Branding Basics for Product People
As a marketing person working alongside product & tech people, I sometimes have these “ah-ha” (or actually “whoops”) moments, when I realize that things which may seem totally obvious to me, aren’t to everyone. And that’s okay. God knows I don’t know *everything* about planning, building or coding an actual product… We each have a role to fill, and that’s why everyone is needed . We work together, as a team. BUT… That being said… I’ve seen many mistakes being made because the owners of a product find themselves making important marketing decisions very early on in the product’s lifecycle. These product people find themselves wearing all hats, not out of vanity I’m sure, but simply because the product is their baby, and they believe they know what’s best for it and how to deliver it to the world; but most times it’s simply because the company just doesn’t have a marketing person on board yet. (So why wait, right? Wrong.)
A marketing person usually joins the team after the product is already half way there (if not fully baked already), which means it most likely already has a name and some level of online presence (a website, a twitter handle, a Facebook page, etc.)
I’ve actually seen some cool pre-marketing-initiated names out there, but also too many disastrous ones (which usually lead to time-wasting rebranding & relaunching efforts later on.) So the following is for all you product owners out there, who are on a tight deadline to introduce your idea to the world before someone beats you to it (or before you run out of money and can’t afford anymore lag time), but haven’t found, or looked for, the right marketing person to join your team yet…
These are the three main marketing strategy components that anyone working on a product or brand should be aware of:
[1] Positioning
One of the simplest “tricks” in the book regarding positioning is to understand your product’s place in the market when it comes to two parameters — Cost & Involvement. Is your brand a High Cost or Lost Cost product? Does it require High Involvement or Low Involvement? Once you understand where you are on this grid, you have a better grasp of how to present yourself.
Let’s think about a breakfast cereal, for example — that’s a Low Cost-Low Involvement product. Why? Imagine standing in front of the cereal aisle at the supermarket, just about to grab your usual brand off the shelf, when you realize that a similar brand is on sale, offering 2 boxes for the price of one, and for a cheaper price. This is a rather good deal, so you decide to take the other brand instead this time. Why? Because it’s cereal. It doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, and it’s not a life changing decision, so why not save a couple of bucks? That’s Low Cost-Low Involvement. Now let’s think about a High Cost-High Involvement Product — how about a car? That’s a big decision. Definitely not a product you decide to purchase in less than a minute because it’s on sale… No, with a car you take your time, you do your research and get extremely involved, not only because you’re going to pay a nice sum of money for it, but also because it has so many other heavy implications (the safety of your family, the amount of gas it guzzles, etc.) And yes, it also costs much more than a standard daily purchase. So it’s High Cost-High Involvement.
(*BTW, this “Cost & Involvement” exercise can also help you understand your target audience, where to reach them and how to address them; but that part comes a bit later on, when it’s time to work on your actual marketing plan. This post is about the strategic phase that comes one step before that, when creating the actual brand before it’s launch. It might help if you think of it as part of the product planning phase, rather than the beginning of the marketing phase.)
[2] Branding
Based on what you’ve understood about your product by defining it’s position in the market, you can now more easily continue to the actual branding task. This step includes the name, the logo, the color scheme — everything that will convey to the word how you want your product to be perceived. Let’s go back to the car example, and now let’s say your product is an app that helps you find the most trustworthy car dealerships selling luxury vehicles. (*Notice that I decided to take things up a notch — we’re now dealing with two products in a sense, 1. cars and 2. your app… I think it makes things more interesting, don’t you? :)
So we already know that cars are considered High Cost-High Involvement. What about your app? Your app may be a freemium and take less than a minute to downolad, but your overall end-goal premise is the cars (luxury cars at that), so that’s the big-picture message you want to convey to your users as well. What does this mean branding-wise? This means that your app probably shouldn’t have a cartoon logo and a pastels-colored interface. You’d probably want to go with a short, smart and witty name, and the logo could be a sleek font-logo using serif fonts — meaning, you have to focus on visual elements that convey a classy “we mean business” feel; you want to make sure your brand says “we’re professional and we want your business”, and does not sound like “woohoo let’s have some fun with in-app games!” No one is going to buy a $$$$K car through your app with the latter message. Get it? (This may sound obvious to some of you, and if so — I’m very happy! But believe me, I’ve seen products go astray because the product manager or app owner got too carried away with having fun with this process, and never stopped to really think things through… Not every “cool” name is the right name.)
