Beginning in the Beginning – The Branding Platform
Before you say ANYTHING, it’s important to have a firm understanding of what you should be saying and to whom. It helps to have a foundation or platform upon which your key messages can be developed, but to do this, you sometimes have to back up to the beginning. Here are some questions to ask yourself in forming your branding platform:
1. What is the underlying purpose or passion that drives your business or organization?
2. Who is your ideal customer? What expectations will they have when choosing your product, service or experience?
3. What differentiates you from your competition? Does this point of differentiation matter to the ideal customer?
If you are happy with the answers to those questions, you’re ready to move on to a positioning statement; if not, perhaps you have some bigger decisions to make. Here’s a very simple outline for a positioning statement:
For [your ideal customer definition], [brand name] offers [your product, service or experience] that delivers [the ideal customer’s expectations] in a way that is [differentiators].
Now take a look at your current website, as an example. Does it communicate the current positioning statement through the use of text, images or other elements? If not, give some thought to what you can do differently to communicate this message.
