Innovative Branding Strategies for Startups: Building a Brand on a Budget

Thinking you need millions of dollars to create successful branding strategies is a myth. You can create a branding strategy for your business with your current resources. Moreover, according to Exploding Topics, branding is nonnegotiable for long-term success, as 81% of consumers need to trust you before buying.

Today, many small businesses and startups use strong branding strategies to build relationships and trust online. If you want to know how to build a powerful brand identity on a budget with mastermind branding strategies, tag along until the end.

How to Create a Strong Brand Image

You must first understand branding and how it affects your business to create a strong brand image. Your brand identity is the first thing that comes to mind when people think of your brand. It combines your brand’s visual identity, brand messaging, product branding, and purpose. It’s your brand personality. 

For example, if you met a bubbly lady for the first time, your perception of her would be that she is a friendly person. The same principle of personal branding applies to your business. How your brand makes people feel is your brand identity. Although you cannot control human emotions, you can shape consumer perception about your brand. That’s where brand strategies come in. 

The branding strategy dictates your overall brand identity. The table below lists all the elements of a strong brand. An example of a small company with one of the most impressive brands is Bakeshop. You can tell they have a brand strategy from their cakes to their packaging.

Brand Identity Elements
Brand Promise	Vision statements, mission statement, value, and purpose
Customer Relationship	Product or service benefits, price, and brand positioning
Perception	Brand voice, personality, brand story, customer journey, and expectations,
Visual elements	Logo, tagline, brand colors, imagery, typography, and messaging.

To build a strong brand identity, you need to address each element of branding identity. You should perform competitive market research, market analysis, and a target audience analysis to create digital marketing strategy and identify your target customers and build a strong brand identity. 

Conduct a market analysis (competitor analysis) to understand how the current market offerings don’t serve them. Following that, you must create a strong brand purpose, values, vision, mission, purpose, and promise statement to guide other areas of your brand identity.

Next, you must outline your product or service offering, brand story, brand voice, customer journey, content strategy, logo, color, and messaging. You should also define what your brand isn’t at this stage.

All of this should be consolidated into a single document known as the brand guidelines. This can be a slideshow accompanied by a drive, where every member of your team can refer to as a point of truth when developing new public-facing strategies, and creating marketing materials and brand assets.

Crafting Your Brand Story with Values and Vision

The best way to build your brand story is to intertwine your brand purpose, people, and the passion driving your brand. Your brand story paints a picture of why you started the business, which you are, and what sets you apart from the others. 

The brand story, as part of the brand development process, is a strategy that emotionally connects your company to your target audience to sell a product or service. Some people may think it is manipulative, but it can be genuine if you are not making a false statement.

Below are the steps to craft a compelling and beautiful brand story:

• Start from the beginning: How did you start the brand? What were you thinking? You may think it’s nothing serious, but you can always tell a beautiful story and make your brand stand out by offering more context. Even powerhouse brands can often tell a humbling story which customers can resonate with, resulting in increased trust.
  
• Your mission: What was your mission when starting the brand? The beautiful thing is your mission may have begun before the brand. For example, if you want to help less privileged students attend school, you may have started doing something similar before creating your brand. So, your mission may come before or after your big brand idea. It doesn’t matter when; it matters the story.
  
• Your vision: Your vision is the long-term but main goal of your brand. Where do you see yourself in 20 years? If your mission is to help less privileged students attend school, your vision might be to become the brand that has helped 1,000,000 less privileged students gain a bachelor’s degree. Crafting a beautiful story involves telling your audience how far you have come with your vision.
  
• Your values: Your values are who you are. If you are not taking a donation from drug-driven organizations, then you must stand by it. Your brand values inform your actions, and people know when you take steps that don’t align with the brand. 

By showing that your brand is empathetic through storytelling, you make people approach you willingly and buy from you without hesitation. Sharing an authentic and compelling brand story will bring rewards you never imagined.

Target Audience Analysis

Target audience analysis is essential to building successful co-branding strategies. You have to research the nitty-gritty of your market to understand your audience thoroughly.

Some of the questions you need target audience analysis to answer are:

• Who is your target audience?
• What markets can you capitalize on?
• Who are your competitors?
• What are the ways to reach potential customers?
• What products or services do they want?
• What is the market price?

Meanwhile, there are two customer analysis stages (identifying customer pain points and drawing buyer persona). The first is the customer pain points. You have to understand the challenges your customers face. Some are more obvious than others. Sometimes, you may need to interview them to describe their pain points. 

For example, tourism companies know that there are a few main struggles for keen tourists – pricing, planning and quality. This allows them to focus on one or multiple of them and provide a competitive service.

