How to Look Less Like a Startup? Good Branding

We all have to start somewhere. As a new business owner, you can sometimes feel that pinch of “I need to get experience, but I need experience to get clients”. That catch-22 makes it hard to get your new business up and running.

Branding may be the missing link to promoting yourself more effectively. You need to look the part before people will accept you in the role.

As much as new startups and solopreneurs complain about the difficulties of landing new business, they are adding to their pain by not investing in their own branding systems.

Consider these two scenarios:

• Business A has a web site full of content, a professionally printed business card, and proposals from them come as well-formatted, branded documents.
• Business B has a web site “under construction”, a flimsy business card with clipart on it; and the proposal is a poorly typeset Word file.

Which is established? Which do you trust?

Branding is a series of small decisions that work together to create a consistent look for your company and sets the foundation for building a reputation that says “I’m for real”.

In the world of marketing, know me, like me, trust me is a critical sequence of events that many buyers go through before deciding to work with you. If you don’t have a consistent brand, it’s difficult to a known and liked entity. If you look like you just decided last week on a whim to hang out your shingle, it’s hard to trust you.

Consistent branding, developed by a professional designer can leapfrog you forward in how established you look to your clients. Being established means the ability to demand higher prices, seek larger projects, and work with other larger and more established entities.

Case Study

If you’re interested in reading about how one of our clients, Educational Endeavors used branding to create a more professional image and grow their business, download our white paper: Professional Graphic Design: The Crucial Step Toward Higher Brand Equity, Increased Revenues.