7 Steps to Success

Essential personal development skills before building a

brand
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Pen Model - https://www.idrlabs.com/pen-personality/test.php

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Write don your early aspirations

- Reflect on your favorite past activities from your childhood days

- Write down these memories
- Brainstom on these interests
Factors to consider when joining a new startup
 Making a difference

If your company's vision involves impact your struggle will be more worth it and this leads to a
community of dedicated and inspired people

Impact means your actions should create a direct effect that people can see or feel
Key purposes of branding

All meant to increase Sales & Partnerships

When it comes to branding, don't succumb to analysis-paralysis. If you brand is 90% ok, go ahead to
start your business and fine-tune it afterwards.
Branding 101
1, 2,3,5,8,13,21…….
Tips for the best logo design
Intro videos allow you to efficiently demonstrate what your
company does in ways that text cannot. You can briefly show how
your product or service works rather than explaining through
lengthy text, which can become confusing. An intro video will
quickly get your message across without boring your audience.
 How to design and post premium content

• Use tools such as photoshop and illustrator that allow creative effects
Post on Social media channels
Factors to consider when choosing a brand name

trademark or copyright your brand name

• Starts with understanding your business very well and knowing how you generate
revenue and maintain customers

• Think of how you can translate your good values to your business so as to add
personality to whatever product or service you offer.

A strong business brand ultimately helps create a strong bond with your customers
Often times people confuse the product with the brand

You can say what your brand means but you cannot make customers believe it. That is why it is
crucial to send the right message with your brand. To increase brand value you need to know
what customers think about your brand at the moment. Know the indicator your brand stands for
Design principles

this is one of the most straightforward ways to send a message about your
brand. It has to be concise, clear and to the point.

Though overlooked this aspect is crucial and can communicate your brand
values. Design styles can be modern, practical or classic based on the business
values.

Don't dismiss design as one of the crucial key things to do in the beginning. Its
all about maturing as a company so people can align to you
It stays in your customer's visual memory for long and is easy to recognize. It does not
have to be complex. A simple logo sticks better to memory. It has to look good in black
and white

These could be pictures or graphics. Make sure they are matched to the message of
your brand and design. Customers prefer visual over written content. Images play a big
role when you are writing. Fonts can also show your brand personality and it should be
legible or else you lose customers
The purpose of marketing is to connect various customers to your business. You do that by using
different marketing strategies such as advertising on social media etc.

These includes your company's key branding features such as its logo, tagline, mission statement and
more through which the company show who they are and how they think

Marketing helps you get in new customers while branding makes them
come back. Your branding is long-term while your marketing campaigns are temporary
 A brand is a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes that creates value and influence. A
distinguishing symbol, art, logo, name, a word or a sentence or even a combination of these
items that a company uses to distinguish their products from others in the marketplace.

Brand equity is a brand’s power derived from the goodwill and name recognition it has earned overtime which
translates into higher sales volume and higher profit margins against competing brands

How to gain brand equity?

 Brand Experience is the action of how a person perceives your brand. Every
interaction between an individual and a tangible or intangible brand artifact can
be seen as a brand experience. Brand experience is conceptualized as sensations,
feelings, cognitions and behavioral responses invoked by brand related stimuli.

Brand Extension is a common method of launching a new product by using an existing

brand name on a new product in a different category. A company using brand
extension hopes to leverage its existing customer base and brand loyalty to increase
its customer base with a new product offering.

Brand Identity is how a company wants its brands name, communication

styles and its visual elements to be conceived by consumers.
Note: Brand identity is most times wrongly thought of as brand image

Brand image is the customers perception and ideas about a product

Note: Brand identity is often is often confused with image

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A licensing agreement that grants a manufacturers the right to develop, market,
and sell approved products. Typically leveraging a company's name, trademarks
etc. in return for payment

A plan for the systematic development of a brand to meet agreed objectives. . A

company's brand personality elicits an emotional response in a specific consumer
segment, with the intention of inciting positive actions that benefit the firm.

