How to start your own brand
In the era of the Internet, there is no popularity for operation products and low conversion rate for promotion. Everything points to an important concept — brand. In this era of fragmentation and rapid information iteration, as long as we build a successful brand with great influence, we can not only break out of this chaotic world, but also have a good sustainable development potential. But how much do you know about “brand” and how to start your own brand?
Is a brand an identity? An advertisement? A location? A particular image? Branding is advertising. Does that require a lot of money? Now is eyeball economy times, the brand still rely on live? .
The more attention is scarce, the more important the brand is. This paper will start with a series of processes from the essence of how to start your own brand, for you to elaborate on the essence of the brand and how to build.
Start with the nature of the brand
Philip Kotler, a famous American marketing scholar known as the “father of modern marketing”, defined the brand as: “a brand is a name, a term, a mark, a symbol or a design, or a combination of them. The purpose is to identify the products or services of a particular seller or group of sellers and to distinguish them from those of competitors. However, the author believes that “brand is the sum of consumers’ cognition and experience”.
This contains the following meanings:
1. The brand is center on “consumers”
Is in the consumer mind, consumer experience, rather than from the enterprise out of the specification.
For example, the company named its brand “the fun choice of the post-90s generation”, but the young people didn’t identify it, thinking that the brand was “a wise choice for the 40-plus middle-aged people”. Then the latter is the real meaning of your brand.
2. Brands are based on consumers’ “perceptions and experiences”
All tangible and intangible things that affect consumers’ “perception and experience” are part of brand management. Therefore, the brand has the following two characteristics:
- the brand is always present: the brand has existed since the establishment of the company, the development of products and the registration of trademarks.Every step and every event of the company will affect consumers’ cognition and experience of the brand. Therefore, no matter the size of the company, no matter there is no professional brand agency, no matter there is no professional brand responsible person, we need to clearly recognize that we are a brand company.
- brand is ubiquitous: successful brand operation involves all relevant business processes — internal and external logistics, manufacturing, marketing, sales and service; It also involves supporting activities such as product design and technology development, human resource management, general management, etc.
All the tangible and intangible things that consumers know and experience, from an envelope of an enterprise to an advertisement, will affect consumers’ impression of the brand.
To sum up, the brand is the consumer all cognition and experience together in the mind and body, integrated into a “total” impression!
So what does a brand do? Why is it worth it? How to launch your own brand？
Secondly, brand significance and function
In my opinion, it should be interpreted from two perspectives, one is the enterprise perspective and the other is the user perspective.
Enterprise perspective —
From the perspective of the enterprise, the brand is a beacon, guiding all employees to do all things in one direction. Such as: Alibaba’s philosophy: make the world no hard business. This leads all products and services developed by alibaba to focus on the core appeal of “no hard business”, and makes consumers/users and society think that “alibaba makes business easier”.
This can not only have a unified external image, but also have a great incentive effect on the internal team, which will make the team members have a sense of honor and mission in their specific work, which is the ultimate motivation for all people to persist in innovation and strive hard every day.
Of course, the brand concept also gives the broader public a more positive impression of the company and its founder,
Just like a lot of people don’t understand, jack ma is such a high-profile person, incredibly has been popular until now, while robin li is such a low-key and honest person, but everywhere was hacked, It is because jack ma no matter where, always tightly holding the “make the world no hard business” this amulet.
The user’s perspective
From a consumer/user perspective, the role of a brand is to be able to remember when a consumer/user needs something. This requires consumers/users to deeply remember your brand in the noisy market sound, in the noisy variety of brands think of your brand.
Generally speaking, the main purpose of a brand is to achieve a demand of people, and then from the demand can be associated with it. For example, if you want to eat, then eating is your demand, what to eat, is a category of choice. For example, if you eat hot pot, there may be no future when brand awareness is not strong in the last century. And in the Internet era, brand rampant era, when we want to eat hot pot, this time you have a choice in your mind, is to go to Haidilao? Or should we go to Banu? The role of the brand is to be able to think of you when the user needs to increase the opportunity to buy.
Therefore, whether from the enterprise’s own strategy and benefits, or from the memory and perception of consumers, brand building is a must to pay attention to the work, so, how do we starting your own brand? How to launch your own brand in a more efficient way?
In my opinion, to understand this issue, we need to understand how the current emerging brands have become popular in a short period of time, which also reflects the current choice of brand values.
For recent years, those consumer brands, how are popular?
In recent years, a new consumer trend and a new consumer brand have emerged around us. Their speed was so great that it sometimes seemed as if fire had penetrated half the sky overnight.
Their popularity came so quickly, with the past traditional dissemination, marketing fermentation way are not the same. Most of them do not rely on special channels to complete the cold start, both quickly and quietly, have spread the trend and brand across the country.