The second is the buyer persona, which involves outlining everything there is to know about your audience about your product or service. See the sample below for guidance when you create user personas:

Personal InfoAgeGenderHobbiesInterestLocationIncome	ChallengesWhat problems keep them up at night?What is stopping them from solving it?Is it a problem they will pay to solve?
Professional GoalsWhat are their career goals?Does their problem affect their career goals?	Your SolutionWhat product can capture their needs and solve their problems?How will they know you can solve their problem?

It’s important to note that the customer persona also includes geographical details which could alter your strategy to include cultural branding elements. For example, you might change your brand’s voice if you notice that most of your customers are from the Southern states.

Building Your Brand Voice

Your brand voice is your distinct personality in the market, shaped by your brand strategy. Your brand voice is your messaging, and your tone is how you say it. The tone can change, but your company’s personality remains the same.

Just think of yourself and how you have some transcending characteristics regardless of whether you’re angry, happy, excited, sad, bubbly, or anxious. Only you can do it that way. Without a comprehensive brand strategy, you can have any voice, but with one, you can have and own your voice.

The below steps will help you build your brand voice and maintain consistent branding.

Developing Your Brand Archetype

Have you ever heard the famous saying “To be your authentic self“? You can be anything, but you have to define this. You cannot stand for everything. Otherwise, you will stand for nothing. Also, your audience cannot determine your personality. They may shape your tone, but they cannot decide your voice.

Your voice is all of your brand identity elements. However, a better way to find your voice is to develop a brand archetype, which is one word that describes your personality. Remember, you can have a dynamic personality, but some characteristics are more evident than others.

Considering Your Target Market

In everything you do, consider your audience, their age bracket, occupation, pain points, and what makes them happy. Understanding your audience helps you set the tone of your brand message.

The best brand voices are clear, direct, and identifiable to their target audience. For example, mnml (Minimal), a streetwear company focusing on simplicity and minimalism, uses concise sentences and pithy language to communicate. It gives a sense of luxury to its target audience.

Creating a Strong Online Presence

A strong online presence is necessary for building trust and reputation. It helps you boost revenue faster and increase your brand awareness. Consumers are likely to buy from a brand they know, even if they have never purchased from them. Owning a website is one of the most significant ways to build a solid online presence.

However, to grow your online presence through a website, you need to optimize your site for search engines to gain visibility for your site. If you’re unsure how to do it yourself, you can always consider using professional SEO services to help you with it.

Another means to build your online presence is through social media. Companies of all sizes use social media accounts to promote their business in a relatable and friendly way so customers can relate well with them. Below, we have identified how to use your website and social media platforms to build solid online branding.

Use an Appealing Website Design

The digital world has evolved, and so has customers’ taste. Nobody wants to visit a site with just text and pictures anymore – that is primary. 

About 75 of every 100 customers will judge your credibility based on your website design. So, you have to use exciting layering and UI interactions to improve customer experience. This is especially important with high-tier service branding and SaaS offerings.

You could use the help of a front-end developer to help even with the no-code sites because they still need experience and may take hours to set up without expertise.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To build an online presence, we strongly recommend SEO as it’s a major part of modern Internet branding. Imagine topping the search results. It boosts your credibility each time. More people will be curious about your website. They will want to know about you, especially if you have seen a great source of helpful information. 

To increase your ranking, use tried and proven SEO strategies and improve every other area of SEO (technical, on-page, off-page, and local SEO).

Run Intense Campaigns on Your Social Media

Create and invest in extensive marketing campaigns and promotions and use the right means to promote them. It could be a giveaway or a sales campaign using paid ads, influencer marketing, and user-generated content to get everyone talking about your brand. If done right, you will make more profits before you know it. 

An excellent example of a brand that has a great social media strategy is the Big Brother show. It gets people talking about it without directly hiring influencers.

How To Make The Most of User-Generated Content

Nowadays, brands reach new audiences through customers who are also content creators. These creators become brand ambassadors for your brand by advocating your products to their audience. 

It’s a way to reach locals without overspending. It’s also a way to receive genuine recommendations. It’s easier for someone to buy products recommended by their friends than by celebrity influencers.

Here are some steps for turning customers into ambassadors:

• Tap into your customer base: Analyze your loyal customer base to find consistent customers. Look out for people who could naturally endorse your brand and are not afraid to create content. These are the suitable candidates for ambassadorship.
  
• Request for ambassadors: You can create a broadcast to announce that you need ambassadors through email newsletters or by asking a customer following a purchase through a well-crafted request.
  
• Provide clear guidelines: Taking great caution when turning customers into ambassadors is essential. You should create a document to outline their responsibilities and suggest ways for them to promote and create content. Additionally, outline the benefits, expectations, and the on-brand content ideas you want to see them portray. 

Turning your customers into brand ambassadors is a smart move. It’s cost-effective and uses honest reviews to promote your brand leading to increased brand recognition. 