A marketing partnership between at least 2 different brands of goods and services

Occurs when a business or organization seeks to change a significant part or element

of the brand. Such a change could be glaringly obvious like a brand theme or logo change
or it maybe subtle like a slight shift in messaging to better communicate a relevant brand.
Communication activities to give an existing product a new position in customers mind.
And so expending or otherwise altering its potential market

What a brand looks like including among other things its logo, typography, fonts, and
packaging.
Assignment

Identify the brand personality of your current business and propose a new personality for your
brand if necessary.

Below are the 5 major types of brand personalities

- Excitement: Carefree, spirited, and youthful

- Sincerity: Kindness, thoughtfulness, and an orientation toward family values
- Ruggedness: Rough, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
- Competence: Successful, accomplished, and influential, which is highlighted by leadership
- Sophistication: Elegant, prestigious, and sometimes even pretentious
Lesson
starts with knowing...

The brand purpose helps build a stronger bond with the customer. A bond based
on friendship, loyalty and trust which leads to more potential sales.
Questions to ask when thinking about brand purpose

This involves how the brand purpose relates to your brand and the company. There
should be a strong and justifiable connections between both.

Other questions to consider

How the business will realize its brand purpose
 Example of a purpose driven brand is PELA

An ecofriendly plastic free company that makes phone cases from bio-degradable material.

What makes them truly purpose driven is that they find a way to turn waste products into multiple plastic
bio-degradable in 10 years compared to plastic which takes a 10000 years.
They are working towards a real ecological problem and their mission is making a plastic free world.

In contrast, many people confuse purpose driven brands with Corporate Social Responsibility. Corporate
social responsibility is a business model that makes a company be more socially responsible for the
impact they are creating. The impact can be social, ecological, economical, cultural and so on.
There are different ways in which companies can engage in CSR
- Donations
- Volunteering
- Projects and Campaigns

While it can be noble for many companies and their customers It is not always the same as having a
purpose driven brand. The example given earlier shows that a company has a strategic mission to fight a
problem with CSR.

Just being involved in CSR like most big companies do does not mean purpose driven branding.
Brand purpose should not be confused with a brand’s mission or vision. The brand purpose is not about
strategies and goals. Goals and strategies can be decided at a certain time but the brands purpose is an ideal
that inspires and drives.

A purpose is the philosophy behind your business and the driving factor behind inspiring change and progress
These are 2 Important elements are key for creating your brand. They truly both reflect the purpose and
the goals of your business but they serve completely different purposes.

This is a guiding light for the aspiration of your business.

 Focuses on what is being done by your business right now. These are simple action oriented
statements that explain what your brand aims to achieve and how you will do that. The following
questions can help with the brand mission statement:

It can always be
adjusted as you grow
The brand vision focuses on where you want your achievements to lead in the future. You will keep this
vision until it is outdated or until you have reached your goal. It can be a simple sentence or short
paragraph which defines your core ideals that gives your business directions

- Think big so as to inspire employees,

customers and yourself.
- Think about your values and responsibilities to
customers
- Define your hopes and aspirations
 Visuals assets are the cornerstone to engaging, informing or influencing a specific action or
reaction from your audience. These are digital elements

Early development of visual assets helps you to ensure brand consistency from the early days on to
your growth period. This will prevent rebranding in the middle of the growth period.
The characteristics of your business should be visible in your logo. You logo
should be

You should have different logo files types for different purposes. Definitely when
you have designer you have hired, you should be asking for
This is a fundamental element to set you apart from competitors. It is part of your brand
identity. You should keep your color code consistent across different mediums. For example,
for digital and print mediums
It is important to find a specific font for all your branding. One primary font for title and
headings and Secondary font for body text.
The imagery you use on your website and other content has to be consistent. The imagery and
photography you choose should reflect your brand content and message and appeal to your target
audience. Make sure you have the rights to use the image and that they are stored in a safe place. You
can get free images from

or licensed images at

It is not recommended to go for licensed at the beginning. As you grow you can the
get licensed images or assemble a staff to do it in-house.
• These guidelines clearly defines all mentioned before and clarifies the do's and dont's. You can
create them in a PowerPoint or pdf.

• Having the things we have discussed since commencing of this unit in your brand guideline will
make it easier for your staff to create images and videos.
How do you want to position your brand? As soon as people see your ads, website, social media posts
or even your office they form an opinion about your business and there comes positioning into play

and decides how customers should think about your brand.