For “popularity” and process, it is temporarily impossible to do quantitative analysis of data. But by analyzing epidemic phenomena and extrapolating their epidemic maps backwards, we can conclude that there are several crucial perspectives from which to find the root causes of epidemics.A consumer trend or consumer brand, just meet the following aspects of the situation, “popular” is likely to quickly become a reality.
A new way of life and a new aesthetic
Key points: Rapidly popular consumer brands will closely combine the latest lifestyle and social trends, and even create innovative lifestyle based on this. In terms of brand expression and starting your own brand, more inclined to use the “new aesthetic” way of expression.
People are more likely to pay for brands and purchases that are “in line with their current or desired lifestyle,” By contrast, the traditional lifestyle and consumption of the once strong old “instant noodles, beer” category has seen a sharp decline.
The new aesthetic is also an important signal of the rise of new consumer brands.
You’ll find that the new consumer brands that are hot aren’t emulating the old aesthetic habits in product design, service design, and marketing design. No matter from the product form, or service way, or marketing presentation, have been very different from the past performance.
A new, more open, more human aesthetic became a favorite. Instead of the serious, dignified, dignified, balanced, antithetical, introverted, crude aesthetic forms of the past. More to parody, presence, exaggeration, funny, contrast, cooperation, creativity, delicacy and other aesthetic forms.
Better, more extreme experience
Key points: General experience, will only make consumers nod and smile; Further good experience, let the consumer can not help but stare;
But the ultimate experience, can let consumers tell each other. And most latter, just explode likely popular.
Most consumer brands are mediocre. Because the product to service to brand side offers just a “so-so” experience. And the real performance of the brand, at least in one respect, or even all aspects, will show the ability to let people pass the word and tell each other.
At present, many consumer brands that only rely on “copywriting marketing” and “event marketing” to let people tell each other and forward each other look very hot. Because of getting some of these things right (even if it seems like some of them are even if they’re just from the marketing side), these fires are rewards for the best of experiences.
Marketing of the ultimate experience, innovation is only the tip of the iceberg. For consumer brands, the ultimate experience in products and services is the long-term path to brand popularity.
There are explosive or transmissible material and flaunt points
Key points:
The material provided by the merchant intentionally or unintentionally becomes the news point of “nationwide assistance dissemination”. These news sites are highly explosive and conspicuous. Or celebrities, Or a niche culture that stands out, or price flaunting, or even willpower flaunting can be fodder.
A popular restaurant in Beijing is a regular presence on social media, and customers who visit it are impressed by its Fried rice, which looks like honeycomb coal and is burning in flames. In the circle of friends, there are many references about this dish. Every time the service staff of the restaurant serves the Fried rice, they always invite the guests to take out their mobile phones and get ready. When the cameras were ready, he smiled and lit the alcohol on fire. In the same way, we’ve seen a lot of stuff like that. A hotpot restaurant waiter hand fluttering skills surprised all pull noodles skills, a cray restaurant came up with a surprisingly large cray hill, ridiculously expensive all-natural mineral water, clothes, shoes and hats of the same style for celebrities…
Not only that, but even willpower can inadvertently become a source of brand communication. We’ve seen fitness punches on social media (number of abs done today), we saw the word punch card (100 new words today).
For popularity, of course, material and tipping points are indispensable. Therefore, active manufacturing or active assistance to consumers to complete the material collection and release, is a good way to explode the popularity.
The intensification of consumer herd behavior
Key points: Herd behavior, also known as conformity, is a kind of social psychology of blind obedience. In consumption, herd effect is gradually intensifying with the further development of social media. Consumption KOL and community big V play an obvious guiding role in consumption. Once detonated, it spreads quickly. Like consumer kols and community big V who are responsible for planting, and after the herd effect of “weeding gens” will soon “weeding” as a matter of concern.
The leader’s role is magnified on social media, shopping sites and group-buying sites. Even consumer brands will put the consumption proposition of “leaders” into the community, office buildings, fixed cultural places and so on. When the major communication channels and community kols work together, the explosive effect is doubled.
Through the above, you should be clear about the Internet era of starting your own brand and communication logic is what kind of.
With the logic clear, we can finally get to the actual operation of the link – a set of how to launch your own brand.
A basic approach to branding
- Find your users — location
Knowing the nature of the people on the Internet, to find your niche in this group from the point of view of your product, which groups are you targeting, find and identify. Look at your product’s age, preferences and needs, find your target audience, and build a lasting battle.
- Brand building — F4 brand building equation
I’m not go into the basics of consistency and so on, but what I want to introduce is a method of brand building.
Facts: “we provide…”
From a vendor’s point of view, here are the core characteristics of our product or service. These characteristics are undoubted, the fact exists, has the difference competitive advantage. This is often said by advertising agencies or brand departments as a reason to believe. Like what exclusive technology do you have, what premium ingredients do you have, etc.