Start by identifying engaged customers, reaching out to them, and laying out what you expect and what they get in return. This strategy can transform your marketing efforts, making your customers the most credible promoters you could ask for.

Partnering with Influencers for Reach and Credibility

Influencer marketing is a great way to generate brand awareness, reach more people, and build credibility.

The following are ways to use influencers to promote your brand:

• Sponsored social media posts: Through social media videos or design posts, an influencer will tell their audience about your brand while announcing that it is a sponsored post.
  
• Sponsored blog posts: Through a sponsored blog post, an influencer will create an informative piece and tie your brand to it. They will inform their audience how your products or services can help them.
  
• Guest posts: Guest posts can work for blog and social media content. In this case, you can create informative but promotional posts on an influencer’s blog or social media page.
  
• Brand ambassadorships: With a brand ambassadorship, you can build a long-term relationship with an influencer. You can pay them per month or per content they have created. With an ambassadorship, they will be more committed to your band.

One of the ways to kick-off your product branding strategy at a budget is to pay influencers by offering free products in the form of gifts, especially if the product is of high quality and at a market price. Some influencers will accept this payment arrangement depending on your brand’s size.

Creating a Memorable Brand Experience

From brand design and packaging to customer experience, below are tips for creating a recognizable brand and a memorable experience.

Let’s see these branding tips:

• Use eco-friendly materials: Eco-friendly materials are high quality and usually high priced. Still, you will get massive discounts if you buy in bulk. This makes the product more appealing, and consumers more aware of environmental sustainability will patronize it.
  
• Personalisation: Handwritten notes, thank-you cards, stickers, or customized labels are becoming increasingly popular because brands want to make customers feel special and appreciated.
  
• Develop customer journey messaging: You should develop uniform messaging for your customers from when they inquire to when they make a payment. It makes customers feel special, especially if you enter with a punch.
  
• Providing exceptional customer service: In retail branding, the customer journey isn’t over when the purchase is made. If there are any issues or inquiries, they need to be addressed in a professional and friendly manner. This can affect your branding and even turn complaining clients into returning customers.

Creating a memorable brand experience involves performing a unique activity or event that makes you stick to the customer’s memory.

Implementing Guerrilla Marketing Techniques

Guerrilla marketing is a type of branding strategy that uses unconventional tactics to delight and attract customers. It focuses on disrupting the public space with memorable events and activities relying on human interaction and quality.

Let’s see some impressive guerilla marketing ideas below:

• Outdoor guerrilla marketing: This type of guerrilla marketing involves placing something unique outdoors. In 2010, GOLDTOE dressed the New York City Stock Exchange bull in a pair of GOLDTOE underwear to make the brand memorable.
  
• Indoor guerrilla marketing: The Frontline Fleas had bought a shopping mall, putting an itchy golden retriever dog’s image there. Shoppers on the upper floors who looked down saw the image of the dog with fleas but, on a second glance, realized that the fleas were passers-by.
  
• Experiential guerrilla marketing: This involves giving out a free product or doing fun indoor or outdoor activities. For example, Coca-Cola created a campaign to make people happy by giving them free Coca-Cola, pizza, sunglasses, flowers, and a giant sub sandwich from the happiness machine. All they had to do was hug the machine to get free coffee.

Measuring Your Brand Success: Key Metrics to Track 

Making informed decisions is crucial in a corporate branding strategy. When measuring your brand’s growth, there are three primary metrics to consider.

Let’s see them in detail below:

Performance metrics: These are the quantitative results of your branding efforts. It helps you understand how your brand performs regarding the numbers. These include revenue, profit, profit margin, customer lifetime value, and brand equity. Metrics like this help you evaluate and compare different brand identities so you can choose the right branding strategy to pursue in the long-term.

Perception metrics: This is how people feel about your brand; you can tell this from product reviews and social listening. The critical perception metrics include brand awareness, brand preference, brand perception, and brand associations.

Behavior metrics: We previously discussed SWOT analysis; in strategic branding, it is essential to discover your characteristic metrics. Some important behavior metrics include website traffic, lead generation, social brand engagement, and product reviews.

Track your performance, listen to customers, and watch how they interact with your brand. By doing so, you’ll have a grasp of your brand’s health and growth trajectory. You can tell how well your brand is doing if the general metrics score is good and aligns with your business goals.

Wrapping It Up: Key Takeaways for Startup Branding

Innovative corporate branding isn’t exclusive to companies with large budgets. A startup’s brand can also create a significant level of presence in the market without having to borrow from banks. 

The articles emphasize the importance of brand building efforts and ensure you understand what it takes to do it. Your brand identity is the soul of your business, so you should take the necessary steps and do it right.