Same goes for the color scheme — I won’t delve deeply into colors here, there’s an endless number of books and articles you can find on the subject (plus, that’s also venturing into design territories), but every color has a meaning — a color gives off a certain “feel” (is it hot? is it cold? is it approachable vs. standoffish?) and can help relay very specific branding messages. So as we said before — your luxury car dealership app’s palette shouldn’t be pastel pinks and purples, but rather something more solid and “down to earth” (that’s why luxury brands tend to go with black, silver, gold, dark blues; something about black & gold just makes people feel like they’re putting their money in the right place…) So don’t just go with the colors your girlfriend/husband/mom liked — colors are as important as the length of your name or the font of your logo, take a few minutes to research and learn what the colors you like mean first.
[3] Tone
Your positioning & branding strategies now have to be “heard” in a consistent manner as well. At this point, once you have a name, a logo, and an overall understanding of how you wish to convey your product to the world, you should already be at the point where the written word enters the picture. I’m referring to your website of course. (and possibly also to your tweets and Facebook posts, as you probably ran ahead to secure a very specific twitter handle, and were eager to start with your “big things coming soon!” teasers…)
If you’re writing website copy for the above mentioned 2-for-1 cereal brand, your tone can be over-casual, conversational and chummy, but if you’re writing with a goal to sell a luxury car, or diamonds and high-end jewelry (just mixing it up a bit to keep it interesting this far along), then your tone should be on the more sophisticated & professional side.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking now. But wait.
Before you say “wait up, that’s not true these days”, hear me out. True, today there’s a tendency to write in a more casual tone across the board, for all types of products and brands, but don’t confuse this trend that stems from the blogging and social networking worlds with what’s appropriate and fitting for your product’s website. If you’re selling a High Cost-High Involvement brand you should have a professional and respectable tone on your website. Your website is your salesperson. Stop and think how you would feel if a salesman at a luxury car dealership would greet you as though you were his frat brother, joking around, slapping you on your back, and taking things casually. You wouldn’t be so eager to hand over that $$$$K check, now would you? Treat your product, and your potential customers, with respect.
Now to the matter of social channels — yes, that world does allow for a much lighter, casual tone, BUT this does NOT mean that you get to fool around. A product’s tone reflects it’s character, which as it’s brand, should be consistent across the board. So even though it’s okay to tweet with a more casual tone, please try to not sound stupid. Stay loyal to your overall positioning strategy and maintain your product’s respectable character.
The reason I’m addressing this point a bit “harshly” (yes, “stupid” is a harsh word when pointing virtual fingers at colleagues) is because this is a personal pet peeve of mine — non-brand-consistent tweets. They’re everywhere, and I’ll tell you why. The problem with twitter, and social media in general, is that for some reason, even today, they’re somehow considered “less important.” (Wrong perception, by the way.) And so, more often than not, the tweets are written by either an over-enthusiastic intern or a well-meaning product person (who personally truly believes in twitter as a platform from a user’s point of view but has never really used it for business purposes and isn’t aware of the different practices for each.) The result? Tweets reflecting these employees’ own personalities. Not the brand’s. And what does this mean for the brand? We see a product with a sleek and professional sounding website, which is targeting serious consumers who will (hopefully) value the product as a high involvement one, tweeting incoherently with too many exclamation marks in one sentence, abusing hashtags, and overusing the words “cool” and “awesome.” Of course none of the tweeting employees mean any harm, their tweets are written with the best intentions, but they’re just wrong. And in the long run, they could do more harm than good when it comes to the product and how it is perceived by the public.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t let an intern tweet, but when you do, don’t assume they know what they’re doing simply because they’re millennials and twitter should be “their thing.” You should make sure they understand the product’s brand and character before giving them the responsibility of representing it online. Social channels may not be the official website, but they’re most definitely a representation of your product’s tone & persona.
(*Btw, once you start your marketing activies, I hope it goes without saying that everything mentioned above applies to your emails, newsletters, ad campigns, landing pages, etc… Always stick with your brand’s recognizable & effective pre-defined tone — this will help strengthen your brand recognition in the long run.)
These are my three basic tips. Probably not so basic; and not so small, either. But if I’d have to tell a product person to keep three things in mind pre-marketing, these would be at the top of the list. Positioning. Branding. Tone. Enjoy.