Function(rational value) : “to bring you…”
We going to shift perspective here, from a vendor perspective to a user perspective: for users, our product/service features. What unique value can you translate into them? What practical problems can be solved and what practical needs can be met?
For example, if you are making batteries, how can you translate to the perspective of consumers?
Feeling: “it also makes you feel…”
How does it make you feel when a real need is addressed? This is often referred to as emotional added value. The emotional value of a feeling is less easily measured than its measurable rational value. Brand premium space also produces difference accordingly. When you’re paying for a feeling, the price isn’t rational. So a lot of big brand or luxury ads create some kind of desire for you, or a feeling, not a specific fabric. For example, many advertisements of LV:
Faith: “we all believe in… from the bottom of our hearts.”
And at this point, once again, switching angles. From the perspective of previous users, to the belief and belief Shared by users and brands. It’s really tying the user to the brand. If the brand can do that, the user will go from being a consumer to a fan. The user becomes your brand ambassador and spokesperson. Loyalty at this time is also extremely terrible. Their loyalty is expressed in one word — “ONLY” : “computer, I ONLY buy MAC!” “, “sneakers, I only wear Nike! “, “soda, I only drink Coca-Cola!
3.Make your brand relevant to your users
1.Know your users
Detailed analysis and mining, know your users, and even become like them! After you’ve found your users. Therefore, the characteristics, pursuits and habits of this ethnic group need to be analyzed and excavated in a more detailed way. Only in this way can we find out what they like.
2.Product innovation
Depending on your user needs, adapt your product to meet the needs of your users.
The functional value of the brand is mainly reflect in the products. If you can’t meet the needs of your users, your brand won’t succeed. Internet era user habits: simple, convenient, fast, affordable. Your product should satisfy these habits. And continue to optimize your product on the analysis of your target audience.
3.Image design
According to psychologists, 85 percent of our information comes from our vision. The time the user gives you is 3.8 seconds. As a commercial form of art, visual design inherits the appeal of art. Good vision can quickly make users interested in the product, and even fall in love with the brand. This completes the first relationship with the user in 3.8 seconds.
4.Collect user feedback
Publish in the context of the customer, creative creation to let users like the content! Content marketing is one of the core ideas in Internet marketing with attitude, First proposed by point online, network marketing with attitude, including precision marketing, network marketing, content marketing, attitude marketing four network marketing concepts.
5.Interact with users
The brand should always maintain the interaction with users to keep the brand fresh. The emergence of social marketing media (weibo, WeChat, etc.) and interactive tools (H5, etc.) make it easier and more frequent for brands to interact with users. In this day and age, if you can’t keep interacting with your users, you’re likely to be quickly forgotten by them. And good interaction can directly drive sales!
6.Feedback and modification
User feedback is the main basis of brand adjustment, do it well, the brand has its own user database!
Reflection:
Are your primary users the ones you initially targeted?
Are your users happy with your product?
Do your users like your brand?
Will your users still use you?
What advice have your users given you?
4.Spread the word in the Internet era
How to do a good job in the dissemination of the Internet era? Here are seven Suggestions:
Determine the communication theme, why users choose you and why they choose you?
What are the media platforms that consumers are interested in?
What are some of their buzzwords?
Find the hot spot, is the hottest topic they are concerned about;
Creation and dissemination of ideas, good ideas will make people remember, that is to say, the brand in the minds of consumers;
The production and distribution of the dissemination of content, is based on the above approach to formulate consistent content;
Interaction, that’s important, do your users like your product? Results interactive, the user is your biggest motivation for progress!
Of course, the most important thing is to respect your customers!
Whether it is brand building or brand communication in fact the most important point is actually, respect your consumers! When you do that, your brand is already successful.
Last of all
So in conclusion, enterprises need to have a clear plan for their brands at the beginning of their business. And insight into the inner preferences and channel changes of users in the Internet era,
Targeted to build a unique brand, and make the brand connotation become a beacon guiding the internal work of the enterprise. Make the brand connotation in the mind of consumers/users consistent with the brand connotation in the enterprise planning. To remind consumers/users of your brand when they need it.
Through the quality and effective management of the brand, will become the internal driving force, the engine of growth. Let the seemingly ordinary things become shining stars! Generate brand value that far exceeds the cost of the product/service! Make the enterprise rapid, orderly, effective development!
It should be noted that brand management is a systematic project. That is far from enough to be left the Marketing Department handle it. It requires the enterprise to make overall arrangements, involve all staff and coordinate operations, and make decisions and actions in every link of the whole business process.
Finally, to quote Steve jobs: make it easy for your customers to remember who you are and how you can change their lives.
