, what they aspire to and what their triggers are.
5. Formalize Your Brand Positioning Platform
Brand positioning is the art of creating meaning for your brand in the minds of your target personas. Using the data above, you’ll want to develop a brand positioning platform that includes the following elements:
Competitive Frame of Reference: the definition of the category in which your brand belongs
Points of Difference: the key characteristics that make your brand stand out
Points of Parity: Weaker links that your brand will need to counteract
The Brand Mantra: a short phrase that captures your brand’s complete positioning
For a complete overview of brand positioning and the points above, download the Brand Positioning Adventure Guide by New Kind.
6. Name Your Company
Most of you have likely already completed this step a while back — but for those of you who haven’t, use the vision and positioning exercises above to drive your naming!
If you need a resource, use this full naming process available for download by Igor International.
Pro tip: Make sure you spend time searching the trademark database in the US or any other country in which you plan to do business to ensure the competitive namespace is relatively clear. Also do some Google searches to see who else has created brand equity around your chosen name.
7. Choose a Web Domain
Availability of domain names won’t always be on your side. Make sure to choose something easy to remember and easy to type — closest to your actual business name as possible.
Checking for available web domains early in the naming process can help you avoid the heartbreak of finding out that the .com domain for your chosen name has already been taken!
8. Write Your Brand Story
A brand story articulates the deepest truths about the brand, answering questions like:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
What do we care about?
What do we do?
Why does it matter?
A great brand story becomes a touchstone for the brand, something you can share with every new employee to help them understand what the brand stands for. Or that you can share with customers and partners to fully explain your place in the world.
9. Design Your Visual Identity
The most powerful visual identities are developed once the vision, positioning, and brand story are all fully developed. Successful visual identities are more than a logo, they are complete systems that define your purpose, voice and aesthetic.
Brand Identity is created through the process of bringing the vision, positioning, and story of a brand together, developed in a visually cohesive way and easily communicated through strategic language.
10. Articulate Your Brand Voice
Ask yourself if you could have anyone represent your brand (money is no object, dead or alive), who would be some of those people and why. By identifying and clearly articulating their characteristics, you’ll have the starting elements for your desired brand voice.
Always be relatable and use the “friend test” when communicating with your audience — would you sound the same way talking to your friend or are you sounding overly “professional” and creating a distance?
Developing a new brand strategy for a startup can be exciting, but it's also a lot of work! This hopefully gives you a list of “must do” tasks to ensure you are ready for launch. If you need help from an expert or are interested in collaborating, let’s connect!