Five Steps to Building a Successful Brand for Your Startup

Like most things, brands exist on a spectrum — from small, mom-and-pop coffee shops in your neighborhood to household brands nearly everyone knows. 

And while becoming a household brand name is certainly one metric of success, it’s not the only way to build a memorable brand. 

But no matter your business model, going from startup idea to successful brand isn’t always a simple process. How do you get started? How do you succeed — and define success? And what constitutes “your brand,” anyway? 

In this article, we’ll show you what we’ve learned from helping thousands of successful brands grow on Bubble. 

What is a brand?

“Brand” is a broad category that encompasses all of the visual elements, styles and designs, name, voice and tone, experiences, and content your brand creates. All of these brand elements shape public perception and add up to create your brand. 

Meta famously defined it simply: “People have personalities. Businesses have brands.” 

Your brand is the public image you put forth of your business and products, in both obvious ways (i.e., your name and logo) and small ones (i.e., your customer service and brand voice on social media platforms). 

The goals of brand building

A strong brand image differentiates you from your competitors. Brands influence customer perception, which influences customer behavior, which influences customer loyalty and purchasing habits. 

Customers who are loyal to a brand and have high brand affinity have higher customer lifetime values (up to 300% higher than average!), spend more (and purchase more frequently), and have lower customer acquisition costs. Put simply, good branding directly affects your bottom line.

That said, the goals of brand building can vary between brands. For example, consider the difference between your local mom-and-pop coffee shop and a major corporation like Apple or Tesla. 

Household-name brands have extremely high brand recognition. But this isn’t the only — or even the most important — measure of successful branding efforts. Brand success is also dependent on: 

• Market size and saturation (i.e., of the people in your target market, how many of them know you and buy from you?)
• Brand loyalty (i.e., how loyal are your customers to your brand? Would they choose you over someone else?) 
• Brand affinity / affection (i.e., how much do your customers like and care about your brand?) 

The corner coffee shop doesn’t need to build brand awareness among a huge market. More importantly, it needs loyalty and affinity from a regular crew of customers within its (relatively) small target market. If it gains that, it succeeds — even if no one outside of your town has ever heard of it. 

So part of good branding is first deciding what the goals of your brand will be. Here are some common and effective goals your brand can support. 

Set (and meet) expectations

Your brand is ultimately a set of feelings, perceptions, and expectations that the public associates with your company and product. Developing a strong brand sets expectations for consumers about your brand. By delivering on those expectations over time, you both reinforce your brand and establish trust with your customer.

For example, Patagonia has developed a brand identity around their commitment to sustainability and the protection of natural places across the planet. As a result, customers are right to expect them to deliver on that promise in how they make their products, what they support as a brand, and so on — and generally, they do. 

Besides being a Certified B-Corp and their transparency in how they develop their products, initiatives like “Worn Wear” gear trade-ins and recycling, “1% for the Planet,” and so on both reinforce and deliver on their brand promises. This is an overarching brand goal that often supports more tangible brand goals like building an audience and creating brand loyalty.

Create a consistent experience

One of the most important goals of a memorable brand identity is to give your customers a consistent experience. 

This is true for any brand in any industry. You want your brand experience to be the same across platforms, in your software or at your store. 

For example, every time you go into a Target or an Apple Store, you pretty much know what to expect. The experiences are very different from each other — that’s a small part of what distinguishes these brands — but if you go into a Target in Arizona or a Target in Massachusetts, your experience will be largely the same. 

That’s consistent branding. Consistency in branding helps build trust, reinforces your brand experience and promises, and makes it easier for your customer to complete the task they set out to do.

Stand out from your competitors

At its core, your brand — in some cases, even more than your product or your offer — is what distinguishes you from your competitors. 

What’s the difference between Apple and Android? Or a running shoe from Nike versus a running shoe from Adidas? 

It’s not just about the product. It’s about what the product stands for, what it says about the person wearing it or using it, and what’s behind the product. 

If a brand can establish itself particularly well, it can become the sole decision point for a consumer — ‌even above product quality, price, or other factors. That’s why people will continue to buy iPhones even if a phone from another brand is argued to be objectively “better,” or why someone goes out of their way to shop at Target instead of Walmart. 

