Business Startup Exhibition: How Branding Makes You Stand Out

By 100m
August 5, 2010
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Filed under Branding, Positioning

A business startup exhibition is an opportunity to learn more about brand positioning strategy. Whether you’re planning a trip to a business startup exhibition or looking to apply the information that you learned at one, it helps to think about the startups that you remember. Why did they stick in your head? It’s important to understand how branding makes you stand out, not just at a business startup exhibition but in the business world at large. Just as important is recognizing the branding makes you stand out no matter how far along your startup is. Many startups think they need to get off the ground before they can afford branding, but this is a mistake. It’s important to work on branding from the very beginning of your startup.

Branding Often Gets Neglected

Branding is an essential component in the startup process. Many startups focus on development and ignore their brand. While you obviously need a great product to succeed, we see branding and development as two sides of the same coin: it’s equally important to communicate your product to others with a consistent message. A lot of entrepreneurs think the message they are trying to communicate is “my product is awesome.” That’s not enough. Understand that your customers need something beyond the product to connect to. Brand your startup accordingly and you will stand out from all the competition who have missed this essential distinction. Plus, branding down the line is actually usually more difficult than doing it from the very beginning; it’s a lot easier to build a brand into the DNA of your product than it is to graft it on Frankenstein-style at the end of the development process.

Branding Helps Others See Your Startup Like You See It

Visionaries don’t assume that every one can see what they can. They can see, but they can also make others see. You might be too close to your vision to effectively communicate it to others. Building an effective brand is all about channelling your vision into cues and signals that help other people get inside your head. That’s why it’s often so effective to think of branding as creating a company’s personality. The visuals, slogans, and voice that you associate with your company help your desired audience to see your company as something they want to build a relationship with over the long term, not just a temporary fix. It’s easy to get someone’s attention for a minute, but being able to maintain it over time through effective branding really makes you stand out.

If you need help standing out at a business startup exhibition, it’s time to put some serious work into branding your new company. Contact the expert branding and naming consultants at A Hundred Monkeys today, and we’ll teach you all about the benefits of our human-centered approach to branding. We can’t wait to help you develop a branding plan that will help your company stand out, get noticed, and stay on people’s minds.