At Dimalanta Design Group, we are all about building relationships with our clients and in turn helping them build relationships with their clients. And what do people in relationships do? They listen to each other. They seek to understand each other. They ask questions. Questions are equally important to a company as you create and define your brand to best relate to your clients.
Ask yourselves these five questions to get brand clarity:
1.) What problem is our product or service solving and what differentiates our solution from our competitors?
Let’s face it, there’s a lot to bombard a person in this hyper-connected world we’re living in. Algorithms track not only what sites we go to but how much time we spend there and what products and services catch our eye. Ads show up that promise to solve all of our persistent problems. Clearly, we’re going to need to stand out if we want to be our potential customers’ go-to solution for one of their key problems. This means we need to get clear about not only what problem our product or service solves, but how it does it in a way that sets us apart from the competition.
2.) What is our MVVP?
Your company’s MVVP is a four-piece tool to help you gain clarity on what your company is all about.
M is your mission–it’s the compass that guides each decision you make. It’s the deeper yes that helps you know what matters and what doesn’t matter.
V is your vision–a statement of how your company has a positive impact on not only your customers but the greater community and even the world.
The second V is your values–It’s a list of the beliefs your company professes and practices that also serve to guide each decision you make.
P is your purpose–it’s why you do what you do in a sentence.
When you develop an MVVP and use it as a filter to guide decision making, you’ll be well on your way to a clear brand.
3.) What is our brand personality?
The best brands are immediately recognizable. They have such a clear persona that we know who they are, what they’re about, and what they offer before we even have to think. We see their logo, and we get it. Of course, that kind of brand recognition doesn’t just happen. It’s carefully cultivated by thoughtful people over time. Brand personality creation is tied to your internal company culture as well as your brand archetype. If you haven’t studied archetypes as they relate to branding, we suggest the book The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Hartwell and Chen. For an overview of the twelve main brand archetypes’ values, traits, and goals, download our white paper on archetypes on our site. Identifying with an archetype helps a company or product decide how to show up in the world and attract customers.
4.) Who is our target audience?
Speaking of customers, archetypes also help a company address the core needs of their ideal customer. This is the who element of branding. We align a company’s archetypal goal with a customer’s core need, considering the product or service being offered and who would benefit most from it. We might conduct market research to gather formation about potential customers. We consider their demographics, which might include age, buying habits, and geographic location. A step further is creating a buyer persona; a fictional representation of a company’s ideal customer based on research and data. By creating buyer personas, a company can better understand its target audience and tailor its marketing strategies accordingly.
5.) How will our brand show up in the world?
Once you have identified the problem your brand solves, gotten clear on your mission, vision, values, and purpose, and identified your brand’s personality and to whom you want to appeal, it’s time to get clear on the details of your brand. In this stage of brand creation, we work with you to come up with a name that aligns with your brand archetype and that resonates with your target audience. We create a logo and develop brand standards–the fonts and colors we will use in all of your branding. This also includes a voice guide, which establishes the tone and diction to use in all of our communications. Finally, we decide how best to reach your target audience. We develop a website and decide on the best social media platforms to use as well as developing email campaigns and other types of campaigns.
As Donald Miller says in Building a Story Brand, “people buy the products they can understand the fastest.” (p.19) We have found this process of branding helps not only our clients define who they are, but helps their clients see and understand their product or service better. And THAT’s a good relationship!