Craft Your Brand Before You Start Building One…
Before investing in marketing campaigns to build brand awareness for a business, first, you must create the components that make up the brand identity. This may sound obvious, but I assure you it is not when it comes to startups. Most B2B tech startups don’t bother to do this properly or at all before they start, usually because they don’t know what to do, how to do it, can’t afford it, don’t have time or all of the above. Early-stage tech firms often go from the market testing stage to launching the business without considering all their basic needs and forgetting about the brand. Ideally, crafting the brand comes before investing in promoting a solution and engaging with prospective clients. This is a common oversight, and many established tech businesses will still lack the maturity of a fully formed brand until several years into their journey.
Just Enough Will Do – For Now
Most new tech startups will create a cheap logo and throw what looks like random words, pictures and colours at a simple website template, just to establish an online presence that allows them to start trading. This may be practical, but it usually does more harm than good. This is before a full market launch, as developing the solution and establishing market viability are the priorities. Yes, you can always fix things later, when you can afford to bring in professional help to do it properly; however, the sooner you start, the better. Some of the work can be done by the founders themselves, but I would always advise you to get professional help as soon as possible. This can be a marketing agency, consultant, freelancer, an internal hire or a mix of some of these.
I’m passionate about this topic and have gone to great lengths to include, in detail, what must be done. This is not a simple list of headline points but a more thorough examination of what you can do if you are to take this topic and your marketing seriously.
How to Create Your Brand
1. What is Your Purpose?
In the beginning, like any new creation, you must first shine a light on what you are doing. To start defining a brand identity, begin by writing down your purpose. This is your ‘why’. Don’t worry about it being perfect for now, just make sure you have at least a basic attempt at stating the reason you started this business, which explains ‘why you exist’. It is a short statement, and the shorter the better. Your purpose will be something you can refer to and is a good cornerstone to inform other components of your brand and messaging. Your purpose is the problem that your startup fixes for a market need or segment that was previously underserved. It defines the fundamental reason for the company’s existence and the impact it aims to have on its customers.
2. Core Values
Core values are the foundation of your brand and messaging, which is why they are needed early in the process, before creating other aspects of your identity. They are the basis of everything to do with your image and company culture, and they inform what comes next. Too often, this is something that gets ignored or added at a much later date, when it’s too late. Try not to list a set of dictionary words; anyone can do that, and it does nothing to differentiate the business. This is your opportunity to highlight the unique factors of your business that set you apart from the rest and nurture the desired culture. Core values must be a genuine and authentic representation of who you are, with just enough ambition to challenge employees to raise their performance.
Think deeply about what you stand for as a business and create your own short but poignant core value statements that are unique and help advance your purpose. This is one area you will most likely need help with. Remember, they are called ‘core’ values for a reason, and it will be difficult to differentiate your business without them or develop the culture you want for the business. Once established, your values can be used to help hire new recruits who are a better match for your culture, but the benefits go much further. They also provide a benchmark for employee reviews and are an ideal way to positively influence staff behaviour, provided they are real and demonstrated by the leadership.
3. Belief Statements
Attached to your core values are your belief statements. It is very powerful to be clear about what you believe in. This is a list of beliefs that you hold to be true and will guide your team. They can also be used throughout your messaging. Aim for a minimum of five but ideally around 10 meaningful belief statements and write them as full sentences that you can use internally to motivate and guide staff behaviours and externally to inform prospects of your key principles.
4. Add Your Mission and Vision
After creating items 1-3 above, you can use this important information to define other elements in more accurate and effective ways. This is where you write your Mission and Vision statements. Together with your purpose, these statements complete your messaging triad of Purpose, Mission and Vision (PMV). They articulate critical market signals, i.e., what makes you special, where you are going and what you want to achieve. They serve as the backbone of your messaging.
Without these statements in place, it will make it harder to message and grow your business efficiently. Sometimes these statements are subconsciously understood by the founders, as they will normally have a clear picture in their mind of what they are trying to do. However, writing them down is important, if less straightforward. These statements are important if you want to inspire and take employees and customers on the journey with you, something that cannot be left to chance.
How to Create Your Mission and Vision Statements
Apply a similar approach to creating the mission and vision statements as when writing your purpose. The PMV must be connected and work together, as if they came from the same company. Together they are your ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’.
Complete Your PMV
- Purpose – this is why you exist
- Mission – this is how you’ll achieve your goal
- Vision – this where you’re going
Keep them short and to the point, using simple language and avoiding tech jargon and industry acronyms. Take as much time as you need to create something that fully represents your business, solution and the target market you are focused on. Ideally, you would seek help from a marketing professional or branding agency. Doing this work before creating visual aspects of your identity, such as a company logo, is preferred. Once you have these elements in place, they can be used as part of a design brief for a designer, who can then incorporate relevant visual aspects into your brand marque.
