How to Build a Brand and Reach Market Fit
The questions of how to build a brand or how to create a solid start for their vision should be right on the top of the list to do with each Founder.
In this article, I’m going to share with you all about Buyer Personas. The methods that we used when we started building a brand identity. And also some of the steps that we take to optimize what a successful brand has to offer, in other words… reaching Market Fit.
Let’s make some assumptions: First, an average person will typically have more than 6000 thoughts in a single day according to new research into the human brain.
Secondly, let’s take into consideration this about every founder. They take at least 10% of their time (if not the whole company) thinking about ways how to optimize or innovate in their business.
Are you one of the 1.5 Billion people using Gmail every weekday to check your personal or working email? Well, Gmail was one of the results of those innovation initiatives in Google.
Now, taking both assumptions we could come up with a third assumption that you could have up to 600 ideas in the day to improve your business.
And let’s face it!
As a Founder, you probably are one of the many that wakes up every day with a new idea in mind about how to do something better with your team or by yourself.
Normally, such founders, tend to try to do as much as possible at once. And yes, I know! As a founder, you need to use many hats to build your brand. Multitasking from one issue to the other may require your attention.
Nothing wrong with that… in the starting phase.
Eventually, you need to figure out how to select the tasks that move the needle of growth in your company and focus your time mainly on those, while delegating other tasks that may be still important yet may be done by others in your team.
But what has this to do with how to build a brand?
The first steps you take to build your brand will become very useful later on, for example, at the moment of selecting which of the 600 ideas to follow or which of the tasks to focus on and which to delegate.
Building a brand is also about building a set of guidelines that could help you to make faster decisions.
Think of this Experiment where the main goal was: Becoming a Vegetarian.
Back in 2001, I became a vegetarian for 3 years. The reason? Well, I was dating a vegetarian girl. I bet, there are many out there that relate to the story. Once I knew my goal was to be a vegetarian, I could go to the store and select quite easily the type of products I could purchase.
Meat? No! Kitchen? Salami? No…..
I would walk through the supermarket without hesitating about what kind of products I should choose or not. Soon I had my very own ¨Route¨.
That certainly had an effect on the time spent on groceries. I wouldn´t say on money spent because something eating healthy can be way more expensive.
Now, think about your brand, and having the ability to have a Route in mind, which could help you navigate through the ocean of decisions that you have to do daily:
The products or services you deliver: Do they comply with your main goal? Do they meet your criteria?
The people you work with: How do you, onboard new employees? How do you select new team members? Do you have a Talent Management System?
The Solutions you acquire: Do you need a new CRM? Are you using the right tracking methods?
The list can go on and on. And if you don´t have a way to reduce your variables, you may as well, go around in circles for days, months, or worse…
After spending years developing brands for Europe and USA, we tested all the methods we could get our hands-on.
Right here I´m going to share with you 4 possible methods for you to decide from and I will share with you the one that we prefer here at Inspiral Growth.
There are no quick hacks when it comes to the DNA of your brand, as we like to call it. You must do the work, put some time and effort! After all, no one knows your vision the way you do.
We repeatedly express to our clients the same: The only way we can create together what´s is on your mind, is if you share your goals and thoughts with us.
So here are the 4 Methods I promised.
Method #1: The Marketing Agency Method
Years ago, long before Inspiral Growth, when launching a new Platform called CHAMBA into the market we reached out to a number of well-known Agencies and these were the most common steps these Agencies recommended to start with :
- What is your vision?
- What’s your mission statement?
- Which Values do you want to represent?
- Which are your USPs?
- What is the personality of your brand?
- Which is your Target Customer?
- What are the reasons to believe in your brand, your brand voice?
Method #2: The Accelerator Method
As the years passed by, we entered with one of our software companies to an accelerator. A well-known accelerator shared with us, several steps on how to do it better them.
And this method started like this:
- Describe your client demographics
- Describe their professional life
- Describe their hobbies and interests
- Why do they need your solution?
- How would they learn and adopt your solution?
Method #3: The King of Sales Method
I came across this method and it has all the key elements of an outstanding and 100% guaranteed Tool. I must say that here at Inspiral Growth we only tend to use method #4 because we are a Growth Hacking Agency yet if not we would most certainly choose the King of Sales Method.
- Where does your buyer hangs out and congregate?
- Where does your buyer gets informed?
- What are their biggest frustrations and challenges?
- What are their dreams and hopes?
- What is their preferred form of communication?
- What kind of language do they use?
- What does a day in their life look like?
- What makes them happy?
If you go over these questions and create a summary for yourself, you most definitely have all the tools to make good decisions and create great content for your clients as well.
Method # 4: The Growth Hacking Method to brand your Business
In my opinion, especially in the first 2 methods, you would be focusing more on creating Buying Personas to establish your brand. Yet something we need to remember is that Buyer Personas are assumptions.
And if your data is to build them, you are also using limited information. It´s created from the average of a set of data in a certain period of time.
Statistical Inference or just plain statistics are assumptions we create to deal with the unknown. And before going too much into the subject of Business Analytics. Let’s just remember that you can not create something certain out of uncertainty.
Therefore we are mainly creating assumptions. They assist us in the decision-making process that every business owner or leader has to deal with daily.
Buying Personas are a great start for us as well, yet we also combine them with another method that we call JOB TO BE DONE to create your brand story. Here we define that as the job. Your brand must do it to solve the real issue at hand with your Buyer. Furthermore, it helps you define the way you communicate your job to be done. In order to reach your Market Fit. Here is a great article about it in the Harvard Business Review.
How to build a strong brand with this information?
Back in 2015 together with a team of investors and a very young team, we brought the brand Ripley’s Believe It or Not! To Amsterdam. For those that may not know, Ripley´s Believe It or Not! Is a brand that was created back in 1918 by Robert Ripley.
A brand that nowadays shares with the world more than 90 attractions. Also millions of best-selling yearly books, tv-shows and much more.
Imagine building a brand that can pass 100 years. Not an easy task… But also not impossible!
So Believe it or Not, if you are looking for how to build a brand, here are several methods that can help with it. Moreover, with the team of Inspiral Growth, we decided to share all our knowledge and our past experiences.
So be sure to follow us on Instagram and Youtube to find out more about Growth Hacking and how to scale your Business!
Here, we are all about learning as well. Therefore if you wish to get our feedback about your minimum viable product?. Then sent us an email to info@inspiralgrowth.com
Stay Bold!
Juan Carlos Z.
CEO & Growth Hacker.