It’s not that the product is significantly better, or even different, from competitors — it’s about the brand. 

Build an audience

A good brand can help build and grow an audience or community for your startup. Your brand’s audience might coalesce around your startup because: 

• They support your brand’s vision, mission, or values. 
• They find a community of like-minded people (often the case for work software or hobby-related products). 
• They’re entertained or inspired by your brand (or your brand’s content). 

Whether your brand is focused on a mission (“purpose-driven brands”), an idea or vision (“visionary brands”), or something else, a good brand can create commonality between your audience members and keep them engaged with your brand even when they’re not purchasing. 

Build loyalty

Although many research groups like to argue about how “brand loyalty is dead,” there are plenty of brands we’re loyal to, both big and small: 

• If you need a new phone or computer, you probably don’t do much research every time to decide what you’ll buy. You just buy the latest model from your favorite brand. 
• If you’re going to the grocery store, you probably don’t look at which stores in the area have the most choices and the best prices every time. You go to your regular store, and buy the same things you always do. 
• If you need new gear for a hobby that’ll last a long time, like new skis or software, you probably start with a well-known brand. 

Brand loyalty is built like any relationship: slowly over time, by delivering on promises and expectations to reinforce trust. Rewarding customers for brand or app retention over time can also deepen loyalty.  

Generate growth via word-of-mouth

Did you know that 88% of American consumers say they trust personal recommendations more than any other form of advertising or marketing?  

Luckily, loyal customers are also the most likely to make referrals — and referred customers are four times more likely to make purchases. 

In short: Strengthening your brand gives you a strong foundation for growing referrals and word-of-mouth growth for your business, which is both cheaper and more effective. That’s a win-win!  

How to start a brand 

A brand may be intangible, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a critical business asset. Here’s how to build a brand a successful brand for your goals, step-by-step: 

Phase 1: Determine what you want from your brand

As we mentioned above, not every brand needs to achieve the same goals and outcomes. Universal brand recognition might not be necessary to meet your goals from branding. To figure out what you need:

Articulate your vision. Why are you building your brand? Why does the world need your product, solution, or offer? These are the foundational questions of your brand’s mission and vision. Make sure that these answers are exciting to you as a founder first — if you’re not excited about your brand, no one else will be either. Once you articulate these, you can start working your mission and vision into core components of your brand identity — both tangible and indirect brand elements — and communicating them to your target audience. 

Take inventory of your resources. As you start building your brand, you need to work with the skills and resources you currently have available. Sounds obvious? Yes, but it’s easy to get caught up in big-picture brand goals without being able to execute on them. 

This can prevent you from making smaller, more sustainable progress that you can build on as you grow. Look at who you have available, what skills you have, and then start from there. 

Decide on your brand goals. With your vision and resources in mind, you can then decide what your initial brand goals and objectives should be. 

• Do you want to start by building an audience or gaining recognition among an existing audience? 
• Does your brand first need to help you stand out or create loyalty? 
• Do you want to focus on generating excitement and loyalty or sales and sign-ups? 

For example, Uber focused first on disrupting the market, generating excitement, and creating new user patterns before they focused on profits. Building loyalty eventually helped them raise prices and make the product more profitable without losing most of their customers. 

Phase 2: Brand research

Making sure your brand can deliver on your brand goals — and your customer’s expectations — starts with market research. Namely: 

Competitor research. A competitive analysis is a process where you compare a variety of businesses in the same industry. You can use a competitive analysis to understand what other brands with similar products or audiences are doing, what’s working, and what’s not. For example, you might want to analyze: 

• What do other brands’ logos look like? What colors tend to be popular? 
• Do other brands have a slogan? 
• What type of tone and voice are used when interacting with customers, writing online, or explaining their product? 
• How do other brands talk about themselves and what they offer? What is the core value for the audience, on both the surface and on an emotional, social, or personal level? 

Once you’ve done your analysis, you can then decide where the biggest opportunities for differentiation are in your offers and in your branding. 

