Brand Identity Breakthrough

How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible

Gregory V. Diehl

• Publisher: Identity Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781945884306
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

Does your business have a story to tell? It should! From the moment you first opened your doors, you began crafting it. With every new product you release, you carve out an even more unique niche in your industry. This all builds up to one thing—brand identity. Does yours stand out from the crowd?

With a decade of experience studying businesses across the world, Diehl has unlocked the key to creating innovative brand identities and distinct business stories. In Brand Identity Breakthrough, you and your small business will learn how to develop a strong brand identity by combining your personality and values with the functionality of your products, becoming an irreplaceable brand and company.

Whether you lead a growing company, or are just starting out, Brand Identity Breakthrough will give you a smarter way to think about product development flow, branding, brand mapping strategy, and business model generation. With proven, and well-organized logic, it will set you on the path to selling more—and at higher prices—giving the customers exactly what they want and sending your profits through the roof.
In Brand Identity Breakthrough, you will learn…

•How to incorporate a unique selling proposition into your branding
•The best methods for selling products to customers as a small business
•How to use business storytelling to sell products in both physical and online marketplaces

Table of Contents

Section I: Why Identity Matters
Chapter 1: Can You Tell a Good Story? (The Importance of Business Storytelling)
Chapter 2: When Good Ideas Fail
Chapter 3: Why Entrepreneurs Fail to See Their Own Value
Chapter 4: Why Others Fail to See Your Value

Section II: Creating Your Brand Identity
Chapter 5: Uncovering Your Core Values
Chapter 6: Developing a Unique Selling Proposition
Chapter 7: Crafting Your Personality Profile
Chapter 8: Knowing Your Target Audience

Section III: Telling Your Story to the World
Chapter 9: How to Sell Who You Are (Your Brand Identity as a Sales Pitch)
Chapter 10: How to Speak with Clarity, Authority, & Authenticity
Chapter 11: How to Display Your Character Through Writing
Chapter 12: How to Educate Your Audience About Your Brand Identity

Section IV: Brand Identity Case Studies
Case Study #1: Rebranding a Whole Industry’s Adversarial Image
Case Study #2: Pre-Seeding a Two-Sided Marketplace for Launch
Case Study #3: Turning a Charitable Project into a Profitable Movement
Case Study #4: Skyrocketing a Personal Brand through Narrative Focus
Case Study #5: Embracing Personality in a Technical Niche

Section V: Resources for Prospective Entrepreneurs
Appendix 1: Entrepreneurial Terms Defined
Appendix 2: 50 Useful Starting Questions for New Entrepreneurs
Appendix 3: Making Money Online

SECTION III: Telling Your Story to the World

Introduction to Telling Your Story to the World

Communication is happening in every shared moment, and in ways that are not always obvious. It happens in the way your hair falls on a given day. It happens in how straight you are standing, or the way you walk into a room. The clothing you wear tells a significant story about who you are. There are so many other things we take for granted about the messages we send out to the world.

Many people don’t want to spend money on a product or a service they can’t identify with. They want to feel a connection of trust based on a sound relationship. The problem with marketing in today’s rapid digital climate is that you only have a few seconds to establish this connection.

Sales is about learning to direct the information you put out towards a specific outcome: getting others to think the way you want them to think about your business. When they agree with you about the value you are offering, they will be ready take the actions you want them to take. This can be done unethically (by tricking someone into a sale with false premises and incomplete information) or ethically (through education and emotional support).

To be an effective communicator is to be absolutely clear in your core message. If your goal is to romantically attract members of the opposite sex, there is a combination of factors which will aid you most in that mission. However, these factors may not be compatible with other goals you have, such as appearing intelligent, intimidating, easygoing, unconventional, or something else entirely. Since you can’t be all things to all people all the time, you have to pick what is important to you and stay consistent with it.

For your brand identity to be effective, it is imperative that you understand the intended outcome of all the subtle information it sends out into the world. In this section of the book, we will focus on turning the core components of your brand identity into a presentation that deserves the attention of your target audience.

