E09: The Elements of a Brand. Understand then Grow

What is up Remote Start Nation, my name is Jim Doyon, your host and I want to welcome you to another episode of Remote Start. I’m going to be starting a series of episodes this week that have to do with brand and branding. We've talked a lot in previous episodes about starting a business, we've talked about out lifestyle, we’ve talk about a lot of other areas, we've interviewed some really awesome entrepreneurs so if you get a chance go back and give that a listen, but now I think it's really important after talking about growing a brand or growing a business sorry starting a business. I want to talk about how to grow a brand but to do that I think we first need to really hone in on what branding is and more importantly what is a brand, what makes up your brand. So I'm going to start in this episode and I want to touch on six key elements that I feel really important to think about, when you're looking at growing your brand or when you're looking at starting up a business and the elements that put your brand together, so we'll go into each one of these elements later on in greater detail later episodes but for now I just want to kind of hit over these top six.

So a lot of times when people think of a brand, they think of your logo, they think of a name but there's so much more to it than that and as you can see a brand it could be up color packaging, it's what people think of, when they hear your name it encompasses everything from the way you answer the phone to even the products and services that you deliver, and the truth is there's so many different elements that could play part in defining your brand, but not all of them will matter to your business only certain will so it's important to think how what you can do to bring those elements cohesively together to your audience so it gives you an advantage over your competition. When someone in your in your market thinks of your brand what are they going to think about what is it that's going to differentiate you from your competition so they go with your product or your service versus someone else, and truthfully I've heard a lot of people define brand or branding differently, and so there's a lot of gray, it's not black and white. So now when we look at branding and we look at a brand there's a lot of different things to think about, so again in the most simplistic way of looking at it, you could look at your brand as your businesses personality, from your look to your name, what is someone going to think when they see, they hear, they feel or they interact with your company that's your brand.

In order to build a strong brand, the goal would be to take all these different elements regardless of what the elements are and try to be consistent and cohesive with them, so here's six different elements and you can kind of figure out which ones you'd like to use for your brand and go from there.

So brand voice, that's the first one this is the way that your company speaks to the world, this is the way that your copy writes, this is the way that your website, social media, emails, anything that you put out that comes from your brand that's your brand voice, it's how you talk to your customers on the phone, it's how your team interacts with potential clients or current clients, that's your voice. So it's super important to understand early on, what is that voice going to be?

Next, brand identity. So the brand identity, this is something that it encompasses all a lot of the different areas that, when someone thinks of brand or branding, I think they automatically go to brand identity it refers to the aspects of your company that are recognizable with your customer, so that includes your color palette like I went over already your logo fonts and lettering as well as how you visually present yourself on social media, through the website and any other channel. It also can define your packaging and other physical aspects of your brand or assets of your brand.

of the third one I want to go over is your brand promise. And these next few kind of go together and a lot of times this starts from within right, like this starts from your business and as you grow it and as you start it and as more employees come on, it's so important to have a brand promise and brand values which is the next one I'm going hit on because it helps to carry on your mission through everything else with your company so your brand promise is how you articulate the unique value that your business is going to provide your customers. so your vision mission statements right?That's your brand promise, so what is your mission as a company, what is your mission of your brand what's your vision it allows your employees to grasp hold of that and spread your message and everything you do, it also it sets customer expectations and hold your account your company accountable to meeting those expectations. Brand values then are similar in vision mission but your brand values are actually the guiding principles and beliefs that your company stands for and those can be like just one off words or little sentences so things like honesty, trust, commitment to customers, passion, these are all core company values that help your employees they help your customers to see what your company's about and these have to be real they can't be fake, they can't be like just some made up this is who we would like to be, like okay that's cool if you want to be that, but unless you're striving to constantly get there then throw them out, people see through that, but what it does is it made sure that from top leader leadership to even entry level everybody's working towards those same common goals, everybody shares that bigger purpose, we want our clients to have trust in us, okay, how do we do that? We want our we want to have a commitment to customers, okay what does that mean, a commitment to customers okay, what's some when a customer calls and their pissed off what are you doing to make sure that customer is happy? Before your product leaves, what are you doing to make sure that that quality of that product is perfect? Because that's a commitment to customers, it's those types of things that are your core company values, your brand values, that are super important to hit on right away as your company starts to grow not when you're first starting out it's good to have that and a lot of times that might be the values in your own personality as the business owner, but as you start to grow, it's super important that whoever then is leading the charge in getting your brand out to the masses that they understand these values and what you represent because it's again your brand is your personality, it's what your customers with the people out there in the public see and they're going to think about when they think about you as a brand.

The next one, brand targeting. Brand targeting and then the last one going to go over his brand positioning. They're similar again in a way that they work together so brand targeting, helps to define the market that we're going to go after, who are we going to target? I like to say the community we belong in, okay, who does our community our brand went through our values, our identity, where do those fit into a certain community or that market? And it can be broken down in the age demographic, geographic location, income there's a lot of different ways to break that down but the most important thing is understanding who you're going to target, who your list of your perfect avatar for your client, who is that what, do they look like, who are they? Because then the next brand element comes into play and that's brand positioning. So brand positioning, that's how your brand stands out versus your competition, in the eyes of your community your potential customer and so it's super important to position your brand to the right audience and you do that through targeting them, through positioning you're going to understand what your marketing tactics might be, so if your community is in on Facebook, you're not going to go promote on Tiktok, or if they're reading a newspaper you're not going to go promote in and Facebook, so that's where you have to understand again your brand targeting, where that's going to go, where that's going to end up, and then how you're going to position that, and that'll help with your marketing, you're not just going to waste money on advertising you're going to market the right way that's going to have the biggest effect with your customer. Alright, so to recap, we talked on six different areas of brand. We hit on number one, we talked about your brand voice, number two we talked about your brand identity, number three we talked about your brand promise, number four your brand values, number five brand targeting and number six brand positioning. So as I mentioned, we are going to hit on each of these in a little better detail further on down the road through other guests that I bring on a interview, but I wanted to give you a good idea of how to look at your brand and the key elements behind it, so we can really start to think about, how we need to position our brand as we grow we we've started a business, we're out there, now what are we doing to really bring that to the next level.

So with that said,

Remote Start Nation...

Go start something, have an awesome day, and I'll see you in on the next one!