How to build your branding from scratch in 7 steps

If you want to learn how to build your branding from scratch in 7 steps, this is the ideal article for you.

I have personally helped build several brands over the years through my branding agency as a designer and brand strategist.

And I've learned a thing or two about building your brand from scratch that you might not know.

There are 7 key steps to the branding process that will allow you to make money and grow in your industry far beyond just earning a side income from your job. That is, obtain the power of branding with a healthy brand, which works like a glove to sell the product or service you offer.

#1 Money first, brand later.

If you ask a normal person how they would start a business, most would start by saying that they would first buy their products, then go register their business, get an accountant, rent a space, pay for a logo, develop their strategy, launch a website. web, among other things... and from there, they would start operations.

Serious mistake.

If you notice, they have paid for all those things and still not a single measly penny has gone into their bank account.

This contradicts the most basic principle of all businesses Which is to make money.

Before thinking about developing a brand, you have to validate your market.

The easiest way to validate your market is by investing a zero or very little amount of money to start getting your first clients (Renting an office or hiring an assistant is an example of a very premature investment for this stage).

If they don't buy from you, that's okay, there wasn't a need in the market to begin with, and now you know that. Also, you only lost a small amount of time and money in the process.

In case they do buy from you, congratulations! You can now invest more in developing your brand. That is why learning sales is essential if you want to learn how to create a brand.

What does “Money first, mark later” mean?

The average entrepreneur has not validated his business idea in the slightest and has already invested "heavily" in its development; which, consequently, puts you in danger of losing all of his investment in developing a product or service that nobody possibly needs.

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn as an entrepreneur is that money comes first and brand building comes second, but what do I mean by that?

Basically, if you want to build a successful brand, you have to first validate your market and get your first customers.

It will be there, when you can see that it is worth investing time and effort in this project of building a brand and growing your company.

Remember, before making any heavy investment, you have to validate your business idea with the most effective test of all, selling.

If you can't sell, at least you've wasted a small amount of time and money, rather than thousands of dollars developing a product or brand that no one possibly needs.

This is the true meaning of “money first, brand later”.

And that brings us to the second point.

#2 Discover the hidden need

Most entrepreneurs start by asking themselves: What should I sell? Instead of wondering what do people long to have?

Every business begins and ends with the customer. The client is the person who can fire from the cashier to the CEO; only, with deciding not to buy there. So it is very convenient to find out what he wants to have and what he currently needs to fulfill his desire.

It is important to discover the hidden need of our clients to be able to offer them a solution or, better said, a satisfier made to measure.

To do so we will discover your deepest desires and needs.

How to discover the hidden need of your customers

To discover the hidden needs of our clients, we must go much further than a simple profile by age or price, we must know who this type of person is and what exactly their habits are. This action is called segmenting or segmentation.

To segment, we will begin by proposing a hypothesis that we will later verify, about what the characteristics of our ideal client could be according to the pre-knowledge and experiences that we have with them.

Try to think carefully. Which potential customers are most likely to buy your product or service right away?

Describe features such as:

Age range (Tip: Use ranges between 10 to 20 units/years to avoid wasting time trying to attract too wide ranges like 10 – 80 years)
Sex/gender
Education level
Occupation
Income
Budget
Geographic location

Most important of all, talk to them.

The best way to get to know our ideal customer is to ask them why they buy or don't buy, what they might want to buy in the future, and what other needs they have. This will give us a clear idea of what is important to them.

The more clarity you have regarding your ideal customer, the more focused and effective your marketing efforts will be.

Brian Tracy

#3 Understand pain

Understanding exactly the pain of our customers will allow us to empathize with them and write texts that are more effective in persuading our prospects to buy from us.

Taking a pill to relieve back pain is not the same as taking a pill to relieve the symptoms of nasal congestion. Understanding pain involves listing the client's pain points. This information answers the essential question of: What aspects related to the need that my clients have cause them discomfort or pain?

#4 Create an irresistible offer

When we understand the client's need and pain points, the logical thing would be to think that we are ready to offer our solution, right? But it's not like that, I'm going to ask you to hold the sales horse and hold on here with me a little longer, because I'm going to teach you how to create an irresistible offer that accompanies your solution.

There is a common misunderstanding regarding the offer. Most people think that an offer is a price. However, an offer is actually a set of features that together create value. While the price, on the other hand, is a more tangible aspect that determines the monetary value of the offer.

The offer is characterized by being more intangible and perceptive. This means that there are offers that are perceived as more valuable and others that are not, despite the fact that both may have exactly the same price.

