The Heavy Chef’s 5 Point Guide to Branding: Point 2
by Fred Roed on 28/08/09 at 4:57 pm
2 comments
This is the second instalment of a 5 point branding series, exclusive to Ideate, where we’re taking some lessons contained within the Heavy Chef Digital Marketing Course and distilling them for our Ideate readers. [Read Point 1 of our brand-building series here]
Point 2: Figure out what your message is (and make sure it’s special!)
Once we understand what is meant by “Brand” (it’s the message you choose to convey), then you need to define it in a way that is going to be profitable for your business. Start by stepping out of your shoes and into the shoes of your client. Look at your offering with fresh eyes, and figure out what’s important.
Probably the most common mistake that marketers make in defining a brand message is the confusion between features and benefits. You will see this over and over: in communicating their brand, companies will list the features of their offering. In an age when consumers are bombarded with marketing messages, this is not persuasive enough to sway savvy customers to engage with you. Again, by stepping into the shoes of the customer, you must analyse what elements of your offering are relevant to him or her. These elements are the benefits, and are what needs to be contained within your brand messaging.
Most importantly, your brand message needs to distinguish your offering from your competitors. Your brand message needs to be special to your customer. It needs to contain something that is relevant and meaningful, yet new and innovative to your audience.
A valuable tip in doing this is by analysing your category. You want to be top of your category. Even in competitive industry, if you analyse your category, you can start seeing the points where you are different (“The best luxury estate agency in the Northern Suburbs”)
Author of “22 Immutable Laws of Branding” Al Ries wrote: “If you can’t be no.1 or no.2 in your category, then create a new category.”
(Points “3 – 5″ coming shortly.)
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Tags: Brand, Business/Finance, Communication design, digital marketing, Graphic design, Heavy Chef, Marketing, Technology/Internet
Mike
Sep 3rd, 2009
Thanks for the posting, good article and look forward to reading the other points.
I really like this quote “If you can’t be no.1 or no.2 in your category, then create a new category.” Is so important these days to differentiate your business and product to create appeal to your customers. For online businesses this is possibly even more important with the increased competition from overseas companies.
The Heavy Chef’s Guide to Branding: Point 5 | Ideate
Oct 2nd, 2009
[...] is a follow on from Heavy Chef Guide to Branding Point 1 (Understanding branding), Point 2 (Define your message), Point 3 (Brand consistency and pervasiveness), and Point 4 (Execution is everything) in a series [...]