Corporate Branding in Startups and Its Effects on Creating Social Media Brand Advocates

Abstract

Startup companies are important creators of new jobs and technological innovation. However, many of them fail before reaching substantial growth. The reasons for failure are various and lack of corporate brand is only one of them. Despite the potential benefits, lots of founders are not building their brands. This happens due to lacking the required knowledge for efficient brand building on a low budget. Previous studies about brand building in startups have called for the development of practical guidelines. They also pointed out a need for further research on the topic. The following study addresses the research gap by exploring the best practices of brand building in startups. It demonstrates that a strong corporate brand can help startups in securing and gaining online brand advocates. Moreover, corporate brand positively affects the sustainable growth of new ventures. The data was gathered by reviewing the existing academic literature and through face-to-face interviews with experts in the field. The results suggest that by adopting a holistic approach to brand building and by following a set of basic principles described in this study, startups can build their corporate brand using creativity and time instead of money. The study also found that the corporate brand influences social media marketing of the startup directly through the corporate image. This study benefits startups by clarifying the basic concepts of corporate branding and offering actionable advice for brand building in practice. It contributes one practical solution for start-ups in order to secure a stable position in the market and generate leads that can bring prosperity.