Finding your own voice — branding as a startup

In the beginning as a start-up, you are immediately faced with decisions that you have to make concerning how you’re going to transmit your vision into the world with the view to achieve recognition and acceptance within an industry.

The complexities that come with being the ‘new-kid-on-block” while still wanting to have an immediate impact rest on a few basic tenets and questions you should ask yourself before establishing your brand, which I’ll take you through shortly.

The main thing is to remain confident in your vision and always listen to the consumers. You’ve naturally found a gap in the market, a niche that you feel you can expand and develop on so never lose sight of why you first started out.

What is exciting in our modern world is that the Internet is a platform that allows smaller/new brands to complete one on one with the larger players in a market. So if you have a vision and can execute it quickly, then ‘hey presto’ you have a store front for your wider audience and potential customers.

How will you communicate the vision?

It is all about intention. If you go into business as a start-up simply looking to make a profit, then you’ll more than likely fail. Before you even establish your brand and start communicating it to customers you’ll need to focus your vision of what you want to achieve. My experience has always been to attempt to make a difference to a group of people, or offer something that is unique; to better an experience or a life situation. If you can do this, and do it well, no doubt financial rewards will follow. It’s a given you need funds to operate and you should keep your eye clearly on costs in/out, but making the difference is ultimately what should be a driving force behind your vision.

You need to be impactful and make a difference, fulfilling wants and needs in ways that others can’t. If you don’t believe in your own vision, then why would anyone else? Ask yourself if you would buy into your brand. If your answer isn’t “yes, definitely!” then your vision isn’t strong enough to succeed. Always be honest to yourself, but check with others around you, and also not directly connected to you or your past. This way you can assume opinions would be independent.

What is the personality of your brand?

People love the brands that they love because of how they make them feel and how brands respond to societal changes. Your brand can’t just be an extension of your company but has to have a personality, much like the entrepreneur that started it, but not necessarily the same. I know it might sound odd, but it’s important and filters conceptually to the way you communicate all the values of your mission. You will be pleased to know that models for understanding brands values and missions can be worked through to get to the answers you need! An example of a brand personality is ‘Ben and Jerry’s’, the ice cream makers, whom have a ‘jester brand’ — this is delivered through the look, feel and in all methods of their communication to their customers.

Take DNAFit for instance. Yes, we’re a global consumer genetics company but there are a lot of companies out there who do the exact same thing. What gives us personality is a strong vision and the way in which we interact with consumers on a personal level. We want to improve people’s lives and are dedicated to doing that. We’ll speak about consumers soon but one thing you have to remember is that people aren’t dummies and generally know when they’re being duped.

The DNAFit brand is a ‘Change Agent’ brand archetype, and we exist to enable people to unleash and transform their human potential into human performance.

It’s important to communicate your brand’s Higher Values, Archetype, Emotion and what you do through visual and communication structures.

How do you speak to your consumers?

This is probably the most important thing when you’re starting out attempting to establish your brand. Your customers keep you alive; they’re the reason that other people are hearing about you and why the influence of your brand is growing.

Never forget that.

Brands that can interact with consumers on a personal level and prove to them that they care are the brands that survive and continue to grow. All the rewards that you desire can only be reaped after your customer-base are happy.

Social media has provided brands that are just starting out with the fantastic opportunity to interact on a personal level with a wide audience and reach out to potential consumers.

It’s about convincing actual people that your brand is real and that what you offer is going to have a positive impact on their lives. On a high level it’s about defining your brand’s memory structures and standing on a soap box to tell the brand story!

What do you offer that no one else does?

Unless you come up with a unique idea that actually works, in a world saturated by so much competition you need to differentiate yourself from the crowd.

An entrepreneur should always attempt to view the industry from a new perspective and attempt to see things that no one else has seen before, be it tech, healthcare or fitness because there’s always room for innovation.

There has to be a reason why you first created your company and product, and it’s probably because you wanted to change lives. Never lose sight of that inspiration but always make sure that you constantly innovate and adapt to ever-changing markets. Once you get started, you get a feel for the market sentiment and adapt quickly to meet those sentiments. This is the strength of a small start-up, against the larger more established entity. We are nimble and can move as the market requires before the larger players do and therefore reap the rewards.

How will you adapt to change?

Which leads us to the final stage, accepting that you may have to change. Your vision might be completely relevant right now but you always have to be alert and in tune with the competition and the market. If you had the ability to innovate an industry then what’s preventing someone else from doing it just like you, but better? So keep ahead of the game and keep innovating and changing to meet your customer demands while continuing to remain unique in the market.

As a start-up, things can change pretty fast and that’s why you always need to be looking at ways to improve upon what you’re already doing. Stay up-to-date with industry trends, that’s fine, but more importantly always listen to what your customers have to say, and the market. If you have a team on the phones, keep getting feedback from them as to what they are hearing. It is vital information that should be used to engineer change in your approach.

In order to remain influential and grow your brand the first place you have to look to is your consumers, the people keeping your business flourishing. They already know your brand and are far more likely to talk honestly with you so they are your best bet when looking for way to make your brand and product even better.