Branding Mistakes when starting a business

by Startacus Admin

Branding Mistakes when starting a business...              

You’ve had your great eureka moment and you are now in the midst of formulating your actual, living ‘n breathing business - fab! Now for branding…but many first time business owners, thinking that your epiphany for having said great business idea, also equates to becoming ‘master of everything’ means that you go ahead, and take control of your now real life company branding. Potentially this might work out well, and some of you may be branding naturals. However the chances are, you might instead make some common branding mistakes - mistakes such as those that we’ve outlined below. Read, learn and hopefully avoid making some of those errors that many of us make when starting a business.

Doing it all yourself

Leading on from the introduction - there is a chance that you think that having a quality business idea, means that you will be able to come up with a quality business brand. Perhaps so - but you need to consider if just because you love your branding designs, others will too. You also need to consider if your quality brand, will work on those quality logo products, business cards, billboards, posters and so on. If costs are a massive consideration and doing it by yourself is the only option, then at least consider how you can also do some quality market research to see what your prospective customer thinks of your brand and its message.

Company name

There’s so much you can do wrong with coming up with a company name, that perhaps this is a post in itself. However, it is important to try and remember that your company name is the first and most important thing that initially represents your company brand and image. It is possible that a badly named, or difficult to understand company name, will mean you lose prospective customers, even before they have the chance to find out what your business product or service is all about. So do get creative with your company name, but not so creative that it doesn’t do exactly what it says on the tin.

Not becoming the brand

The likelihood is that when you start a business, startup, venture (call it what you like!) your headcount will equal you, and if you are lucky, one or two others. It is therefore important that you realise that you cannot have a big and shiny brand and then have a service behind that brand is not first class. If you want to be first place in your marketplace, whatever that market place may be, you need to make sure that there is a real synergy between the values and connotations of you brand and the values you offer to your customer too. First up - you are your company brand, so start acting it, if you ain’t already!

 

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Published on: 14th April 2014