Sometimes, the goal of your communications will be the completion of a new customer’s very first purchase. In other contexts, it will be upselling them into something larger than what they initially bought. You will need to know how to motivate people to take immediate action with new information you have handed out.

Maybe you are at a point in your business where you are not focused on immediate cash-for-product sales, but more so on the longer-term goal of reputation building. In this case, your goal will be to plant seeds of trust and authority in the minds of your audience. You will be the first option they turn to when they are faced with a problem you are prepared to solve. Immediate sales and long-term branding are not always compatible, but a wise communicator can accomplish both with a comprehensive messaging strategy.

There will be times when you aren’t concerned about what your consumers think at all. Sometimes you will only need to address other professionals who have no desire to buy from you. Their interest will revolve around your potential for commerce, not as the producer of a specific type of value. They will either see you as a threat, partner, or investment opportunity.

If they view you as a threat, your goal should be to intimidate them enough so that they will not attempt to invade on your market territory. If they view you as a partner, your goal should be to show them how they stand to profit by working with you. If they view you as an investment, your goal should be to demonstrate your competence and viability in the market.

Lazy entrepreneurs limit their communication with consumers to traditional impression-based marketing techniques. They rely on taglines, catchy names, and other superficial branding schemes to create vague associations with their company. Small businesses should instead be educating the world about previously unknown or unavailable opportunities for personal happiness.

By learning how to be a better communicator, you will gain access to a wide new world of opportunities which are only available if you know how to talk in a way that makes others want to listen. Knowledge and ability can only take you so far. It is our relationships with others that make it possible for our individual actions to have greater meaning - but only if you master the art of influence.

Whatever the base of what you are trying to get across, it will only be amplified when you apply the fundamentals of good communication.

Understanding Your Communication Goals

Until you know what you want to accomplish, it’s impossible to measure progress. Before you can begin crafting a communication strategy, you need to have honed your specific identity first. How are you supposed to know what combination of taglines, slogans, symbols, color schemes, and personas will create the most favorable impression in the minds of your target audience if you haven’t analyzed what they are looking for? How can you display your best self if you hardly know who that is?

Last section, we covered the types of questions you need to be asking yourself, and the ways your perspective will have to change, in order to bring your core values to the forefront of your business. These values go on to shape the overall personality of your brand, and how your products, and services can be displayed uniquely to a very specific sector of the market. Since we now understand what we are trying to say, our focus turns to the best ways to say it. This is where we enter the domain of sales and marketing.

There’s a reason why sales and marketing are the bane of many founders. I get it. You’ve worked so hard just developing your products and bringing your business together. Now suddenly you have to convince someone else that your business is worth paying attention to? You have to talk to complete strangers and get them to hand over their money simply because you said so? It’s a loathsome process for people who aren’t natural-born communicators.

Whether you plan to be in charge of your own sales and marketing or not, every founder should understand the fundamentals of their communication strategy. It will be integral to the way you train your employees, bring on new partners, expand your product line, and grow your audience. If nothing else, it should leave you far better prepared to delegate these tasks to the most qualified people in the best possible way.

Let’s make a very important distinction here between sales and marketing, because the two are often vaguely grouped as one process. The truth is that though they are related and complementary, they remain distinct functions of any business. It is possible for a business to do one very well, and almost completely neglect the other. Likewise, you may have a strong talent for one, but be totally hopeless with its counterpart. That’s okay. The key to improvement is understanding where your weaknesses lie, and then systematically improving them.

Sales is the process of converting non-customers into customers, or increasing the purchase quality and frequency of existing customers. It is what creates direct revenue for your business, and in many ways is what makes your business “legitimate”. Put simply, without sales, you don’t have a business.

Marketing is the act of increasing awareness of your brand. Its purpose is to get more people to know who you are, or remind the ones who already do why they should care about your existence. It doesn’t necessarily lead to a direct increase in revenue. Many of the people who know who you are may never actually buy anything from you. It’s a very powerful branding position to be in when even people who will never have any use for what you sell recognize you as a market leader in your industry, or associate you with a specific desirable feature.

