Building your product or service into a brand - Part I

Feb 15, 2011

For anyone who is in business, building your product or service into a brand is a big step to create awareness and increase potential prospects and customers for your product. This will be the first part article on brand building.

We will talk about some of the basic concepts of brand building and what you need to think about when you are building a brand, the further parts of the article which will come out soon, will focus on potential strategies you could use to build your brand both low cost and with some cost to increase your market reach that includes public relations and advertising strategies.

Let’s look at some basics first for building your product or service into a brand

Critical to brand building is to understand some basic concepts that are used to develop strategy. There are three basic concepts:

1. Brand Positioning.

This is the strategy of how you want the general public to perceive your brand in their mind. When they think of a particularly service or industry, how do you want them to think of your product.

For example Coke wants you to think of their product every time you are really thirsty and position their product as a really refreshing thirst quencher. And for some people it works, they always want a coke to relax and refresh or quench their thirst.

Positioning also works to improve market share. With some companies their positioning strategies has resulted in first time recall in the mind of consumers for that particular industry.

For example

• What is the first soft drink that comes to your mind? – Coke
• What is the first toothpaste brand that comes to your mind?- in some countries it would be Colgate in others maybe crest
• What is the first brand of cornflakes that come to your mind? – Kellogg’s
• What is the first handphone brand that comes to mind? – blackberry or Iphone.

Strategic Positioning works in different ways to build a brand

First there must be a unique area or service that you are providing that others cannot do as well as you (mostly in the industry). Sometimes it could be a combination of a product with a service or some extra value.

Please remember positioning is about perception, how do you want your target audience or target customers to perceive your brand?

Implementation Exercise

Can you think of your own unique positioning strategy to build your brand?

here are some guidelines

1. How are your products or your positioning of products unique?
2. Is it really different from the industry?
3. How can the positioning strategy create value for the target market or customers you are trying to reach?

NOTE: A positioning strategy is usually written in a statement but it is NOT a tagline, it is a strategy. Please do not think of making it flow well with words when you are defining it. Think strategically first!