Butterfly Chic Boutique Blog

I am SUPER excited about this guest post. I’ve been meaning to touch on branding since I started the blog, when I stumbled across this post on the Etsy forums I HAD to convo Electric Boogaloo and ask if I could use it here. She very graciously said yes, and I’m so glad, she went way more in depth than I would have :0)

And be sure to check out her super cute shop too :0)

At my day job I work for a marketing agency and just finished an article about branding for software startups. It occurred to me that the same principals apply to building an online art/craft business. So I thought I’d share some of the tips on branding… I cut out a bunch of stuff about start ups and dealing with agencies etc. but the basic meat of the article is here:
———————

WHAT IS BRANDING?
Branding is the persuasive message that you send to customers at every touch point.

Humans tend to personify everything. We’re social creatures, and we look for everything from cars to laptops to have a personality. That’s crazy, a company isn’t a living person with its own personality, but it’s the way we’re wired. Or more to the point, it’s the way your potential customers are wired. So they are going to project a personality onto your business entity no matter what you do. That personality is your company’s brand.

The act of branding means that you are taking control and actively trying to shape what people view as that personality. When you control it, you can use it to make your company memorable in a good way – and ultimately in a way that persuades people to buy from and invest in your business.

So okay. What are touch points? Branding touch points are all of the obvious things like your logo, your brochures, your web site, and all of that fancy creative jazz. But it’s also things you might overlook: the design of your billing, the tone of every email and letter that is sent out, the way people answer the phone, the automated system and hold messages. Think of it in terms of your own personality: you are a very intelligent, nice person (we don’t actually know you, but let’s assume for this exercise that you are intelligent and nice). But if you wear giant red and yellow clown shoes, or have a habit of blowing your nose into your bare hand, or mumble into your shirt whenever you answer a question, people will roll those details into their picture of who you are.

It’s much easier to control your company’s brand if you start from the beginning, before customers and investors start forming opinions. Think about your touchpoints. If you make software then your interface, manual, training, help, and support are all touchpoints where you are communicating something about your company to your customers. If you sell a widget, then touchpoints include packaging, the product itself, customer service reps, sales, and even the invoices and inventory process for wholesale orders. And no matter what you are selling, every person in your company is potentially a touchpoint. Every time anyone says “So what do you do?” – that’s an opportunity to sell.

So branding really carries down to every level of everything that happens every day. It’s much easier to do this from the beginning. But you don’t need to throw money down a mysterious well to get started. You can do much of the work yourself, right now.

THE BRANDING WORKSHEET
Brand your company right here and now.
1. Print this out and fill in the blanks.
Imagine the perfect potential customer standing in front of you, ready to hear about your company. Fill in the blanks to form a brief persuasive pitch:
The Product:
You should buy ______________ from my company because ___________________________ _______________________________ and _______________________________.

The Personality:
We are a __________________ (forward thinking, cutting edge, innovative, high-energy, kind hearted, high quality, cost-cutting, family oriented, friendly, intelligent, high-class, elegant, comfortable, etc) company that ______________. (cares, pushes the boundaries, is here to make your life easier)

The Promise:
We promise that if you buy from us, you will be happy because now you can _____________________. (Stop worrying, feel good, simplify your life/job, impress people, etc)

Congratulations, you have just articulated your company’s brand.

2. List all of your company’s customer touchpoints. Every piece of communication that customers and prospective customers see:

3. Look at each of the touch points and ask: Does this touchpoint help make our brand promise? Does it convince people that we are what our brand claims? How can we change it to make it more persuasive?
Examples – redoing the forms, changing the tone people use when they answer customer questions, thinking about the wording of emails, making the software easy to use.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 06:55 and is filed under customer service, internet sales, Etsy, branding, planning, business start up, Small Business Start-up, Guest Posts, business, plan, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.