Branding Insights for Start-ups

Brand Strategy, Start-ups•on May 4th, 2010•No Comments

This weekend, I was fortunate enough to participate as an “expert” in an immersive event for idea-stage companies called LaunchPad. My contribution was as a member of the Branding/Marketing panel, and I was lucky enough to get to sit alongside some great marketing minds, including: Brent Hieggelke, the founder and President of Second Porch; Ken Westin, the founder and CEO of GadgetTrak; and Peter Weiss of Weiss Ideas.Launch Pad

Finding the time and money to be an effective marketer is obviously a huge challenge for start-ups and their founders, but I can’t think of any part of business that is any more important. And if I had to summarize my contributions to the discussion in one key nugget, it would be MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE. Success in PR, social media, and buzz-worthy publicity all come back to this concept, and it’s especially critical in a start-up where cash is tight. If you act like Ken (who is brilliant at getting media coverage on both the local and national level) you WILL get noticed. Ken is always looking for newsworthy items to share and will give the media ACCESS any time of day or week. By opening up and sharing your story with the world you will attract fans and friends, whether you’re selling anti-theft software or hi-tech toilet bowl cleaners.

Launch Pad

A few other relevant thoughts from my start-up words-of-wisdom notes:

Q. What are the top three strategies you see as having timeless effectiveness in [the field of branding/marketing for start-ups]?

  1. Focus on ONE thing that you want to “own” in the minds of your customers. Make sure everything you do as a company/brand reinforces that one thing.
  2. Keep your messages to three or fewer and repeat them as often as possible.
  3. Have a tight, one-sentence elevator pitch that answers the question “Who/what is ______ (your company)?” It’s the most important marketing vehicle you have because you’ll get asked that question by someone new every day.

Q. What are the top emerging strategies and trends you see as up and coming in [the field of branding/marketing for start-ups]?

  • Have a community engagement plan that considers how you’ll engage with your customers and allow them ‘inside’ your business.

Q. What is the one thing every early stage and idea stage company can do to increase the effectiveness of their Marketing, Branding or PR efforts on a shoestring?

  • Be available. Destroy any barriers between the founders and your customers/media/prospects/etc. Companies are successful at getting great publicity because they make themselves available for the media and others to engage with. Press releases get thrown in the trash can, but a coffee with the CEO creates an interesting story.
-Scott

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How to use Social Media to build a small business brand

Brand Strategy, Social Media•on March 24th, 2010•No Comments

I had an interesting conversation this evening with Lisa Peyton, the founder of the Thoroughly Modern Marketing blog, about how to use social media marketing to build your brand as a small business. In a nutshell, this is what I told her:

1. Keep it real.
2. Keep it relevant.
3. Keep it meaningful.

But to expand, here’s what I was thinking:

Keep it real. By that I mean, be YOURSELF. Don’t be all corporate or attempt to be overly professional in your posts on social media channels like twitter, facebook or LinkedIn. Be human. People want to engage with people, not with these false identities known as businesses. If you’re a small business, customers probably like the people that make your business work. Embrace your people and their unique personalities. Yes, that means occasionally tweeting about what you had for lunch, but see points 2 and 3 for more on that!

Keep it relevant. To the extent possible, stay within your sweet spot. Tweet about things that you know. If your business sells shoes, find compelling and unique content about shoes and share it. This can establish category expertise and ensure that your audience looks to you for the latest relevant information on shoes. The point here is to establish yourself or your brand as a voice in the category.

Keep it meaningful. Relevance only gets you so far if you’re not adding insightful points of view to the content. Relevance might get you ‘followed’ or ‘friended’, meaning gets you contacted. Stand out from the crowd by connecting the dots for people. Teach, share, and add value. Retweeting, for example, can be relevant. Overlaying a point of view can create meaning, as can engaging in REAL dialogue in these channels. If I look at your brand and see that you’re blasting one-way messages without much interaction, you’re not creating meaning.

-Scott

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