Brand Styling Series
Part 2 : The Strategy Comes First
The strategy always comes first, it’s the backbone of your business, company and startup.
A. Identify Your Target Market:
Your Homework: Research, Research & Research
First, think about who your target demographics are. Your messaging and imagery should be unique to one target demographic segment. Trying to target everyone is setting yourself up for failure (big time) — you might cast a wider net, but you’ll end up being less relevant to any individual within that group. Instead, start out with one or two key demographics and slowly expand from there. Think critically about these demographics: Who are they? What do they need? What do they want? How do they act? What do they like?
B. Learn Who Your Competitors are:
Your Homework: Look up whose creating something similar to your product
Next, start evaluating your competitors’ brands. You can learn a lot about marketing in your industry just by studying these previously established entries. What do their logos look like? How are they different from one another? How do they talk to your shared customer base? It’s important that you not take any of these qualities and copy them for your brand. Instead, look at the motivations behind these choices, and use the qualities themselves for the next step of your process.
C. Know What makes you unique
Your Homework : Create a Positioning Statement
Identify what’s going to make your brand unique, and different from all of your competitors. It could stem from your business itself. For example, if you’re offering lower prices than your competitors’, you could emphasize that in your branding. Otherwise, find a way to make yourself stand out. Are most of the other brands older, more traditional, more conservative? Try for something sleeker, more cutting-edge and with a younger vibe. Are the other brands elitist and pretentious? Shoot for something more down to earth.
D. Define Your Brand as a ‘Person.’
Your Homework : Create a Brand Persona
Once you’ve collected this information and begun brainstorming, speed the process along by trying to define your brand as a person. If your company were a person, what type of person would that be? Male or female? Older or younger? What kind of wardrobe would your brand choose? How would it talk? Would you be happy to see it if it approached you as a stranger? What are its favorite foods and movies? The answers to these questions may never come up for customers, but they will help you come up with a better, more precise feel for your brand.
In my next post, I will dive more into naming your brand so stay tuned!
