Like many British cities, Leeds has committed to becoming a smart city with high-quality digital infrastructure, including faster, better internet. This makes it very easy for local entrepreneurs to get an online business started. Many entrepreneurs, however, overlook how important branding is for an up-and-coming business venture, so find our quick guide right here.

Start with a Brand Style

When thinking of branding, brand style is the first thing that crosses people’s minds. These are the superficial (but still very effective) aspects of a brand, like its logo, the fonts it uses and colours you want associated with your brand. For example, Amazon uses orderly black/grey with hints of yellow, and their unique Ember font created in-house.

Having a striking brand style is very important, especially on the internet, where long attention spans can be in short supply. To stand out from the crowd, many websites and even software products or online services craft their own brand. In iGaming, sites create a casino brand and then host games on its pages, which also have their own distinct brands with wacky themes and otherworldly settings. The result looks like online bingo at Paddy Power, where tropical islands, deep fishing waters and glitzy showroom floors are all represented in its selection of games. While each game has its own brand, the site itself uses a deep green because of its association with Ireland, with accents of pink to distinguish its bingo brand from others.

To craft a brand style, find a font that you can legally use and make sure it gels well with what your business does. A lot of tech industry brands settle for neat, clean, professional fonts while more creative, entertainment industry brands can get away with messier, playful brand styles. Then, choose a primary colour and one or two secondary colours to accent it. Even though this can be subjective and change with time, we generally associate certain ideas with specific colours, as explained here by Carleton University. Once you have settled on a brand style, document it somewhere and keep it consistent across everything your brand does.

Think Deeper About Brand Identity

Brand style is important because it’s the first thing potential customers see. At the same time, it’s relatively superficial and can change over time. That’s why the best brands don’t just have great optics, they have a strong brand identity too. These are deeper ideas, values and narratives that are associated with (and often inseparable from) the brand. While every business fundamentally exists to sell a product or a service, customers are much more likely to support companies with a relatable story or admirable perspective on their industry.

If you look, many older businesses will have a date of establishment on their logo or at physical locations. Most of them will also have a web page or a plaque somewhere that explains the business’s history, how it came to be and what its founder had in mind when they created the venture. Since you’re thinking about starting a business today, you don’t have this luxury, but you can learn a lot from the companies that came before yours.

It starts with missions and values. These are the things that influenced you when creating the business. For example, a business that sells quality watches for less than the industry standard would say that its mission is to make great watches that are affordable to average people, in a market where Swiss legacy brands dominate. When starting out, it’s best that your missions and values look to the future, aren’t divisive and comment on your industry in a fresh or supportive way that your audience will appreciate. You can find more brand storytelling at the Prezly Academy.

By giving brand style and brand identity a lot of thought, you’ll have the foundations of a strong brand. Of course, the next step is to actually start working and bringing in an audience who can marvel at the new brand you’ve created.

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