Successful branding is often the balance between meeting consumer expectations for the industry (fitting in) and breaking set expectations to provide a more valuable experience (standing out).  

Audience research. Understanding your audience is also critical to deciding how you can connect with them in ways that other brands aren’t. What are other brands doing that’s working, and what are other brands missing? 

To understand this, you’ll want to think about your target audience and decide: 

• Who exactly is your target audience? What do they want? 
• How does your product impact their life? 
• What other products or brands are they also purchasing? 

Perhaps your customer cares more about your brand’s values than they do price (value-conscious vs. price-conscious branding). This is the brand positioning used by brands like Patagonia or Bombas. 

Or, perhaps they care more about their connection with your brand. They want a personalized experience that’s easy every time, so customer service is going to matter a lot to them. Brands like Disney or Chewy are known for their customer service. 

There are many other values that can form the foundation for your brand strategy, such as: 

• Price (Spirit Airlines, Costco, Aldi) 
• Convenience (Amazon, McDonalds) 
• Social status (Chanel, Tesla, Gucci) 
• Quality (Whole Foods, Everlane) 
• Community (GoPro, local coffee shops, Lululemon) 

Connect with your audience through online forums, surveys, and conversations to explore what motivates and interests them. Understanding their pain points, biggest needs, and values will help you build a brand that resonates. 

Understand your brand framework. Distill the information you collect on your audience and competitors to understand your brand identity. This process will help you clarify your brand strategy and promises, while also defining what sets your brand apart from other brands in the space.

A brand framework can help you define these details in a way that’s easy to share with your team or stakeholders, and can be used to make decisions about brand elements and strategy in the next steps. Brand frameworks often plot where your brand (and other brands) exist on a grid or graph using common brand stories or core values to see how your brand stands out.

Phase 3: Create brand assets 

With your vision, goals, and a strong brand identity in mind, you’re ready to create the actual elements of your brand. There are so many brand elements that you could create, but starting with these essential brand elements will get you off on the right foot. 

Create visual brand elements. A brand’s visual identity appeals to our strong visual memories as humans. This includes visual elements such as: 

• A brand logo 
• Brand colors  
• Typefaces 
• UX / UI standards for digital products and websites 
• Product and product packaging for physical products 

Here, consistency is key. For example, associating a color strongly with your brand — i.e., Tiffany blue, Snapchat yellow, or Spotify green — will help customers remember your brand more clearly and see it everywhere. Color theory can be helpful here, as different colors influence us differently. For example, darker colors can signify a more luxe, professional, or sophisticated experience, while bright colors indicate playfulness or something fun and edgy. 

Create linguistic brand elements. Written brand elements are just as important for distinguishing your brand and establishing recognition. This can include things like: 

• Your brand name 
• A motto, slogan, or tagline 
• Mission and vision, or your brand promises 
• Brand voice or tone 

A good brand name is crucial. Unfortunately, there isn’t a surefire way to find the right one. Good brand names may be alliterative (Coca Cola), describe what you do (Netflix), or may mean nothing in particular at all (Spotify, Miro). Brand names may also have a hidden layer of meaning, such as Bubble (in reference to our goal to burst the traditional “tech bubble”).

Your motto, slogan, tagline, and so on are all ways to further emphasize your brand values, promises, and mission — what is different about your company? Why should customers care? 

Keep in mind that your linguistic brand elements may be more or less customer-facing. For example, Nike’s mission is “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” However, their well-known slogan, “Just do it,” makes their mission clear in a more catchy way for customers. 

Create other brand elements. Your other brand elements will be determined by your brand goals, research, resources, and differentiators. What can your brand offer that no other brands in your space do? What are you going to do to stand out? 

That might be: 

• Incredible content 
• In-person brand marketing / advertising 
• Experiences 
• Smells
• Physical locations 
• A community 
• A mascot or person 
• Customer service 

Almost anything can be a part of your brand, when incorporated well and consistently. 

Phase 4: Roll out your brand

When it’s time to launch your brand, keep one thing in mind‌: consistency, consistency, consistency. 