Even non-customers who recognize you may contribute to the network effect which passes your brand along until it reaches the mind of an ideal customer.

The reason sales and marketing are often confused for each other or grouped together is because one can directly lead into the other. You need people to be aware of your solution before they can be convinced to buy it. On a small enough scale, both actions can be accomplished at once, almost seamlessly. However, as you grow, it’s going to make more and more sense to segregate the two for greater efficiency in both. To perform both of these tasks, you will need to hone your communication skills.

What you choose to communicate can vary, but it will most likely include some combination of the following:

• Mission and vision statements about why your company exists.
• A message from the founder or CEO about past achievements, experiences, and goals.
• The history of the company (or what lead to its creation).
• Information about the core staff and extended personnel.
• Your current and future product line.
• Promotional events you are planning.

Your message should be personal. It should be about the real people who have helped shape and hone your company to date. Many successful company profiles are written in first person. They talk about the individual’s dreams, hopes, and goals, both within the company and on a personal level. Including other members of your team is crucial to creating a holistic view of your company. Staff profiles should explain what their position is, but also how a particular person has helped shape the company. Great company profiles also include how each staff member can assist the customer.

Whatever your goal is, the skills you acquire here will prove invaluable in both your business and personal life. Anytime you want to get something done that requires the collaboration of other people, effective communication is the catalyst which makes it possible. As you develop your ability to speak, write, and present yourself favorably, make it a point to put these tactics into practice as soon as possible. Not only will you retain the information better, but you will be emotionally encouraged to continue when you see the tangible effects of better communication.

Mastering the art of communication will make people want to work with you, and customers want to buy from you. It’s the single most impactful thing you could change to improve your opportunities.

If you did nothing else well but communicate effectively, you would still go very far in business and in life.

CHAPTER 9: How to Sell Who You Are

Positioning your product or service in the market is about getting enough people to see that the value they will receive is greater than any other way they could spend their money. It’s not just other people in your industry that you are competing with. It is literally every other product on the market, and even every other activity they could be spending their time doing. Money and time remain finite for even the richest and most powerful people in the world. Whenever you spend five dollars on a cup of coffee, that cup is competing with ballet lessons for your daughter, or leather seat covers for your car.

Additionally, each buying decision can be broken down into a series of smaller decisions made in mere moments. A cup of coffee is not just a cup of coffee anymore. Do I want decaf? Do I want a latte? Do I want a cappuccino? Do I want a half-decaf dark roast caramel mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream? Those all fall under different categories of choice within the initial choice to purchase coffee. Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises provided a concentrated study on the mechanics of human decision in his magnum opus, Human Action. He showed how the micro-actions of individual people combine to create market trends within largescale economies.

Selling is when you transfer useful information and emotional motivation to others, in order to get them to take an action in their own best interest which they otherwise would not have taken. It is about helping others help themselves make better decisions in their own subjective pursuit of happiness. When you sell yourself, you are helping someone understand how you can help them improve their own life, and giving them the support they need to overcome any emotional resistance to taking action with you.

An ethical salesperson does not attempt to convince someone to do something they do not believe is in their best interest. However, if you know something would help someone else, wouldn’t you do everything you could to help that person see it themselves? No matter how you currently feel about talking about yourself or your business, this is the attitude you must adopt if you want to be successful in sales. Ultimately, whether or not you personally end up handling the sales for your company, as a leader you still need to know the fundamental strategy for converting new clients and sharing your story.

The title of this chapter has been chosen very deliberately. Put the focus on selling who you are because that’s the ultimate goal of branding. You are presenting an invented identity to the world, and asking everyone to consider it worthy of their attention. You are putting your foot down and saying that you are a valuable entity in the market, and others will benefit enormously by knowing you. So even when you are just pitching a specific product or service produced by your company, you are still representing the overall identity of your brand.

Last section, we talked a lot about how understanding your target audience is just as understanding yourself. Great communication is a two-way process. Whatever words you use in speech or writing need to be...