In today’s hyper-competitive world, launching a technology business takes more than a quirky name, an artsy logo and a good product. In the race to define the future, the common mistake made by many tech startups is to focus too heavily on the short-term rush of product marketing and neglect the bigger picture of brand development. In fact, you’d be amazed at just how many startups attempt to drive their business forward without a proper brand in place at all.
For true, long-lasting success, your startup requires a brand strategy with as much attention paid to it as the evolution of your tech. An impactful brand demands significant effort, including market research, competitive analysis, creative workshops and multiple rounds of development. It’s not something that can be improvised or dealt with half-heartedly. Your brand strategy is the solid foundation that will fully support everything your tech business aspires to do — so how to make a good one?
Step #1: Define your core values
The core values of a company can be described as the foundational anchor of the brand strategy and relate to the beliefs that you, as a technology business, stand for.
Core values are how you communicate the various attributes that you find most important, and unlike your business aims which define what you hope your tech business will achieve, they can be likened more to “promises” for how your business will conduct itself.
Your values can be what sets your technology business apart from others in the landscape. They can help you to create meaningful, long-lasting connections with your customers who share your same values, and thus can even be more important than having the best product or service in the industry.
Defining your tech company’s core values requires a close examination of your organisation’s culture and vision. Take good time to consider how to use your values to convey what your company hopes to achieve and serve.
Step #2: Develop your brand positioning statement
The next step to creating a killer brand strategy for your technology startup is to create a strategic positioning statement. This is exactly what it says on the tin — it helps position your brand and solidify its identity within the market. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors and helps influence the way your target audience perceives your brand. This is where you take ultimate control over how your technology startup is viewed through the messages you put out around your product or service.
The concept of market positioning first came to light in 1969 by Jack Trout and was later popularised in his book ‘Positioning – The Battle for Your Mind’ in 1981. In this book, Trout and co-author, Al Ries, define market positioning strategy as a “battle to create a unique impression” in a customer’s mind so that they associate something distinctly desirable with your brand.
Before you get to crafting your brand positioning statement, sit down with a nice cup of coffee and your laptop and have a think about the following aspects of your brand:
- Who do you serve?
- What do you offer them?
- How do you offer it to them?
- How does this compare to current offers?
Step #3: Clearly define your ideal customer profile
Technology startups failing to reach their sales goals often have the same thing in common: they haven’t nailed down their ideal customer profile.
In a nutshell, an ideal customer profile relates to how your business would describe the type of customer that would benefit from and gain the most value from your product or service. It’s a description of future customers that have the characteristics and behaviours of your most important success stories.
It’s important to build a detailed picture of your ideal customer in order to understand them as best as possible. It’s this understanding that will allow you to build authentic relationships, provide the most value, and ultimately, make the most sales. You may want to consider the following:
- Age
- Location
- Hobbies
- Job title
- Income
- Purchasing habits
- Goals or motivations
- Challenges or pain points
Step #4: Create a brand promise
A brand promise is an extension to your brand positioning, covered in step #2. If we think of brand positioning as the fertile soil that allows a technology startup to grow and thrive, the brand promise can be likened to the delicious fruit — the benefit that ultimately attracts the target audience to the product or service.
Apple’s brand promise of “Think Different” is one of the most well-known slogans of all time, and has played a key role in the technology company’s raging success. It relates to their guarantee to deliver great products based on seeing the world a little differently, and their promise to inspire their customers to do the same.
What’s important to remember is that a promise is only good if it is kept! If an organisation fails to deliver on its promise to its customers, then its reputation (and subsequently, its sales) is likely to take an impact. But when kept, a brand promise will allow a business to create a better customer experience and assume a market leadership position through the value they deliver.
Step #5: Have a well-defined visual identity
Us humans are each individually made up of a set of characteristics that make us unique, memorable and recognisable to others around us — from our names, personalities and quirks to the colour of our hair. Just how unique identities play an essential role in our society and how we connect as humans, it’s equally important for technology businesses to have a well-defined visual identity.
For brands, a visual identity relates to everything from your logo and brand colours, through to your chosen typography used throughout your communications. Your overarching visual identity gives you the opportunity to stand out amongst your competitors. It’s often the first impression your target audience receives of your brand, impacting them on an emotional level, and thus, it’s vital you get it right.
A vital step in developing a brand strategy is to develop a brand style guide. A brand style guide will give you, your team, plus external businesses you may work with clear instructions on creating a consistent visual identity. Luckily for you, we’ve written a whole blog about the importance of brand guidelines. Check it out here.
Step #6: Review crucial customer touchpoints
Did you know almost 89 percent of companies now compete primarily on customer experience? The quality of care and attention to detail is becoming increasingly important to today’s consumers. And with a wealth of options out there, they simply won’t hesitate to abort your business and jump ship to a competitor who offers a far greater customer experience.
Your customers are the very core of your brand. They choose to come to your business because you are able to solve their problems. With this in mind, this next step of reviewing customer touchpoints is essential to build a winning technology brand strategy.
A customer or brand touchpoint refers to the point of contact between your audience and your brand. It’s any bit of interaction or communication between the two and includes elements such as your brand website, your email newsletter, your social media platforms, and your in-store experience. Each and every time a customer comes into contact with your brand in any of these ways, they will garner some kind of impression. Whether it’s good or bad it is completely in your hands and even the slightest slip-up can have colossal impacts on your technology business. So, take the time to truly understand where your branding efforts will have the most impact. From this, you can prioritise these areas, continuously making improvements in order to ensure your customers have the best experience in the industry.
Step #7: Develop your brand voice
Up next in our 8-step guide to building a technology brand strategy is the importance of finding clarity on your brand’s voice. In a nutshell, the term “brand voice” refers to the unique personality of a businesses communications, and encompasses the words and language you use.
Just imagine you are at a networking event, and one speaker, in particular, stands out to due to their superb storytelling techniques. From the tone of their voice and the flow of their words to their infectious personality — all of this combines to leave a lasting impression and awesome experience.
Now extrapolate that speaker into your brand voice. If your brand was human, what kind of person would they be? What would be their key personality traits? What kind of language and personality would they convey on a consistent basis?
All of the above encompasses your brand voice. This unique personality should be woven into all of your brand communications, from your website copy and social media posts to your internal company announcements.
Step #8: Schedule in a regular brand audit
Now for the final step: ensuring you build and schedule in a regular audit of your technology brand. According to Brandwatch, a brand audit is “a detailed analysis that shows how your brand is currently performing compared to its stated goals, and then to look at the wider landscape to check how that performance positions you in the market.”
In order to ensure your brand strategy matches your goals, you should schedule in a quarterly audit whereby you spend a good couple of hours working through the below questions:
- How effective is our visual identity at reflecting our core values?
- What kind of improvements can be made to further improve our brand strategy in order to get the best results?
- Do our customer touchpoints effectively communicate and engage our target audience?
- Can we experiment with our brand voice to more accurately reflect our brand mission?
Brand audits are so important in the journey to creating a successful, long-lasting technology brand as they enable you to get into the routine of constantly improving and evolving your brand strategy.
There we have it — our 8-step process on how to build a technology brand strategy. Building businesses that endure takes significant planning and effort. The most loved companies of all time truly understand the importance of creating and nurturing a solid brand strategy. If you need help creating a brand strategy that bangs, our team of marketing-obsessed experts are right here to help. Get in touch today at hello@growwithhde.com.