Apply your brand comprehensively and consistently. A brand audit can help you identify any touchpoints where someone might encounter or interact with your brand: on-shelf at a store, on social media, on your website, on the phone with customer service, on a billboard — the list is potentially endless. 

Review all these touchpoints and marketing channels to make sure that their experience reflects your brand accurately. Don’t forget small things like help center pages, customer support phone lines, and sign-up workflows. Branding isn’t just for social media — it’s everywhere your audience is encountering your brand or product! 

Comprehensive application of your brand matters — so does consistency. This includes things like: 

• Making sure your brand’s logo is used consistently in all instances (i.e., logo displayed with your brand name or without?). 
• Using the correct color shades and serifs. 
• Making sure your tone and voice are consistent, even across channels. 
• Keeping your brand’s mission, vision, and values at the center of your marketing and content. 

A brand style guide is a great way to help ensure consistency. Brand guidelines should document all the decisions you’ve made about brand elements and usage so that anyone can reference it and keep future communications, designs, and so on on-brand. 

Develop content. Once you have all your essential brand elements in place, it’s time to create content. Content is a core touchpoint for many businesses — the more touchpoints there are, the more people are learning about your brand, and therefore your potential audience is getting bigger and bigger. 

Branded content can take many, many forms, including: 

• Posting to social media 
• Hosting a blog on your website 
• Hosting webinars or virtual events 
• Creating in-person gatherings or events for your target audience / community 
• Sending a regular newsletter 
• Starting a podcast 
• Sharing stories of your users or customers 
• Sharing videos of how to use your product 
• Re-posting or sharing user-generated content (UGC) 

When developing branded content, you want to ensure at least two things to see results: 

1. Your content needs to be high-quality and serve a purpose for your customer. In addition to demonstrating what your brand is all about, content needs to serve the customer in some way as well, whether that’s by providing entertainment, information, inspiration, or something else. 
2. Your content needs to be discoverable. That could be through search engine optimization (SEO), social media, or some other channel, but if you’re creating great content that no one is finding, it’s not going to work for you. 

At the end of the day, branded content is often one of the most significant drivers of your brand and perception. Think about what kind of content you can create regularly, what will resonate with your audience, and then go for it! 

Phase 5: Review and adjust

As with most things in business, branding isn’t a one-and-done activity. Brands can and should evolve as your business grows, your product expands, and your audience base changes. Here’s how to keep your brand relevant: 

Monitor your activities. It’s essential to make sure you’re proactive about maintaining brand consistency with every aspect of your branding. You don’t want to roll out a shiny new brand, only to have a bunch of poorly-branded content go out in the following months. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re building an e-commerce marketplace, developing a no-code web app, or creating content for a marketing campaign. Every decision and customer-facing material should align with your brand. Before pushing anything live, ask: 

• Is this consistent with our brand style guidelines? 
• Does this content, experience, or element align with our brand personality and style? (If not, how can we adjust it to ensure it does?) 
• Does this address our audience’s pain points and needs through the lens of our brand’s core values? 

Monitor the audience response. When applying your brand consistently, you also need to monitor how your audience is responding, which can help you understand how to adjust, if needed. For example, you’ll want to review: 

• What do people seem to like about your business and your product? 
• What’s not resonating? 
• Have audience needs, pain points, or desires changed? Has your target audience shifted as your product grows? 
• Has anything about the competitive landscape or your brand’s positioning statement changed? 

Reviewing these questions regularly can help you double-down on what’s working, and adjust what’s not as needed. 

Build your brand (and app) with Bubble 

Bubble makes building your app or website easier — which can make building your brand easier, too. 

How? 

With no-code development, you spend less time on building, which means you can spend more time understanding your audience — and creating exactly what they need. Plus, faster iteration with no-code means you can iterate and adjust your product to create product-market fit more quickly, further enhancing your brand. 

On Bubble, using “styles” in the drag-and-drop editor also lets you set up overarching styles across your app to streamline design and ensure consistent branding throughout all your web pages and app screens. 

In short: Build faster, more consistently, and more easily with Bubble — and spend the extra time getting to know your customers.