INTRO
We are often witness to the frequent internal debate regarding spending the time and money to design a brand. Many of our clients initially hired a friend or family member to create a quick logo as they got their idea off the ground and are desperate in year two to build a formal brand. While this is one of my favorite parts of being a marketer, it really is important to assess the timing of branding/re-brand. For an early stage startup, it’s pretty likely you have a limited budget and when it comes to marketing you want to spend your budget the most efficient and effective ways.
For startups facing this dilemma, we’ve put together a few questions that can help you determine your re-brand readiness.
First: where are you in your product development?
Is your product out of beta? As an early stage startup, your first goal is to develop a proof of concept so you can raise the necessary money to bring your ideas to market. But have you had real customers touching your product, telling you what they think and feel about it? As we say all the time, the number one rule of marketing is knowing your audience and your brand depends on this.
Here’s what we recommend:
Suffice it to say that if you are not out of beta, keeping some simple branding until you are is the best move here. Once your customers are engaged, a lot can change (you learn a lot from your customers when they start using your product!) and considering the expense of branding, it’s best to keep your brand in “beta” as well.
Next: So you are out of beta, you’ve done some audience testing/analysis, but have you established your positioning?
What are your vision, mission and values? Have you established product names and value props? Are you organized around communicating what your company and product do?
Here’s what we recommend:
Spend time on brand and product positioning first. Nine out of 10 times we meet with companies and employees that cannot consistently talk about what the company or product does. This process typically takes 4-6 weeks and you can research how to do it online - or you can hire fivefoottwo marketing to knock it out in less time! Here’s the template we strive to complete in our positioning exercises:
Your brand house is the basis for how you communicate your brand message. Start here by creating pillars/values, a vision and mission.
Establish your positioning architecture as structured here.
Finally, when your brand house and positioning architecture are complete, you (or a skilled copywriter) should complete your messaging hierarchy.
PRO-TIP: CONCISE AND CONSISTENT ALWAYS WINS!
Consider a logo and temporary visual identity that will give you consistency in all your communications. At this stage, clear communications and consistency throughout your message is most important. And you’ll want to save the creative agency fees for when you can spend what it takes to do it right.
Finally, what is your marketing budget?
If you are post-series B, you should have the budget. In fact, this is when we 100% recommend you consider building a strong brand for your business. But if you’re still early stage, think about how much budget is needed toward product development first - the most important part of this stage. What is left? If your marketing budget is less than $50k for the year, you will want to hold on any branding efforts outside of positioning.
Here’s what we recommend:
Generally, we recommend if you are looking to spend less than $10k on your brand, you are not ready. A proper creative shop for this part of your business plan will be closer to $15k - $50k. What do you get for that range? Quality and a level of comprehensiveness. You do not just want a logo and fonts, you need a visual ID and an understanding of what your brand means across every medium. Creative shops will do a deep assessment of your company/products, competitors and utilize not only experience and the proper process but they can tap into teams of different creative minds to bring you the best, most applicable ideas.
Other considerations
The timing for when you build your brand might depend on your market - whether you are B2B or B2C and what your marketplace looks like. Competition could require a jumpstart to your visual identity in addition to your positioning.
For B2B, it’s important to look at your competitive landscape. If you are entering a highly-competitive space, a strong brand is necessary. You want to stand out and you want to be memorable. At Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce for $850M), we were faced with almost 30 competitors in less than a year. We updated our brand and built a highly-focused creative campaign that combined with our PR efforts had a huge impact. Many times your positioning alone can accomplish this. Just having a concise, consistent message can go a long way. HOWEVER! Even with our brilliant, refreshed creative, we needed to spend money to get the message out there. Just because you have a message does not mean people will hear it. Earned media, if you can obtain it, will go a long way. But if not, be prepared to spend on paid media. We love to reference this article from Chief Marketer.
For B2C/D2C, competition is also a strong consideration but it’s more about your audience. Having a brand that appeals to your audience and communicates the emotional response you want from your target is very important. As with all branding however, it only matters if you can remain consistent in how you use your brand. Set rules and abide by them.
Branding is really an exciting part of building a business. And it’s long been a favorite part of marketing for us. However now that we work so closely with early stage startups, we’ve realized the exercise of positioning can not only be exciting but it is highly effective. Please let us know if we can help you initiate this process for your brand by sending a note to melissa@fivefoottwomarketing.com