Sitemaps
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?
Always Take Money off the Table
Founder Impostor Syndrome Never Goes Away

Branding Is More Than A Logo

Kayla Medica

Branding Is More Than A Logo

brand logos

There’s a limited number of colours and shapes in this world, so your logo isn’t your whole brand. Your colour could remind a potential customer of a completely unrelated business (I recently thought of a well known auto care shop when looking at the website of a debt refinancer) and you need to rely on more than just that one aspect of your company to raise brand awareness.

If you have a marketing campaign, do you use just one channel? Only one ad image? Of course not, any campaign is more effective with multiple channels. It’s the exact same principle for “startup branding”.

Have you ever answered the phone without looking, heard “hey it’s me” and known exactly who it was? This is essentially what you want for your company. You want your customers to identify you just from your Instagram caption, your slogan, your product pitch. Create your branding for the blind.

How do you go about this?

bad landing pages

Landing Page

HIRE A COPYWRITER

Seriously. Get a professional to write your copy, avoid awkward grammar, weird angles, and inconsistent writing styles. To help you make sure you instruct them correctly before you hire them, do this exercise:

Describe the personality of your brand in three words or less (e.g. youthful/bubbly/excited)

Describe the tone of your brand in three words or less (e.g. educational/inspirational)

Pass these keywords on to your copywriter, it will help them get the angle just right. It’s also in your best interest to sit down with them for at least an hour to tell them everything about the company so far — where did it come from, why did you make it, what are the goals, what is the central pillar of the company and what are accessories?

With the above brand example, writing like this!!! is probably ok 🙂 but if you’re selling funerals you might want to hold back on the smileys 🙁

Every word on that landing page counts. Make sure it’s the right words.

Social Media/Content Marketing

One of the biggest things you need to adapt to with social media is using each channel for what it’s best for. Don’t post long form essays on Instagram, don’t post pictures of your breakfast on LinkedIn. It’s easy in theory, but executing different strategies for each platform can be hard, especially if you’re doing this with a small team (and no budget).

Only use each platform for what gives you optimum results. Keep your personality across each platform consistent. Even if you’re posting vastly different content for each platform, you should still be identifiable.

Case Study: Tesla

Tesla's Facebook Post

“Submit your Project Loveday video by June 5” followed by a link to Gizmodo. Not much is it?

Compare to their Instagram:

Tesla's Instagram Post

Again, it’s not much, “Easter egg will make world’s fastest accelerating production car even faster; 0–60 mph in 2.4 sec. Free software update next month.”

Let’s break it down.

The content is different, one is a link to an external page (perfect for Facebook), one is an image that’s good to look at (perfect for Instagram), but the language they use is very straight-forward and has a focus on information ahead of style. It’s functional — and that’s Tesla’s whole brand.

They’re not trying to convince you that the colour red is prettier or faster than other cars, they’re not using models in bikinis to sell cars, and they’re not wasting their energy typing about useless things.

They’re consistent as well, they got a troll comment on the Facebook post saying they shouldn’t think so lowly of Australian creatives and replied “I think Gizmodo were surprised at the quality of videos coming through for the project”. It was pretty emotionless (apart from the use of “I think”), was short and sweet, and they corrected someone without being condescending.

Linguist point: In the Instagram caption they’re missing a “the” (the world’s fastest). Of the two categories of words (function/content), the is a function word. The fact that they left out a function word and not a content word further implies a focus on only the most essential or important pieces of information. From “the world’s fastest”, compare “the fastest” with “world’s fastest” — both are missing a single word, one makes more impact than the other. If you had to cut words to fit an Instagram caption, which would you choose?

If you cut corners (or budgets) on content, consider it a cut to the value of the brand. Cheap content = cheap brand; remember that your customers can see right through non-genuine attempts. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money though, it could be more of a time investment. Less often but higher quality content is another option.

Sales Pitch

Let’s say you’re a scented candle company. How many emotions can you sell from?

Love: this one’s easy. Romantic candles in the bedroom, say no more.

Fear: you have a presentation/exam coming up. You’re at the point where you’ll do any memory trick you hear about. It just so happens that you recently read about how certain scents can trigger memories, so you go out and buy a candle you’ve never smelled before and burn it while you practice your pitch. Sniff it right before you go on stage just to refresh your memory and everything goes just fine.

Another angle could be using scent and memory association with parent-baby bonding. There’s actually a lot here.

sales pitch wax hand

If you can connect your product to an emotion and then genuinely connect that to a customer, you have a sale. If your attitude is “I’ll just throw something together quickly” then you’re probably not emotionally connecting, and with no emotion there’s no sale.

There’s a reason why copywriting exists as a full time job — it’s not something you can just jump in and out of whenever you realise you need a product description.

The founder is not the brand

When asking people about startup branding, one person said to me that they were the brand because they were the founder, therefore their personality was the brand (hence they don’t need to spend money on branding because they just have to be themselves).

Ok, you know who this works for? Freelancers.

Freelancers are their own brand, because they are one person. It doesn’t work like this for organisations and even startups shouldn’t fall into this trap. It might work when you’re pitching to investors for funding (they like to pick people), but not to customers (who are picking products).

If you are acting as the brand then remember that your own personal flaws will be on show as well. Depending on your personality, they could sometimes be magnified. You could come off as arrogant, condescending, know-it-all, or authoritative when really you’re trying to be informative and helpful.

I suggest you schedule a time to really go through your brand and ask yourself these questions:

What is our personality (warm or cold and corporate?)

What is our tone (peer to peer or coming from a higher power?)

What is our visual (round and soft or sharp?)

What is our current branding (be realistic and objective, might be best to ask outsiders how they perceive you)

What does the startup brand look like in its best form

Use the above questions as guides to give to contractors or staff who then go on to create your brand through content, marketing, photography and so on. Diversity in your stock photos may also be something you need to reconsider if your customer base is diverse.

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