Anatomy of an irresistible offer

Grab their attention with a statement so powerful and impactful that it makes them spit out their coffee. A title that attracts a lot of attention, that is so bold and crazy that the person has to stop to read it. For example: “Would you like your child to have unstoppable discipline, confidence, and focus?” or “Become a professional product designer in 6 weeks or it's free”
Give a completely rational explanation to the bold title that explains how the brand could possibly offer such a thing.
Write and address the client's pain points (what bothers him or his symptoms)
Make clear the credibility of the offer to reduce customer skepticism through social proof such as testimonials, reviews, certifications, press mentions, brands that have worked with the company, etc.
Offer a solution with a rational explanation to it.
Demonstrate the features and benefits of what is offered clearly
Build value and persuade the customer by comparing the "normal" price of this solution and the lower price of our solution.
Present the prospect with few pricing options with upsell strategies so they can compare.
Present multiple payment options to increase convenience.
Add "Premiums" or extra benefits that the service/product includes completely free.
Close any purchase doubt with a powerful guarantee that takes pressure off the customer and puts it on the company, generating confidence that what you buy is going to work for you.
Build more credibility and trust with more carefully chosen testimonials and reviews.
Close our offer with an effective call to action that helps move the customer's feet one step further in the purchase process or directly make the final purchase.

The reality of creating an offer

The most important part of our offer is the title.

People are not going to read the text, people are going to scan the text, that is, they will read it with such speed, that they will only read titles, key points and pieces of information that call their attention.

If the main title of your offer is very conservative like "Cleaning Services in Lima, Peru" the prospect will ignore you and everything you wrote will be lost.

Remember, to create an irresistible offer that our prospects cannot refuse to accept, we will need to have 2 things very clear:

What do your prospects want?
What do they have to do to get what they want?

If we have both aspects crystal clear, it's simply a matter of writing something attached to it to arouse their interest.

#5 Define the personality and heart of the brand

Every brand has personality. If our brand has no personality, essentially we are not going to connect with anyone.

To build your branding, you need to give your brand personality through the 12 brand personality archetypes, which are a structured personality model that makes it easier for us to classify and, in this case, "create" a personality for our brand.

The key to this lies in defining a personality that connects with that of your customers, that makes them feel identified.

If your brand does not have the ability to create some kind of "tribe" or community distinguishable from the others out there; it means that your brand personality needs to be stronger through clear differences.

#6 Design the brand identity

It is not the same to go to a date with an elegant formal suit, well-polished shoes and a glass of wine in hand, than to go with long hair, an open flowered shirt and a surfboard. Both visual appearances and personalities reflect different identities, which serve to attract different individuals.

For the more demanding person, perhaps the man in a suit with the drink in hand gives him an air of mystery and elegance that makes him irresistible, while for the more liberal person, the man with long hair and a surfboard feels like a free soul and sounds like an adventure worth exploring. To build your branding it is important to create an identity for your brand.

If you don't know what brand identity is, I have this article that explains it in depth

And if you want to learn the process of how to create your own professionally, I have this other article that explains the process in depth.

#7 Get qualified traffic

We already have an irresistible brand, now we just need people to know it exists.

To do this, we are going to bring the largest number of people who meet the characteristics of our ideal buyers, to our "conversion point" or rather, where we want the sale to be made.

This can be a landing page of our website where our offer of irresistible value is reflected, a WhatsApp chat where a seller attends you, an email with our offer and a clear call to action or a visit from a physical store. Everything will depend on what is more comfortable for the client.

This action of taking visitors from one place to another is commonly called "traffic" in marketing but the most appropriate way in my eyes to see this is with the word "attention" if you can attract and retain the attention of millions of people, you are more of a marketer than many graduates out there.

There are 2 ways to get qualified traffic:

Inbound Marketing: In simple terms, inbound marketing consists of attracting people through free content of value that is of interest to them.
Outbound Marketing: It consists of going to people through advertisements, cold calls, cold mail, among other things.

The difference between one and the other is that one interrupts and the other attracts. On one hand, inbound marketing brings greater long-term benefits while on the other hand, outbound marketing brings short-term benefits.

Neither is better than the other, regardless of which one you consider the most suitable for your business, you should experiment with both and improve them little by little.

How to build your branding from scratch in 7 steps

To build your brand you have to think of your client as the central axis of the process, it is not worth creating what is "convenient" for the company, because what the company wants is not always what the client wants.

Instead, it is necessary to put emphasis on what the market yearns to have. The thing that makes people pull out their wallets and slam their card on the table. That's what will put money in our pockets with a brand that aims to appeal to those individuals.

If we are conservative, we will obtain regular results at most, if instead we decide to go further and focus on helping and empathizing, we will be able to stand out from the noise with our brand.

Do not forget that to build our branding from scratch we have to: