Let’s Get Brand Practical

Brand essentials to get you started on your journey

Getting your start-up off the ground can be both exciting and daunting. As you take your idea to market, you’re naturally thinking about the multitude of logistics involved in delivering your product or service to customers. And, then there’s packaging it just right so that the people you’re engaging with can easily recognise it and most importantly build a relationship with it. 

This is where branding comes in. And, the inevitable question: will branding the company cost the earth? The good news is, you don’t have to break the bank. If you go about the process intelligently you can get what you need to go to market and then progressively expand as your business and customer base grows.

Here are some milestones that we work to in helping start-ups get the most out of their brand creation regardless of their budgets.

Make informed moves

Research is key to effective branding. We start by examining what your sector competitors are doing—what they look like, how they communicate, and why consumers favour them over others. Here we’re looking for commonalities and distinctions in their brand expressions so that we can establish a baseline to benchmark against.

Then it’s on to the people you’re looking to connect with. Understanding your audience is vitally important. What does their world look like? What motivates them to engage with brands? By answering these kind of questions, we create target personas which helps us to position your brand more effectively.

Define the brand foundation

We know how tempting it is to dive right into naming your brand and designing its logo. But before getting carried away, it’s crucial to take a moment and think about all the things that make your company, product, or service unique. 

It’s at this point that we define how your offering improves the audience experience. And, the value it guarantees them by affirming your company’s purpose and solidifying the vision and values that will build meaningful connections in a succinct, client-focused statement that resonates with those reading it and guides your brand’s actions and behaviour as it grows. 

Looking the part

You only need a few key visual elements to get your brand started on its journey and embracing versatility is what will help your brand gain momentum in the marketplace. To get our clients over the starting line we recommend a manageable set of brand assets which include the following:

Logo

Your logo is the key point of visual identification which should express the tonality of your brand positioning and should elicit a positive emotional response from incumbent and prospective customers. A well designed logo will give you the ability to expand your communications across the full spectrum of media channels with a mark of consistency.    

Colour palette

Colour creates feeling and helps audiences recognise your brand quicker while setting the tone for the kind of experience that they can expect when interacting with your products and services. Defining a select raft of brand colours that authentically express what your brand is all about will help you influence audience perception and give your brand flexibility to grow in the long-term. 

Typography

Typography gives style to the substance of what you’re saying. Putting words into context even before they’ve been read by audiences. Choosing the most appropriate fonts to embody messaging must be done with due care and consideration. If your brand purpose is to ‘make technology friendly and accessible’ then a cold, thin sans serif font will make your words fall at the first hurdle. In much the same way as colour infuses design with a particular feeling. Typography gives words a deeper sense of meaning. 

Imagery

Whether it’s photography, graphics, illustrations, or all of the above, establishing a proprietary image style will support you brand communications in busy visual environments. This aspect of a brand’s visual arsenal doesn’t need to be complicated. What matters most when crafting an image style is distinction. If competitors predominantly use straightforward stock imagery then you should embrace a style that’s more illustrative, integrates graphics and imagery and ultimately, carves its own visual territory.

Establishing these base visual identity components means you can create a limitless amount of brand collateral to serve a variety of purposes across all media types. It also means that your brand image will be consistent which in turn enhances audience perception, and builds brand equity.

The vehicles to get your brand moving

Once your brand positioning and visual identity has taken form you’ll be able to start getting your messages out there and engaging with audiences. This is where a few essential assets can go a long way. Focusing on digital collateral can be a highly effective means of maximising engagement while minimising cost. Typically we advise adopting the following assets: 

Website

Think of your website as your virtual shop front, regardless of what your brand is selling. In the early stages of your brand’s journey your website will be the central hub of all content and activity. It also becomes the primary destination for all peripheral communications to direct audiences to. 

Thankfully, there are a number of contemporary platforms which allow us to design and build websites with greater ease, flexibility, and administration capabilities. Meaning brands can present robust digital environments in relatively shorter time frames and at a significantly lower cost.

Social media profiles 

Second to a brand’s website is its social profiles. Whether on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, or YouTube it’s important to present the brand content consistently with other marketing vehicles. Ensuring that profile pictures and cover images are properly branded ensures continuity of experience for visitors. 

Additionally, social posts should align with the brands visual identity and be instantly recognisable as part of that brand’s universe. Social post templates are a highly effective way of galvanising communications across platforms and can be created in Microsoft native formats for teams to edit internally without having to pay for extended design support.

Presentation templates 

Investing in a robust and versatile presentation template can give your start-up the professional edge when interacting with new clients and potential investors. Focusing design effort on a selection of key slides means that internal teams can create their own decks easily and consistently. 

Furthermore, a single precedent template can be adapted to fulfil multiple roles such as sales presentations, company credentials, onboarding, and strategy decks. There is also the flexibility to deploy one design across various applications such as PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides.

Investing in these core brand assets will enable fledgling company’s to show up as confident brands, while laying the ground work for broader brand implementation once headway has been made and budgets made available.  

Getting your brand up and out there doesn’t have to take forever, and it certainly doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Having a clear vision and focusing on the essentials will give your brand the capability and credibility to engage more meaningfully with your audiences, helping you convert prospects into an established client base.