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This is for the aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to branch-off into a new startup business. We have all heard about 'Brand Management' and then about 'Brand Positioning' but in the current context, I am emphasizing the need for 'Strategic Branding' as being vital for long term startup success.
To quote Entrepreneur "In a study by Statistic Brain, Startup Business Failure Rate by Industry, the failure rate of all U.S. companies after five years was over 50 percent, and over 70 percent after 10 years."
This partly, goes to show the short time vision of its brand makers. Business disruption says altogether a different story, but that apart, when we look closely, as to why most of the startups which were once bubbling with youth and enthusiasm has grossly failed, over a period of time - One of the reasons, if not all, is their failure to envisage a long term 'Strategic Branding' as part of their larger business plan.
Take for example, a startup company wants to provide an on-line tutor service which is of-late a very successful business model due to easy and cheap availability of 'Video Streaming Services' and affordable 'Cloud Storage' coupled with end user access devices. Though, I have seen plenty of cases of 'Improper Branding' in my two decades in the Engineering Industry, recently, I have seen a startup company come up with such a tutor service with its name as Tutorxyz4u.com (xyz is for anonymity). Here, this company had invested lots of capital on development and to deploy on-board tutors but failed to live long. It was a clear case "Short Vision Branding Syndrome.''
What is the role of Strategic Branding here? or for that matter What is Strategic Branding exactly?
Let me tell you, Its as simple as instilling 'the feel good factor' and 'the authoritative factor' which gives confidence in the user of your product or service. Its not very easy to do either.
To express that in a non formal easy understandable way is, for example, imagine what goes on in the mind of a small child when you stretch your arms to lift it (out of love). The child thinks immediately, in a very short time frame, whether you are trusted, friendly, dependable, safe etc... to be in your hands, before offering to run into your arms. Is that not right? This is just an out of the way analogy I wish to state but, in reality, that's what happens when a customer wants to place confidence in a product or service offered by you. Now this is where 'Strategic Branding' come to play.
To instill that sort of a feel.
For long term success of your startup company, I list here a few basic points needed for 'Strategic Branding' to take off:
(a) Start with a dependable, trust-able, flexible, long shelf-life, lovable and relatable domain name in the first place, not the one like tutorzxy4u kind of a name that I mentioned in the example.
(b) Define long term (i) Business sustaining plan (ii) Business success plan both separately. While one is the 'bread and butter focus' while the other is the 'cash-in' strategy.
(c) Ultimately one has to deal with 'People' be it your employees or your esteemed customers hence, have a large serving of 'Human factor' right from day one and build on it slowly, parallel to your business. And this is 'fail proof' I swear.
Good 'Domain Name' provides the right container for not only for the businesses to take-off but to sustain and flourish in the long run as well.
To quote Entrepreneur "In a study by Statistic Brain, Startup Business Failure Rate by Industry, the failure rate of all U.S. companies after five years was over 50 percent, and over 70 percent after 10 years."
This partly, goes to show the short time vision of its brand makers. Business disruption says altogether a different story, but that apart, when we look closely, as to why most of the startups which were once bubbling with youth and enthusiasm has grossly failed, over a period of time - One of the reasons, if not all, is their failure to envisage a long term 'Strategic Branding' as part of their larger business plan.
Take for example, a startup company wants to provide an on-line tutor service which is of-late a very successful business model due to easy and cheap availability of 'Video Streaming Services' and affordable 'Cloud Storage' coupled with end user access devices. Though, I have seen plenty of cases of 'Improper Branding' in my two decades in the Engineering Industry, recently, I have seen a startup company come up with such a tutor service with its name as Tutorxyz4u.com (xyz is for anonymity). Here, this company had invested lots of capital on development and to deploy on-board tutors but failed to live long. It was a clear case "Short Vision Branding Syndrome.''
What is the role of Strategic Branding here? or for that matter What is Strategic Branding exactly?
Let me tell you, Its as simple as instilling 'the feel good factor' and 'the authoritative factor' which gives confidence in the user of your product or service. Its not very easy to do either.
To express that in a non formal easy understandable way is, for example, imagine what goes on in the mind of a small child when you stretch your arms to lift it (out of love). The child thinks immediately, in a very short time frame, whether you are trusted, friendly, dependable, safe etc... to be in your hands, before offering to run into your arms. Is that not right? This is just an out of the way analogy I wish to state but, in reality, that's what happens when a customer wants to place confidence in a product or service offered by you. Now this is where 'Strategic Branding' come to play.
To instill that sort of a feel.
For long term success of your startup company, I list here a few basic points needed for 'Strategic Branding' to take off:
(a) Start with a dependable, trust-able, flexible, long shelf-life, lovable and relatable domain name in the first place, not the one like tutorzxy4u kind of a name that I mentioned in the example.
(b) Define long term (i) Business sustaining plan (ii) Business success plan both separately. While one is the 'bread and butter focus' while the other is the 'cash-in' strategy.
(c) Ultimately one has to deal with 'People' be it your employees or your esteemed customers hence, have a large serving of 'Human factor' right from day one and build on it slowly, parallel to your business. And this is 'fail proof' I swear.
Good 'Domain Name' provides the right container for not only for the businesses to take-off but to sustain and flourish in the long run as well.
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