Startup marketing kit is a series of thought aggregations collectively devoted to addressing common marketing queries that startups have. The kit is split into different areas based on startup marketing priorities and this is the first one of them dealing with branding.

1. Startup Marketing Kit – Branding
Hit the ground running and help customers embrace your brand in a jiffy
Author: Prayukth K V
Design: Prabahar Chitraikani
June 2014

2. Startup Marketing Kit
Startup Marketing Kit – Branding

3. Startup Marketing Kit
Let’s start with the questions
 What is your product or service all about?
 What problem does it solve?
 What is its value proposition?
 How is that problem addressed currently?
 Who are your potential customers?
 Why should your customers switch to your brand?
 How can you find your customers?
 Where are they now?
 What will be our tone? Aggressive? Passive? Informal/Formal
 How are you going to communicate with them?

4. Startup Marketing Kit
Branding
 Begin by keying down key attributesfeatures of your organisationoffering
 How does that connect with your target audience?
 How different are you from competition?
 Use points 1,2 and 3 to derive your brand messaging
 The message should be genuine and represent the value you bring to your customer’s
business
 The positioning should clearly reflect and address the market segment you wish to
address
 Your branding will tell folks who you are, what you do and why should they be
concerned about your brand
 So be careful about your branding

5. Startup Marketing Kit
Tips
 Go for something that’s simple and easy to remember and connect to
 You needn’t have a marketer around to figure this out
 Visual, imaginative, appealing, dynamic are nice attributes to have
 Remember, the brand has to engage your prospective customers and employees alike
 Imagine all the places they will be seeing your brand and what they would be feeling
when they connect visually
 Be consistent in messaging; develop something and stick to it
 Finally evolve branding guidelines and propagate them among employees and agencies
handling your brand

6. Startup Marketing Kit
Developing a brand tone
 Jot down your organizational values and objectives
 Break your messaging down into adjectives
 Convey energy, focus and passion
 Express values, strengths and ideas
 Stand out, keep it clear, direct and ‘innocent’
 What human value does your brand connect with?
 Mix everything and derive a few sentences that capture the essence of everything
above
 Don’t rush, iterate as much as needed
 Run the lines and tone past your employees, study feedback
 The final line will carry the brand tone and your brand identity

7. Startup Marketing Kit
Translating the tone
 Derive
• Key messages
• Brand identity and persona
• Visual identity
• A compelling value proposition that resonates with the target audience
• Your brand story
• A buy-in from all stakeholders
 Propagate with every ounce of marketing, sales and company strength

8. Startup Marketing Kit
Brand path
Brand
Campaign
Influencers
Channel
Target
AudiencePartners
Employees

9. Startup Marketing Kit
Attribute quadrant
• Vibrant
• Inspiring
• Engaging
• Caring
• Memorable
• Connected
• Evolving
• Low degree of
resonance
• Comfortable
• Confusing
• All about
features

10. Startup Marketing Kit
Pitfalls
 Not living up to expectations
 Bad taglines
 Lack of passion
 Failure to understand the target audience
 Insufficient/inadequate branding investment
 Wrong associations
 Failure to engage employees
 Wrong channels and places
 Poor USP articulation

11. Startup Marketing Kit
Startup Marketing Kit – Branding
Startup marketing kit is a series of thought aggregations collectively
devoted to addressing common marketing queries that startups
have. The kit is split into different areas based on startup marketing
priorities and this is the first one of them covering branding.
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