How to build a brand from scratch
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You want to launch a product, but have no idea where to start when it comes to building a brand.
Three stages of building a brand:
Position
Find the truths in the category, customer, competition and your product. The intersection of all of these is the positioning of your brand.
Personify
Establish traits and an archetype for your brand. People relate with people, not things.
Produce
Create all the assets you need for your brand and activate a funnel to get people to buy and become true fans.
You are in luck! I’ve condensed the full process into three stages in the video below.
Full transcript here:
So you have a fantastic idea for a product and you want to build a brand from scratch. How do you do that? In this video, I'll show you the specific steps to building a brand that resonates, that gets you sales and really develop the kind of visuals, verbals and experiences that your audiences will love.
Before we start. It's important to align on what is a brand. A brand is the feeling and perception someone has about your product and/or service. And branding is an intentional process of building that feeling and perception through every touchpoint. So today, when we go through the steps, it's really about building this brand strategy in which you can put it out to the market place, put it out to your prospective customers, to provide and gain that feeling and perception. And so what happens then is through marketing and communications, you drive them through a funnel and you are able to convert them into customers for the long term.
In this video, we're really focusing on your brand as a product. While most companies start out using their brands for both their products and company, as you have the foundation for this brand as product, you're able to build in behaviors and different ways in which culture can be instilled into your employees, but at the early stages, I'm going to assume that is not gonna be a big part of your goals because you're not starting out and building a brand from scratch with 20, 30, 40, 50 people. It's probably gonna be a handful if any. Maybe it's you and your partner trying to build a brand from scratch. So we'll focus on that. And then later on, you can absolutely come back and check out other videos about how do you build that culture. But right now we're gonna give you the tools and the processes to really have that foundation for your product brand.
Three steps
Three simple steps: position, personify, and produce. I'll go through each of them so you really understand and get clear about what are the steps to building a strong brand strategy and start to create these foundational elements.
POSITION
To build your brand and to find your position, it's really the intersection of four key things: the category, the customers, the competition, and your product. When you look at the category and the customers, you start to understand what is that tension? What is that pain? What are they trying to do? What's unresolved when customers try to get what they want, fulfill their goals within that category? And when you have an understanding of your competition, as well as the deepest benefits of your product, you then understand what is differentiating. What is that unique thing? What is that secret sauce that you can really tout as something that's truly different and unique? And so when you put the tension and differentiation together, that intersection is your positioning.
Category
The first thing you need to do is to define your category. It is to figure out what are the dynamics within that category. How do you do that? So let's take, for example, you have found out a way to manufacture and make water that helps a person think quicker, better, faster. So your category is water. That's sort of the biggest category that you can define your product. Once you understand that, it's also about what might be the subcategory. Is there already an existing subcategory in which your product can fit in? Or are you creating a new subcategory in this case? Is your subcategory brain water or smart water? So think about what that subcategory is and really define in the smallest possible category in which your product can fit in. Now, when you have defined a category, you need to think about what are the truths within that? What are the dynamics in that category? Which means are people having a hard time within the category to find the products, or what are the new technologies and products within that category? I think once you start defining what that is, you have a clearer picture about where you are operating in.
Customers
The second important piece is customers. So the first thing to do is to understand and write down who is your ideal customer. So again, if you are selling this water that can make people become smarter think better and faster. There's so many groups of people that you can sell this to. And maybe a segment, a customer segment could be young professionals in which they're starting out in their career, or it could be students, students who are really needing this water because they're under constant pressure to perform and do well in school. And then if you look closer, perhaps there's even a smaller and tighter segment, maybe it's medical students or law students, the most important thing is to find a customer segment that can help you really break into the market. And in this case, perhaps you pick medical students. They need a lot of help in terms of being able to constantly be clear and think on their feet. So you decide that's your ideal customer segment. That's your target customer segment. And once you understand that it's time to then dig in and think about what are their pains, what are their problems? What are you trying to solve? And also understand what is their mindset, what is their feelings towards being able to perform in the high level that they wish to,
TENSION: Category X Customer
Once you under understand your category, the dynamics of that, and your ideal target customer segment, you can start to understand at the intersection of that, what are some of the tensions today, maybe for this example about the water that can help people think better faster is that these med students, clearly don't even think about water as a source of nutrients or as a source of performance for them. And that could be your truth, but what's important is to really have the intersection and really write down what is that tension and what is the truth when you put these two things together,
Competition
Next up, competition. This is really important for us to understand. Who is our direct competitor, who is our indirect competitor and are there any alternative competitors? Most likely the question is yes, to all three, you don't really operate alone. But sometimes you might not have a direct competitor because you're creating a whole new subcategory or even a whole new category. So from a direct competitor perspective, in this case of our water that can help you think better and faster, are there other water products that claim to do the same thing? That's a direct competitor. Indirect competitor is something that they would rather use or they're using today. So if there's no water that can help you think better and faster in the market today, what are they drinking? As, as something that can, that's peripheral to that, maybe it's Vitamin Water. That's an indirect competitor. Alternative competition is something that if they're not even drinking water, what else are they drinking? In this example, maybe it's drinking juices or other types of beverages. That's your alternative competition.
