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Plain-English thoughts on branding, websites and marketing. The same advice we give our clients, written down. No jargon and no fluff.
Around 20% of new businesses fail within their first year due to Branding issues. Most of those failures trace back to five mistakes made before the site even goes live.
70% of new brands do not have a clearly defined target audience. They write copy that could apply to anyone, which means it connects with no one.
When you don't know who you're talking to, every decision becomes a guess. The colour palette, the tone, the imagery, the Pricing page. All of it drifts because there's no person on the other side of the work.
You can't fix this with a demographic sketch. 'Women aged 30-45 in London' is not a target audience. It's a census category. The businesses that get this right can describe a specific problem their customer has, the language they use to describe it, and what success looks like for them after buying.
If your brand could serve a consultancy, a bakery and a dental practice equally well, it serves none of them. Pick one. Write for them. Let everyone else self-select out.
Most businesses jump straight to the website. They want something live, something to point prospects toward, so they brief a developer before they've decided what the business stands for.
The site goes up. Six months later they realise the messaging is vague, the colours feel off, the tone doesn't match how they talk to clients. So they start again.
We lock the brand in week one before a single line of code is written. Strategy, identity, voice. All decided up front so production never drifts. The website is the output, not the starting point. If you build it first, you're building on sand.
85% of consumers say they won't purchase from a brand they don't trust. Trust comes from a clear point of view, not from sounding like everyone else in your sector.
When you study competitor Websites and mirror their structure, their tone, their claims, you guarantee you'll blend in. That's the opposite of what a new brand needs.
You don't need to be contrarian for the sake of it. You need to be specific. If you run a recruitment firm, don't say 'we find the best talent'. Say what you think most agencies get wrong and how you do it differently. If you can't point to a belief that separates you from the field, your brand has nothing to say.
A logo is one piece of a brand. It's not the strategy, the messaging, the tone of voice, or the reason someone picks you over the other option.
Businesses spend weeks debating whether the icon should tilt left or right, then write the homepage in an afternoon. The result is a sharp logo attached to bland, interchangeable copy that could belong to any business in the category.
Your brand is what you say, how you say it, and what you choose not to say. The visual identity supports that. It doesn't replace it.
Brands that engage with customers on social media enjoy 20-40% more customer loyalty. But most businesses launch the website, post twice, then disappear for six months because they don't have anyone responsible for keeping it going.
A brand isn't a one-time build. It's the thing you show up with every week. If your site goes live and your social feed stays empty, you've told prospects you're not serious or you've already stopped trading.
You don't need a full-time marketing hire. You need a system that keeps content moving without burning your time. Twelve posts a month. Two blogs. Consistent presence. That's the minimum to stay visible.
Companies with a strong brand presence can achieve up to 23% higher revenue compared to those without. But 'strong brand presence' doesn't mean a six-month discovery process and a £40,000 invoice.
Most businesses overpay because they assume quality and speed are opposites. They hire the agency with the longest proposal and the biggest team, then wait three months for a result they could have had in two weeks.
Small studios that stay small on purpose can move faster, charge less, and deliver work that lasts. The two-person team working on your brand full-time will outpace the twelve-person agency where you're one of thirty clients.
Most agencies disappear the day your site goes live. You're left with a brand you own but no idea how to use it, no content calendar, no one writing the posts or updating the pages.
The businesses that don't fail in year one are the ones that keep showing up. That means someone needs to be responsible for the marketing after launch. Either you, a hire, or a studio that bundles it in.
If your launch plan ends at 'website live', you've planned to go silent. Build the ongoing work into the model from day one, or accept that your brand will look abandoned by month three.
Launching without a clearly defined target audience. 70% of new brands don't know who they're for, which makes every creative and messaging decision a guess. When you write for everyone, you connect with no one.
No. Lock the full brand first. Strategy, messaging, tone, identity. Then build the website as the output of that work. If you start with the site, you're building on sand and you'll end up redoing it once the brand becomes clear.
Enough to get a real strategy, a complete identity system, and a plan for staying visible after launch. Overpaying for a big agency doesn't guarantee better work. Small studios that bundle brand, website and marketing into one flat price often deliver faster and cheaper without cutting quality.
Around 20% fail due to branding issues. Usually a mix of unclear positioning, no target audience, inconsistent presence, and no plan for what happens after the site goes live. Launching is easy. Staying visible is where most brands fall apart.
Yes. Brands that engage on social media enjoy 20-40% more customer loyalty. If your feed is empty, prospects assume you've stopped trading or you're not serious. Twelve posts a month is the minimum to stay visible without burning all your time.
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