- Mission – How:
Your mission outlines the company’s core objectives and approach to achieving its goals, highlighting what it does and for whom. Too many tech companies just focus on how their tech is so brilliant and forget ‘why’ it matters and ‘who’ they are doing it for, both of which always come before the ‘how.’
- Vision – Where:
The vision describes where you are going; it’s your long-term aspirations and the desired future state you aim to achieve. Look forward and think about what the difference will be in your target market in 15 years’ time by doing what you are doing.
5. Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
Your UVP can be used as a headline on all your marketing materials and website. It is important to identify what sets you apart from the competition. What is it that differentiates you? Even if you have created something new that didn’t exist on the market before, products and services can and will be copied over time. If your UVP uses tech jargon or mentions your product instead of the value you deliver to the customer, then you have done it wrong and need to start over. A meaningful headline must capture the essence of what makes your startup special and compelling. Remember, that’s why we did the pre-work in the earlier steps above before attempting to write this part of your messaging.
Start by deeply understanding your audience’s most pressing challenges that you are best qualified to help them with. State the distinct benefits and experiences your startup offers, emphasising innovation, quality, expertise and impact. This means articulating the experience and outcome you deliver to customers – not how you do it or getting lost in the features! Use simple, inspiring and relatable language to convey how you not only solve a problem but also enhance their business in a meaningful way. Make sure your UVP is concise, memorable and emotionally resonant, leaving a lasting impression on target prospects and investors.
6. Messaging – Do Not Miss This Step
Brand and messaging are one cohesive unit, and you will struggle to create a powerful and consistent market presence for your startup without a detailed messaging guide. Messaging is a regularly overlooked asset, at least until a website project demands the need to create web copy, which will be done on the fly without anchoring it to the core values and brand essence. I see this all the time, young businesses creating new online messaging that is not anchored to the brand and is a complete mismatch, just for the sake of having a website. Without doing the brand work first and using it as the messaging platform, the chances are that what you present online, or elsewhere, is not consistent or an authentic representation and therefore will not be effective. You must avoid creating this kind of mess at all costs because it makes it much harder to clean up later.
Creating your brand messaging, sometimes referred to as a messaging framework, will be much quicker and easier to complete once you have completed the first steps for the core values, belief statements, PMV and UPV. These components will help form part of your strategic messaging, which can then be used as a guide for all content creation, regardless of the medium. Your brand messaging must be done before you attempt to create content for anything. This is how you ensure a consistent story that flows through all your channels and is distinguishable as yours to anyone in your target audience across every touch point. If you are going to maximise your limited resources and punch above your weight, creating your brand messaging is essential.
This can be a simple document that outlines every key component of your messaging from your story, tone of voice, through to company descriptions, boilerplate and much more. You will need help from an experienced marketer to complete this, but it will be worth it and provide a fast return on the time and resources invested to create it. Do not attempt to create a startup website without doing the brand work first and following all the steps listed above.
7. Logo and Brand Guidelines
The visual marque of your brand is best done last in this process, as you have important information that can be used to create something that reflects your brand essence and is optimised for your target audience. This is better than designing something in isolation at the start. Choosing a logo design just because you like it, only to discover later that the colours don’t translate well to a website and social media platforms or that it doesn’t resonate with customers, is like putting a straitjacket on the business before you’ve even started. The logo project must be delivered with full brand guidelines and is a significant work package that must include all logo variations and file types. Don’t do it on the cheap or leave it incomplete and half-cooked. It must include all the components you will need above and beyond just a logo.
Collaborate with a professional designer or brand agency to complete this project. A logo that is simple, memorable and versatile is best, ensuring it can be easily scaled and used across all media. Establish the brand guidelines that detail your logo’s usage, colour palette, typography and imagery style to maintain consistency. Include specific dos and don’ts for logo placement, size restrictions and colour variations. Once completed, this will serve you for several years before you need to revisit and update anything. As the company evolves, so too will your branding strategy, but as a startup, you are a long way away from that. Completing your brand and guidelines in this way will save time, money and pain later as you have all the critical assets in place and ready for the foreseeable future.
Follow the Process
After completing these steps, you will have everything you need for your brand and messaging, allowing you to create a compelling website (version 2.0 by now) and begin marketing campaigns to prospects. Shortcutting this brand identity work is not advisable. It helps if you consider this as a development process that is completed in specific stages, rather than a single deliverable. Spend time getting the first six steps right, and you will find that once you have those, the visual elements will be much easier to complete and more successful.
Much of the brand identity work can be done in the early phase of solution development and market testing, while you are still researching and looking to onboard your first customer(s). Customer feedback must be factored into the process to help iterate and refine early versions of the messaging. Use valuable insights from customers before committing to a direction for your messaging. In this way, you will have all the key components that will be needed by the time your startup is ready to launch and grow.
You may want to read: “Why B2B Tech Startups Must Invest in Marketing.”
