Top 5 branding tips for your start-up business

Here at Mimo Brands we've put together here top 5 branding tips for your start-up business. New and early stage businesses usually have an unwieldy quantity of issues on which to focus their limited time. Those activities that look like delivering the least prospect of early returns often get left till later. And later can easily turn into never.

In the case of branding, this can be an expensive decision. For global giants and start-ups alike, our brands are an essential part of helping our customers to choose us over our competitors. If you don’t crack this at the outset with your start-up business, you may never get a second chance.

These top 5 branding tips for your start-up should give you a good start. 

      1. Don’t mistake your logo for your brand.

The logo is simply a visual element of your brand. Think of it as the tip of the iceberg that you can see.

The main elements of your brand will lie beneath the waterline. It is much more important to understand and define who you are as a management team and why you exist as a start-up business beyond simply making money, what position you’re taking in the market, and what you promise your fellow workers and customers alike. 

Most importantly for your start-up, you need to understand why the world is going to be a better place with your business in it (i.e. what problems are you solving).  

2.   Differentiate or die.

There are usually only 2 ways to make a success of your business: be cheaper or be different.

Even the most cursory understanding of supply chains reveals that, unless you possess a particularly smart business model, sustaining a lower cost base is mighty challenging if you want to make a profit.

Being different is easy to talk about but strangely difficult to deliver, rarely because of a shortage of ideas, but usually because human nature drags us back to behavioural norms as soon as there is a whiff of resistance. In short, we like the idea of being different somewhat more than the reality.

Furthermore, to be useful, your point of differentiation needs to be valued by your customers so much that they will pass on their usual choice in favour of your brand. 

3.   Have a point of view.

Today’s brand development is more akin to joining debates than it is to shouting your message from a soapbox.

The starting point is, unsurprisingly, your customers, about whom you should understand much.  What are the pressures and interest in their lives?  What makes them tick? What gets on their wicks? What helps them to decide which brands to choose in your sector? 

Don’t guess. Find out and offer an opinion on how to improve their lives through what you do, how you do it, and why you’re doing it.

Once upon a time you could make up your brand’s heritage, and so long as you could tell a good story, you could convince an unknowing public that you were the brand of choice amongst the Tudors.  Not any more.  Social media has put an end to that. 

4.    Be open.

Like differentiation, genuine openness is easy to talk about but unintuitive to most people.  This is because it requires letting go and trusting others unconditionally.

It is important because being a brand owner today doesn’t mean you own your brand.  Your brand is like a small child growing up in the world – you can guide and direct, provide support and encouragement, but ultimately he/she/it will be a product of nurture and nature.  And you’ll struggle to control the nature part.  You have to place your trust in others.

At one end of the scale you have Ricardo Semler who built his business on such levels of trust that he let his employees decide how much they got paid and the number of days holiday they could take.

At the other end it involves engaging with your customers publicly (usually through social media), quickly and honestly.

5.   If you are genuinely different and better than everyone else, and will continue to be, you can worry less about your brand.

I keep hearing how the Googles and Facebooks of this world never spent a dime on advertising, so why should a start-up?

The answer is threefold:

• Advertising isn’t branding, it is simply a communication channel. They have invested heavily in their brands since day 1.
• They had game changing business models that gave them distinct and sustainable advantages in their categories
•  They’re advertising now.

Good luck.

If you need any help with your brand simply drop us an email at giles@mimobrands.com 

Be confident in naming your brand

If I got an English pound for every time a business asked me to give them a name like ‘Google’ I’d be a wealthy man.  Their thinking is usually sound – it will help them to differentiate from the crowd in their market. The trouble is, when presented with names like ‘Google’ or ‘Yahoo’ the business suddenly loses all confidence.  It seeps from them in front of my very eyes as they contemplate their new logo on their website, in a supermarket aisle or store frontage. Google-type names sound just too...different. The trouble with made-up or ‘clever’ names (that have a back story) is they tend not to trigger any familiarity bells, so they get rejected by businesses.

“It should do exactly what it says on the tin” I hear. No it shouldn’t if you are late to the market and there are already 1001 competitors already trampling on your new patch.

So they are offered names that communicate invariably generic attributes or benefits, literally and metaphorically, which of course they think are too dull. And the .com domain isn’t available. So off we head to Google-land again.

There are some great exceptions to this rule – Moonpig, Moo.com and Ocado being a few - fun and distinctive names that mean absolutely nothing, but which we can remember with relative ease. Unlike easyprint, cardsmadeeasy and other slightly dull generics.

Our Story

Mimo was created from the names of our director’s children. It also means Multiple Inputs Multiple Outputs, which describes our approach to brand development, and is therefore what we do every day to create lasting differentiation for our clients.

On discussing the subject of naming your brand on Twitter, there is a common theme emerging with these successful businesses:

Branding, Naming, Name, Creation, marketing

Branding, marketing, naming, brand name

The simpler your business name, the more impact it will have.

A great, simple, short name can create a real buzz and position you as a real competitor. You will differentiate yourself from the crowd with an aspect of mystery from the offset. Just like if someone tells you that they have a secret, you will instantly want to find out more. It is that level of power that really makes a great brand.

Your brand values are important too and remember to keep this in mind. A way to support your brand name further is to use a 'tagline' for example, Nike's 'Just Do It' and you should refer back to this tagline when presenting your brand to someone new and to the public.

Mimo Hints:

1. Like so many things in business life, the whole process should start with a written brief that both parties agree to and sign in blood.
2. Agree the success criteria and stick to them. (Ignore the CEO’s wife who doesn’t like the name because it reminds her of a family pet.)
3. Reject the existing language of the category unless you’re first or second in.
4. Acknowledge inevitable early discomfort of sharing your chosen name (like when you announced your first born was to be called Isambard)
5. Remember, a name is what you make of it.  Google, Apple, Virgin are global brands which we now think are great names, not the other way round.

If you need some advice with your branding strategy please feel free to get in contact with us at Mimo.

What is a brand? And building brand value.

Your definition of a brand will be different to mine. The Intellectual Property Office says this about a brand

A brand can be a trade name, a sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business. But a brand is much more than this; it can also be a ‘promise of an experience’ and conveys to consumers a certain assurance as to the nature of the product or service they will receive and also the standards the supplier or manufacturer seeks to maintain.

A brand is an intangible asset of your business and is often the most valuable part. So how much is a brand worth?

Brand Value

A brand is really only worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it. If you were to try and calculate what a brand was worth on a business already for sale then in theory you could take the amount the business is to be sold for, deduct its fixed assets and the remainder, often referred to, as "Goodwill" is essentially the value of that businesses brand.

Calculating the value of your brand is a far greater task and there are many methods that we will discuss another day.

Building Value in Your Brand

If you are looking to sell your business then developing your brand is going to be key. Here are a few areas we suggest you focus to add value to your brand and increase its value.

• Develop Brand Guidelines and stick to them. Deliver what you promise, and don't promise more than you can deliver.
• Use Brand Targeting to find the people who will drive revenue and profits into your business.
• Engage your employees and bring them into the brand, they will probably be around for the new owners of your business and they are what makes the machine work.
• Clearly define your brand in a document that allows anybody to continue your work. This reduces the work involved in taking over a business and allows the new owners to focus on other areas.

A fun graphic