Building your first brand strategy to a tight budget
This is a guest post by Laura, Senior Marketing Manager at 99designs — STATION F Perks partner, who knows a thing or two about branding on a budget! 99designs provides all STATION F startups an exclusive discount and design consultation. Want to offer a special deal to our entrepreneurs? Write to perks@stationf.co
Your brand strategy is like the DNA of your company; it’s how you set yourself apart from the competition and show your ideal customers who you are and why they should work with you.
Building the right branding strategy to take your business to the next level is crucial. But when you’re an early stage startup, pretty much everything you do is on a tight budget — and that includes your brand strategy.
But lucky for you, building a solid brand strategy from the ground up doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, if you do it right, you can build your brand strategy on a shoestring budget — and end up with a brand so professional, people assume you broke the bank to get it done.
Let’s take a look at how to build your first brand strategy on a tight (or, in some cases, super tight!) budget:
Why is branding important?
Before we dive into how to build your brand strategy (no matter how tight your budget), let’s talk about why branding is so important in the first place.
Building a brand is about more than just slapping your logo on a website and calling it a day. It’s more about creating products and services and putting them out into the world. Branding is about creating something that allows you to really connect with your ideal customers.
With the right brand strategy, you can:
Set yourself apart from the competition
No matter what business you’re in, chances are, there are hundreds (or thousands) of other companies out there doing something similar. If you want to break through the clutter and have a real impact on your audience, you need to set yourself apart from the competition — and your brand strategy is the way to do it.
Develop a loyal customer base
Without a strong brand, people might buy your products or services — but they’ll forget you as soon as the credit card charge clears. When you build a strong brand — the kind of brand that connects with your customers — you’ll develop a loyal customer base and become the go-to anytime they need what you’re selling (think Nike for sneakers or Apple for phones).
Increase your profits
When you build a strong brand, it ups your credibility — and you can up the prices for your products and services right along with it.
Why is developing a branding strategy so important?
So, we’ve established that branding is important if you want to take your startup to the next level. But why do you need a strategy? Can’t you just start building your brand and, you know… see what happens?
The answer is no. No, you can’t. Taking the “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks approach” to branding is a fast track to wasting whatever budget you have. If you want your branding to succeed, you need to be strategic about it.
With the right brand strategy, you can:
Make sure your branding is consistent across all mediums
Creating a consistent brand experience — no matter where your customers interact with you — is key. Not only will consistency increase brand recognition, but it will also build trust with your audience — which is essential if you want people to work with you.
Drive decisions for your business
When you have a firm branding strategy in place, you can use it to drive every decision in your business (like what voice to use in your copy or what your next product launch should be). Without a strategy, you’re going to be making decisions on a whim — and ultimately, they probably won’t be the best decisions for your brand.
Get everyone on the same page
In order to build a brand, you need everyone on your team to be working together towards a common goal. Even if you’re working solo, you’re going to need your freelancers and contractors to get on the same page. A brand strategy is a great way to get everyone to rally around your vision for your brand — and do their part to bring that brand vision to life.
Building your first brand strategy on a budget
Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to actually get started.
Do your homework
Before you jump into building your brand strategy, it’s helpful to do a little homework.
Define your objectives
In order to build an effective strategy for your startup, you need to know the end game. Before you start strategizing, you’ll want to define:
- Your short and long-term business objectives
- Your ideal customer
It’s important to get clear on these points before you start building your brand strategy; that way, your strategy is in line with what you’re trying to accomplish and who you’re trying to accomplish it through — your customers.
Get clear on your budget
You’ve got a tight budget to work with. But you’ll definitely want to determine how tight before you start the brand strategy process. The last thing you want is to fall in love with a designer that’s out of your price range or get halfway through a project and realize you don’t have the funds to finish it.
Before you start building your brand strategy, crunch the numbers to figure out how much you have to spend — and stay on top of the budget throughout the entire process.
The key elements of a branding strategy
Homework is done, which means it’s time to start building your brand strategy. Huzzah!
There are three key elements you’ll want to keep in mind when building your brand strategy:
Mission and Values
It’s going to be pretty clear to your audience what you do. But if you want to build a brand that connects, you need to be clear on why you’re doing it.
