Brand Fundamentals according to a Corporate Marketing Director

If someone gave you the task of developing a brand from the ground up, where would you start? It can be fun to think about colors and fonts. Catchy slogans. Signage. It'd be tempting to start there. But those are not brand fundamentals.

Like most things in life, though, you must first begin with values and mindset! What's important to your organization – and even more importantly – what's important to your desired customer?

Once you’ve figured out the very heartbeat of your customer, your capabilities as a business, and what value you can offer customers, your brand will naturally begin to emerge.

Developing Target Personas

To really nail this development process, we recommend building target personas that you write out, visualize, and even print out and hang up in your office if you want. Gather all the information you can about your target customer. Dig deep into their daily life. Find our how their timeline intersects with yours. This puts you in a great spot to map out your buyer’s journey and position yourself so that your brand's language, themes, and visuals express exactly that.

The Digital Age Shifted Marketing

The reason we recommend this process is because of a major shift that happened not that long ago (in light of the history of time)

"The internet flipped the script!" –Zach Nelson

The digital age turned sales and marketing on its head. It was no longer as effective for a company to buy airtime that forced consumers to receive information about that brand. It became more important to entice consumers to actively subscribe to the branded content you offered them.

We believe this shift was a positive one. It means smaller businesses could actually get in the game. While they couldn't afford a Super Bowl commercial, they could build a community on Facebook or find new leads by earning trust through valuable email content or blog content. Today, the buyer controls marketing. They should determine what we, as business leaders, do with our sales and marketing.

So, whether you're branding a new business or figuring out you need to rebrand, this SquadTalks episode gets down to the brand fundamentals.

Also, our special guest, Zach eats, sleeps, and breaths marketing. We were honored to have him and believe his thoughts are worth your time. Let us know what you think of the episode. And if you have questions about branding, you can send them to us here.

Watch the full episode below.