Week 3 Part B: Developing a Brand
Developing a brand is absolutely critical
to the success of any business. Not only
is developing a brand important, but being able to embody that brand in just about
everything a business does will often determine if a business is going to be
able to survive for any significant length of time. A brand is the personification of a business
that enables it to be recognized and be appreciated by its customers and potential
future customers/sales. A brand essentially
answers the questions of “who are you?” and what do you represent?” on a meaningful
level of connection and understanding. A
brand can be a powerful advertising tool as it allows customers to quickly connect
and identify with the business on a personal and emotional level.
However, if a company has a
confusing brand message, or even worse, operates completely against its brand,
it can quickly lose its brand connection with customers and eventually lose sales.
For example, if REI (which is known to
be an environmentally friendly company) was found to be conducting its
operations in a way which disregarded environmental concerns, it would most
likely lose a good portion of its customer base, regardless of the high quality
of its products. Customers want to be
able to identify with (as in the case of REI) a business that not only makes
good products or services but just as importantly represents their values and
beliefs. In another example, the branding
of “American Made” appeals to a certain demographic of customers, but just
image if a business championing that brand was found out to be using mostly
foreign parts…chances are that many of its customers simply would go elsewhere
for similar products made in the USA.
In the case of my fictitious (and hopefully
future) online business, My Fitness Revival, I will have to consider
many aspects of branding, especially before I start developing fitness protocols,
uploading content, and typing out my menu list of services. In their article, “Building a
brand - a step-by-step guide”, an Adobe Experience Cloud Team (2023) delves
into the process of building a brand from start to finish; and they discuss in 10
key steps:
3.
Define
your brand’s purpose and position
4.
Develop
a personality and brand voice
8.
Design
your brand look and logo
9.
Integrate
your brand into your business
10. Don’t
be afraid to rebrand
Cleary, developing My Fitness
Revival’s brand in its entirety is going to take some extensive forethought
and long hours of research that far exceeds the scope of this blog. However, to get started with my branding vision,
let’s take just a look at a couple of key elements from above. To begin with, identifying my audience will
be crucial if I want to gain a foothold in a niche market. A quick search on Google reveals that the global
virtual fitness market is currently valued in excess of $28 billion USD and growing.
If I am looking to gain a foothold in the industry, I will need to look for a
distinct entry point and start off by taking small bites. My Fitness Revival will be oriented
towards people who are in the middle-aged category (45-60+), and who, for whatever
reason, fell out of their ideal vision of fitness and wellness and now want to
make beneficial changes in their life. My target audience will be further
narrowed down to those people that are looking for a personal trainer/wellness
coach, but don’t have the time, resources, or proximity to go into a physical
fitness location. To begin with, I could
narrow the scope of my niche down even further to people that might be able to
better identify with me, such as retired or former military service
members. I think it is important when
starting out that your business have a narrow focus/niche, and if successful, can
grow from there…vice the other way around.
To jump down to #4 on the list of
10 above, create your brand story. In
creating my brand story, and as founder of my business, I could use my own
personal story of my fitness/wellness decline after I got out of the military
and how I was able to climb out of a state of despair and depression to a much happier/healthier
version of myself today. I recently have
been reading and listening to a lot of content from Brene Brown, a researcher
and podcaster who champions the power of vulnerability and finding the courage
to be vulnerable in life. Her main
thesis is that if a person is authentically honest and transparent with themselves
and those around them (vulnerable positions to be in), then whomever the
audience might be will have a much more empathetic and mutual understanding of
that person. In turn, if people have the
courage to embrace their imperfections, they are much more likely to be happy
and to grow from their experiences. I think that in my branding for My Fitness
Revival, I will need embrace and share my own personal experiences so that my
niche market will be able to trust and grow with me in their fitness and wellness
journeys.
Certainly,
I have only touched the surface of what it takes to develop a business
brand. Eventually I will need to dive
much deeper into all 10 of the brand building steps if I want to build out a proper
brand. At this point in the branding of
my fictitious My Fitness Revival, I mostly just have some random
thoughts bouncing around in my head. To
touch back on the Adobe Experience Cloud Team article, building a brand can
(and should be) a very demanding and time-consuming task. I think building a brand should be like building
the strategic vision for the business…who are you, what do you do, and where do
you want to go. If a business doesn’t get the strategic vision right up front, they
most likely will be heading off in the wrong direction far too often and having
to come back to rebrand themselves.
Reference
“Building a brand – a step-by-step guide” by Adobe Experience
Cloud, 23 January 2023. https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/how-to-build-a-brand
Comments
Post a Comment