The messages you deliver to consumers represent your business’ brand. You brand is what people will cling to when they get to know your business. As you can see, messages and your brand are connected. This is why it is imperative as a new business startup that you deliver the correct messages for the brand you want to develop.
How to Come Up with a Brand
When branding your business, you should ask yourself these questions:
- What does my business stand for?
- What do my consumers want from my business?
- What goals are my consumers looking to achieve from my business?
- What words represent my business as a whole?
When you have the answers to these questions, you can move on to delivering the messages that will start to shape your business’ brand.
Let’s take an example:
TOMS sells shoes, but not only that, for every shoe purchased, they donate a pair to people in need.
What does the business stand for? They help people help people indirectly. People feel good about buying from them because they are indirectly being charitable.
What do consumers want from the business? They want comfortable, simple, stylish shoes.
What goals are my consumers looking to achieve from my business? To purchase shoes AND support a business that is committed not only to providing people with money high-quality shoes but those who don’t have money too.
What words represent the business? Quality, charitable, and eco-friendly.
When you put all of these answers together, you start to form an impression in your mind of what TOMS' brand is and how it is helping them become successful. This is exactly what you should do for your business.
Delivering the Messages
Once you have the brand you want to convey to consumers, you need to come up with the messages that correctly portray the brand. This can be tricky when you don’t have a solid idea of what your brand will be, so make sure you don’t skip the first step in this process.
Using the answers to the questions above, think of messages that will draw your consumers’ attention. Again, let’s take TOMS as an example.
One of the words representing the business is quality. Don’t only tell consumers that the shoes are high quality, but show them how they are that way. Identify the reasons they are high quality and then tell people.
Charitable is another word TOMS stands behind, so it’s important to deliver the message of what that action is as much as possible. They call their charitable actions 1 for 1. One purchased, one donated is what that means.
Eco-friendly is the third word and again, it’s important to identify or show the reasons the shoes are eco-friendly. Images and text can show people a lot when it comes to the materials used to make the shoes and how they treat the people making the shoes.
In addition to these words, you can also pinpoint what consumers want and start letting them know they can get what they want through your business. If their goal is to purchase shoes and be charitable, then the message should reflect that – again, like the 1 for 1 that TOMS has for their campaign.
Think long and hard about your brand and then come up with messages that represent it. This way you’ll know exactly what you’re putting out there in front of consumers and how it is contributing to the future of your business’ brand.