Product
The last thing here, but very crucial, is look at everything there is about your product. And we call this a product ladder. You go from the bottom, which is attributes and features, the specific things and descriptions about your product. And as you go up the ladder are benefits. What are the benefits of these specific features and attributes? And as you go up another level, it's going into more of the emotional benefits. When you have these benefits, these functional benefits, what type of emotions are your customers gonna feel? And ultimately at the very top, is there some sort of self expressive benefit that when someone uses this water, they feel like they're becoming this ideal person or ideal archetype in their head. That's product ladder.
DIFFERENTIATION: Competition X Product
So once you understand your competition and what is your product’s features, functional benefits, emotional benefits, and perhaps even self-expressive benefit, at the intersection of those should be your most differentiating and powerful end benefit. That's where you really start to understand how you can push against the competition, but also provide something that's very special and unique from your brand.
POSITIONING
So now you have the tension between the customer and a category. You have your differentiation between your product and the competition. When you put those things together, you will have a good idea of what your product positioning is. And the framework is actually pretty simple.
For who: who is the target it segment, and what is the problem, and what is that tension?
Your brand is what: what is the description of that solution?
By how: what is the differentiation and a secret sauce?
In order to: what is that functional, emotional self-expressive benefit that is really pushing towards a purpose of what ultimately can happen?
So, do we have an example? Sure. We do. So let's take that example of the water that can help you think better and faster. And here could be a positioning statement.
For medical students looking to get ahead of their peers
Brain water is proven to boost, focus and memory
By providing electrolytes designed for the brain
In order to amplify potential for a smarter and healthier world.
So once you have your positioning statement, you really conquered and achieved a large part of how to build a brand from scratch. Congratulations. Now that you have your positioning, it's time to get into personification.
PERSONIFY
So how do you personify your brand and why is it important? It's important because people don't have relationships with water. For example, people don't have relationships with inanimate things. People have relationships with people. So it's important to personify and think about your brand as a person.
So how do you start? You start by thinking about your brand as a person. So start collecting all these characters and personas that you've encountered in the past. It doesn't matter whether it's a movie character or book character, or a celebrity. Start writing down all these different people and what are the specific traits about them that you feel portray not just your brand, but also your ideal target segment. And so what's the most important thing you want to reflect? What is a personification of your brand that your ideal target segment wants to become? So in our case of brain water and smart water for medical students, right, that's looking to get ahead of their peers, what type of people are they striving to be? They are competitive, they wanna win? Start putting all these things down and that becomes the foundation of personification.
If you really wanna geek out on this in terms of personification, there is a panel of 12 brand archetypes that brands typically fall into. I'm not gonna describe them here, but you can use them as a way for you to describe the persona of your brand.
PRODUCE
The last piece is really the culmination of your brand strategy into what is gonna be expressed into the market. And this is produce, which means you're really trying to make these things now. So the first part of it is really about the visual and verbal expression of your brand strategy: the positioning and the persona that you've laid out.
Visual Brand Language
So the visual manifestation is really looking at your visual identity. So this is your logo, color palette, typography, graphic elements. This is really where you put these foundational assets in place, and you really wanna adhere to them so that you can have a consistent look and feel of your brand moving forward. And you ask me how do I do that? I'm not a designer. So go out and find a designer that can help you put these things together. With positioning and personality in place, you have the foundational elements to give to a designer so that they understand exactly what they need to produce, and even have options for you that adhere to the guidelines or adhere to your needs from a brand strategy perspective. And it helps so much because then they know what to hit. They know what to look for. They know what to actually produce so that you get what you need. Fiverr is a great platform and that you can really find freelance designers to help you do this.
Verbal Brand Language
Messaging is your next part, right? So this is really putting all the ideas up front and your brand strategy into words. What is that headline that's gonna really hook your audience into the offering, right? What are other types of reasons-to-believe and proof points? You can get people to understand: wow, this is a fantastic offering for me that I cannot refuse. Some other things that you might want to write down is your purpose, which is why do you exist beyond money? The description of very specific and short and concise description about your product and your brand and also start to write out what are some phrases and words that you feel can really bring about the personality and positioning that you're trying to portray.
Activation
And the last part is activation. This is really putting it out there. This is the marketing and the communications to really get your target segment into the funnel and start going through the process of converting and make them to be the most loyal customers that you can get.
I'm not gonna go through the details of activation, but let me walk through a simple four part funnel for you to start putting together your plan.
So the first one is, is awareness. This is really getting into where is your ideal target segment? So for your med students, where are they not just in physical location, but also where are they getting information? Are they hanging out on TikTok? Are they on YouTube looking at videos? What are some of the places in which they're getting their information from?
The next one is consideration. So what do they need to it even consider about you? So what kind of information do you need to give them so that it can really consider brain water as, as a product that they wanna buy.
Conversion, you need to help them buy, like, where are they gonna buy this? Is it through an app that you're gonna deliver straight to their dorm room? Is this through distribution in their cafeteria? How can you help them buy? Where do they actually pay? Where is that conversion point?
Lastly is engagement. How are you gonna get them to buy from you repeatedly and become true fans? How do you get user generated content so that they can influence their peers to buy brain water from you?
So there you have it, the three parts of building a brand from scratch position, personify produce. These three buckets will help you really build your brand and put it onto the marketplace and start to get traction, you know, for your customer segment that you're targeting. Thank you for watching this video. I really hope you got something from it. And you understood the three main building blocks of building a brand from scratch. I wish you the best of luck. And until next time, my friend be safe, be well and build an awesome legendary brand.
Ways I can help you
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