This step is very important as positioning is directly linked to the customers willingness to purchase your
product. When your business is seen as favorable, different and credible in the consumers mind your
brand positioning can be seen as effective.
 (price, quality or reputation)

With these answers you can directly compare how customers see your business with how you would like them to
see your business. It is good to compare these to the promises your competitors make to their customers

To visualize this a bit more you can draw a positioning map showing the level of price (expensive or cheap) and the
level of quality. After placing competitors into the map you should be able to identify possible market gaps and help
you position your brand in a way to get customers attention.

As soon as you have identified the reason why a customer should buy your product make sure
that your business is capable of actually delivering these reasons.
A positioning statement is a brief description of a product or service and an explanation of how it fulfills a
particular need of the target market. The goal of a positioning statement is to align marketing efforts with a
company's brand and value proposition.

What is the purpose of a positioning statement?

To craft your positioning statement, you'll need to get crystal clear on a few key facets of your business:
• Who you serve
• What value you offer
• How you position your offer
• Why you're in business
• What makes you different from the competition

Make sure it different from that of your competitors and can be delivered by your business
Never forget to make it authentic. It is something you want people to think of when they see your company.
Positioning Statement Examples

“Payhip is an e-commerce platform that enables anyone to sell digital products or memberships directly to
their fans and followers. You can embed Payhip directly into your website or you can use our storefront to sell
your work. Payhip takes care of everything. We’re an all-in-one e-commerce solution for creators.”

“RateGenius connects people, products, and technology to find consumers the best auto loan rate. We do this
by using our innovative origination platform together with our network of over 150 lending institutions
nationwide to shop multiple offers and present the best option for the customer.”

In your brand personality, packaging design, product, service, visual identity design and communications
 Choosing the right brand personality

Personality should remind you more of a human than a brand. You should imagine your business as a person
your customers are meeting for the first time.
What should be the first impression? and usually you don't want to sound cold and lifeless.

Give your brand a personality that consists of emotional traits and behavior. Most personalities
you remember are those that stand out

When you create the brand personality.

Be realistic by finding traits for your brand

The most important thing to remember is to be authentic in

what you do. Whatever your values are should also be portrayed
in your company-wide internal communication
Nowadays, you are how you look online. Your brand is what the outside world thinks of you online and the collection
of impressions you build over time. These days your first impression is often made online.

It also highly affects whether they choose your service or not. Many leave website because it was poorly designed,
slow in performance or difficult to use.

A website has an important impact on you business When your clients search for you online you need to be there
and not just be there but be there in the right manner to make the best impression.
• Conduct user research. The best way to determine what the users of your website wants, is as simple as
asking them. ...

• 'Don't make me think' ...

• Keep it simple. ...

• Stay consistent. ...

• Be intentional. ...

• Function over form.

Business Branding 101 / Rules Recap

Know who you are. Your customers cant begin to understand your unique selling position (USP) if you don't
understand it. A unique selling position (USP), also called a unique selling proposition, is the essence of what
makes your product or service better than competitors.

and then narrow it down to one.

Keep this word in mind as a mantra when building your website

What colors and font do they use to convey their brand? What images do they use and what illustrations?
Put all these details into a document and call it a brand guide and send to employees and clients for
feedback
 Keep your logo simple. Some of the world's leading brands stick with stylized logos. Symbols do not necessarily
have to mimic what you do. i.e Mercedes does not have a car in their Logo

and speak to your target customer

Images convey emotions so choose the right ones for your brand. Ideally, these are images you have professionally
taken of your company, your product, and your happy customers. there are also free and affordable for stock
photos.
Make it easy for your clients to find what they are looking for by using a lot of white space and fewer words.
Simpler sites with small splashes of color and great photos look more sophisticated and visitors are more satisfied
as they can easily find what they want.

The more color and light variation on the page equals more complexity and more work for the eye to send
information to the brain. Take a cue from Google for their effective online simplicity.

Your branded website needs to be mobile friendly. Your clients are increasingly attached to their phone. when
your clients search for services on their phones they are likely to take action within an hour

If there is anytime to make your site mobile responsive now is the time.
Use to help people find your business online. When your client search for you, you need to be there . Identify
your key search terms. These would probably be your business name, location, services and names of your
key staff members.