Branding: The Secret to Making Your Small Company Look Like a Big Company

Why we’re all in on performance branding – and how it can transform your growth.

Branding: The Secret to Making Your Small Company Look Like a Big Company

Bryan Karas

June 22, 2018

When Leslie Ziegler joined the founding team of Rock Health, a healthcare startup incubator, in 2010 she had the daunting task of creating a brand for a small startup – even harder was making them seem legit in front of healthcare behemoths like UnitedHealthcare.

Leslie was featured in a podcast and an article on First Round – talking about the specific ways she was able to brand Rock Health to look a lot bigger than it actually was…

Read the post – I highly recommend it.

“________” is everything…

The number one takeaway is something that I’ve been harping on for a long time…consistency. For people to take you seriously – or in this case, your brand seriously – you need to be consistent in everything you do…and I mean everything (from the colors and fonts you use to the company values you and your employees live by).

To dumb it down…you have to show up. And that’s how you also become an authentic brand. One of our favorite marketers ever, Seth Godin, defines authenticity calling it – consistent emotional labor.

“We call a brand or a person authentic when they’re consistent, when they act the same way whether or not someone is looking. Someone is authentic when their actions are in alignment with what they promise. Showing up as a pro. Keeping promises. Even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t.”

The first thing you need to do

Leslie says that startup founders tend to wait too long to focus on branding. “The conventional wisdom in advertising is that people need to hear something three times to remember it.”

Say what?

If you constantly play around with your logo or can’t decide how the next message that goes out should look and feel then you’re essentially starting over every single time.

She goes onto say that the fastest way to make your small brand look big is to present polished, coherent materials. “If you’re a small brand trying to approach, say, UnitedHealthcare and your materials look like amateur hour, they’re not going to take you seriously.”

This will sound elementary but you’d be surprised how often it’s overlooked…but we’re going to say it anyway.

Create a Brand Book. Something simple – use a Google doc and share it with everyone on your team. Include all the brand elements: colors, fonts, photos, logo files, taglines, language etc. Explain the importance of consistency and continue to build it out as you learn.

Here is a link to the article again. It’s so good. Read it. Read it now…

How Harry’s disrupted a $2.4 billion industry with a little bit of branding

And by a little bit I mean a lot. Looks like this is the First Round edition of our email series… Learn how Harry’s cracked the nut of the crazy competitive razor industry through branding – here’s their formula.