Have you got a startup idea? Is it niggling away at your brain like a tick? Do you fancy yourself an entrepreneur? Well, before you start writing your elevator pitch, which yes, needs done, you should take a look at our guide.

We’re breaking down all the elements of branding that first-time entrepreneurs forget when they get that idea in their head. Not only are we breaking down landing on your brand name and logo, optimizing your site for the mobile phone and establishing what you “stand for”, but we’ve got a guide on how to get to the answers to those questions. Read on to find out all the details.

Name and logo

Your business’ name is arguably more important than even your given name, as you’re not asking anyone to buy anything directly from you. It’s a very important element of your business, and yet it comes down the line once the finer details of the business plan are ironed out.

A business name also needs to be more direct than a given name too. Your mother might have endowed your name with meaning, like “Hope” but your business name will have to evoke a lot more solid ideas, like Burger King. There are two very simple concepts in there. A specialty food item that makes you feel like royalty. Simple.

Another good example is Apple, which isn’t so on the nose. A tech giant chose the symbol of an urban myth about Isaac Newton coming up with gravity once an apple fell on his head, because it was an enormous leap forward for science.

Notably, their logo is also an apple, which demonstrates that your logo is also at its best when it is full of symbolism.

For both of these instances, make yourself a mind map. Fill the page with everything your business stands for, and then the connotations of that, and any symbolism that comes from the connotations can be your logo.

However, it also has to be simple. Your logo will be seen everywhere, from the center of a billboard to the corner of a mobile app, so it has to be adaptable.

Mobile

It’s important, now more than ever, that you have some transfer of your business website to the mobile phone. Users have gotten into the habit of finding what they want to buy on social media and therefore aren’t about to pull out their laptop to make a purchase. The result is a lot of people are making purchases via their phones, and they are not impressed by a landscape-formatted website showing up on their portrait-oriented phone with the text too tiny to read.

It's important that you have everything on the site well laid out and freely available to find with minimal exploring. Your customer doesn’t have the patience for that. They want to quickly find what they are looking for and head to the checkout. Make sure no long loading screens or glitches get in their way, because they won’t wait for it to fix itself and will simply leave, having lost out on a sale.

It’s important that you have a developer who knows what they’re doing. You might want to look for observability vs. monitoring tool to aid in patching problems that might appear, so that no sales slip through the cracks.

If you want to take it even further, you can develop your own app and really show your customers that you are professional. The app will have to either make things easier or offer ongoing interest in order to justify downloading it, so you might want to look into extra features.

You can add a booking forum if your business requires some form of an appointment, like a hair salon or a restaurant, or a steady stream of content, or even a chatroom to make it a community experience.

What your “stand for”

We mentioned what your business brand stands for above. This can mean different things to different businesses, but it is important. Not only are users finding what they want to buy on social media but with so many brands on the internet, some more trustworthy than others, users are researching the brands they buy from. They want to know that their priorities align with theirs.

Now, this doesn’t have to be so controversial. There are people looking for brands that are more solid with their political opinions, but others are happy with you speaking up for less controversial ideals. Sustainable products, good customer service, cruelty free products, and supporting small businesses are all ideas that just about every consumer can get behind.

You can make it even more simple than that. Some users simply want to know what you’re all about so if you’re Gillette, you stand for giving the closest shave, and if you’re Dollar Shave Club you stand for being the affordable equivalent to Gillette with better results. If you’re Red Bull, you stand for fun and high-octane activities. It’s all a matter of thinking about what your customers might want from you.