How to test your start up brand?

Building a brand is something that takes time, patience and, of course, money. To use the old adage, "Rome was not built in a day." That is certainly relevant when it comes to building ones brand. Start up companies today are faced with the dilemma that they need to build to build a recognizable brand as soon as possible and get it to market even quicker so they can establish themselves and begin to generate revenue.

So with any product the question becomes how do you test a brand especially if it is one that hasn't seen the light of day yet? Certainly if you are Microsoft or Coca-Cola you can conduct focus groups and have test audiences to try out your product and see how it works. A new start up has maybe a half dozen individuals to share the information with and, assuming they have a new concept, need to be discrete in who they inform regarding the product.

To that end it is very difficult for a start up company to test its product and get a sense of its brand. Still, it can be done if appropriate measures are taken to protect the brand. First of all, you do have the option of selecting a small group to serve as your control and use them to test the product or concept. By doing this, you are bringing in people you believe you can trust. They need not be people you know personally but they should be screened for reliability and you should be comfortable with who you are working with.

You can also work with organizations and do a blind test. These organizations bring in people and serve as your focus group and tell you what they like about your concept and what they do not like. They are blind in every sense of the word and have no idea what your product is and in many cases may have no idea about your market. While you benefit from feedback, you are getting this feedback from an ill-informed group who may not fully understand the nuances of your brand concept.

Lastly, you can try and run your own research so that you need not work with a pay-to-play organization. This is very dangerous as you do run the risk of exposing your brand to a public audience before it is ready. There have been many incidents where companies tested products before they were ready and the bad press leaked out as most bad press does and ended up causing the type of attention that most companies would prefer to avoid!

Testing your brand before launching it is a sensible and intelligent means of not only determining the brand concepts and strengths but also in easing the product into a position before its target audiences. Sensible precautions and reasonable planning will allow you to test your brand and either adjust the concept before releasing it to the public or, in a worst case scenario, go back to the drawing board. Either way using a control group as a sounding board allows you to build a stronger brand and one more in tune with what your target audience is looking for.