Your mission and values are your why. They’re the reason you got into business and the standards you hold yourself to as a company — and if those reasons and standards are something your customers can get behind, they’ll do business with you for life.
Just look at TOMS. Their “what” is making shoes. But their “why” goes a lot deeper than that:
“While traveling in Argentina in 2006, TOMS Founder Blake Mycoskie witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a new pair of shoes for a child in need. One for One®.”
TOMS might not make the most impressive or affordable shoes in the world, but their mission is one that people truly believe in — and they’ve had massive success as a result.
One thing to keep in mind when defining your why? Make sure it’s something YOU can stand behind. Consumers are savvy these days, and they can smell a disingenuous business from a mile away. You need to stand behind your mission and values and put your money where your mouth is, just like TOMS has:
“We’ve given over 60 million pairs of shoes to children in need, teaching us 60 million lessons. Since 2006, people like you have helped us achieve this amazing number — and it’s leading to bigger and better things, like giving different types of shoes based on terrain and season, or creating local jobs by producing shoes in countries where we give.”
Personality
Just like you’re naturally attracted to people with personalities you connect with, customers are naturally attracted to businesses with the same. So as you’re building your brand strategy, you want to infuse it with a distinct personality — a personality your customers can connect with.
Ask yourself “if I could describe my brand in three words, what would they be?” Is it edgy, sarcastic, and fun? Or traditional, educational, and corporate? Those are two completely different personalities — and the strategy to build a successful brand for each is also completely different.
Some examples of great brand personalities include fitness app ClassPass (empowering and confident), makeup brand Urban Decay (sophisticated and edgy), and clothing line Madewell (relaxed and classic).
Point of difference
Perhaps the most important element of your brand strategy is your point of difference (POD). Your POD is what makes you special. It’s what sets you apart from the competition and makes you uniquely you — and what makes your customers want to do business with you over anyone else.
Bite Beauty’s POD? Their lip products are so clean and natural, they’re edible. Netflix’s POD? They have the world’s largest library of entertainment — and no ads. Your POD? Whatever it is, it should be front and center in your brand strategy.
Building your strategy on a tight budget
The actual “building” part of your strategy has to do with creating the design assets you need for your brand — so things like choosing your color palette and typography, logo design, creating your website, and all that jazz.
The end goal is to have all of your design assets incorporate your brand strategy, so that no matter where your customers encounter your brand — whether it’s on your website, on a billboard, or on product packaging — your branding comes through loud and clear.
We’re not going to lie to you — getting all those design assets together can be expensive. But they don’t have to be! With a little know-how, you can get everything you need to bring your brand strategy together — at a fraction of the cost of what most companies drop to get their brand designed.
Here are a few tips to building your brand strategy on a shoestring budget:
First things first
If you’ve got a limited budget to work with, you want to start with the most important design assets first — in particular your logo. Your logo is the face of your company, so you don’t want to wait until you’re almost out of budget to get it designed.
Get clear on what you want
If you’re working with a designer on getting your logo or other assets designed, it’s very important to get clear on what you want. If you don’t give clear directions or are unsure of what you want your assets to look like, there’s going to be a lot of back and forth and rounds of edits — and you could lose a lot of money in the process.
Run a design contest
If you’re not clear on what you want, that’s ok — you just have to be strategic about how you work with designers. Use a platform like 99designs, where you can run a design contest. You put together a brief for what you need, like a logo or brand identity pack, and then multiple designers send over their ideas. You get to look through everything and only pay for the design you choose. It’s a great way to get exposure to multiple designers and ideas — without having to pay for samples from each one.
Do a work exchange
If you’re really strapped for cash, see if you can do a work exchange. Do you have an app that makes invoicing easy for freelancers? Offer free access to a designer in exchange for some design support. Just make sure when you’re doing a work exchange, it makes sense for both parties — no one likes being taken advantage of.
Wrapping things up
Building a brand strategy is an essential part of getting your startup off the ground. And now that you know how to build a brand strategy — and, more importantly, how to build a brand strategy on a shoestring budget — it’s time to get out there and build your brand.
Header Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
