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BUILDING YOUR BRAND
Managing director of SongBird Marketing Communications. Trevor Shorte up here to talk about building your brand, welcome Trevor.
Trevor: Hello, hello, hello, every time I hold one of these things, I wanna break one of these beat bot up whatever sorry that’s me.
Apparently, I’m the example that Craig decided that he wanted to use for is other…the idea of validation, but whatever. Building your brand alright. So let’s talk a little bit about branding. First this is a little bit about me I’ve done something’s. So you know if you guys want to talk about any of the things that I have done feel free to call me I’ll tell you all about it.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND
WHAT YOUR BRAND IS NOT
What is a brand? That’s a very interesting question that so many people are asking all the time these are the things a brand is not;
Your brand isn’t your logo. A brand is not your identity, a brand is not just a product. It’s a combination of all of these things. But the biggest thing about a brand is the fact that it’s whatever a person feels about you, your company, and the product and service that you do. It’s whatever it is it takes to get an emotional response from somebody. Now I didn’t make these rules up, this guy Marty Neumeier made that he’s one of the probably the foremost brand experts in the world today. I kind of agree with him but I’d like to take it a little bit further….and I always want to talk about what makes a brand.
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BUILDING YOUR BRAND
SOME OF THE WORLDS BIGGEST BRANDS
Craig touched a little bit on this when he talked about his idea of validation. Within the idea of validation is a lot of things that you need to figure out. These are some of the world’s largest brands. When you look at them they all evoke some type of emotional response from you. Why does that happen? Because they spent decades trying to build these things to that point. Every single brand on this list here has spent a lot of years building up there audiences what do they have in common. Think about it. They have their audiences and they’re also able to make sure that you feel something whenever you look at these brands. So the question is how do they do that? They all have this one thing in common they figured out who their audience is.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND
WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
Craig touched a little bit on this during his presentation. Do you know who you’re gonna sell to and how are you going to reach them? Because if you don’t, you won’t be able to build a brand. These are some of the foundational things that you need to be able to build not only a brand but a company as well. Because all of these things are based on the foundation of what’s propel your brand into the future.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND
BUYER PERSONAS AND BUYER BEHAVIOUR
There is two different things that we like to look at when we’re talking about who your audience is your buyer persona and then your buyer behaviours. Buyer persona is really just about who is actually going buy your product. Do you even know who that is? Craig talked about that when he was looking at the idea of validation. Going out and talking to people and find out who your ideal clients are, and then the behaviours identify what they do. where they do it. how they do it. So that you can figure out how they get your messaging to them because you can’t figure out how they get your message to them, if nobody knows you exist no one is going to buy anything from you.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND
WHAT’S YOUR UNIQUE SELLING POINT?
The other thing that Craig talked about is what’s your value proposition part of your value proposition? is developed through to coming at this, what is your unique selling point? Why is it people are gonna wanna buy your brand or product or service or whatever is it you wanna call it. But the whole entire meeting is based on this,
if you can’t figure out why what makes you special no one is going to buy your stuff.
There are so many different brands out there. Craig talked about this, about competition. There is somebody out there who is doing something probably already. So you have to figure out what is it that makes you either better, faster, stronger, cheaper. Cheaper may not necessarily always be better. Sometimes more expensive is better. Which would you rather have a Ferrari or Pinto? These are the type of things that will help you understand. When you’re trying to build a brand you need to really get to the heart of the reason why people are gonna buy your stuff. That is where the magic happens.
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BUILDING YOUR BRAND
WHAT’S YOUR SALES PROCESS?
The other thing that people tend to forget is what’s your sales process? And when I say what’s your sales process, my first question to you is; alright so you decided you want to make this product. You decided you’ve got a customer who is going to buy it. So how do they buy it? Are they going to buy it online if it’s a software product? Or you going to actually…they gonna have to sign up for something? if you got an actual physical product are you gonna have to now ship it to them? How are they going to buy it?
are they going to buy it online? You’re gonna set up an e-commerce site. There are so many different questions that you have to answer in order for you to figure out how are you going to deliver whatever it is that you’ve built to your audience.
So the first question I wanna ask when I’m looking at these types of things is, is it easy for your customers to buy from you?
Because if it’s difficult they’re not going to do it. If it is way too hard for somebody to get from A to B there is no way they’re going to buy into it. Because for them, it’s too much of a hassle. And then the other thing is, is it easy for you to deliver. So if you got a product that you’ve decided is going to be something that you could sell online and people will get a finished product eventually. Well can somebody overseas buy it? Is that going to be part of your business model? Or you only shipping to Toronto? Are you shipping across Canada or are you shipping into the US? These are all important question because if all of a sudden, your target market is in the US and you haven’t figured out that you need to deliver to the US or how much that’s gonna cost you that’s gonna affect your product which in turn affects your brand.
Because all that is all tied together. When it comes to people looking at how you are branding and the things that you deliver. One of the biggest things I want you guys to take from this is your brand is going to be the key thing for people to understand what is it you can do
if you can solve their problem they’ll love your brand if you can’t they’ll kick you to the curve real quickly.
BUILDING YOUR BRAND
CONTENT IS KING
Now I have this slide because people tend to forget about content. Content is actually very important when it comes to building a brand. The reason why content is important is because this is all of your key messaging. This is where you get people to understand what is it you can do, how you can do it for them, and why they wanna buy it from you. When you have the right messaging and you have all of these things working together for you all everybody is gonna see is that you have the solution to their problems and you can solve everything that they need to have solved. Your website for example. If your website is petty bare bones and it doesn’t tell people what they need when they get there they’re not gonna go. They’re going to disappear. Your social media has to be able…has to be able to engage people, and to get them to understand what is it you can do for them and start to build a community. Because it’s the community is going to help build your brand. The last thing I wanna talk about is as part of your content;
If people don’t believe you can’t solve their problem they’re not going to buy your product.
That is the very basic genesis of everything that we do when it comes to building a brand. So when Craig talks about the idea of validation, all that idea of validation turns into. Craig and I actually buy into…we like the business model canvas. That’s probably the best single best product ever to be able to help determine whether or not you’re gonna go from your idea that you have to actually getting something being able to deliver to somebody. And with those two things together, you’ve got a really good foundation to building your business and building your brand. And I’ll tell you if you don’t do those things you’re asking for a lot of trouble because you’re really basically building your brand on sand.
WANT HELP BUILDING YOUR BRAND?
I went through this really quickly, because I know Craig is running short on time, so I left out some of the antidote’s stories. But I’ve got lots of stories to tell so if you want to talk to me we certainly can we’re doing panel later. so, if you have any questions for me you can throw those in there, otherwise you can send me e-mail call me whenever I’m free I got nothing else to do for the rest of the night so you know I’m good.
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