It’s not just an idea that matters. You need the right name, look, and marketing plan to take your business from an idea to a functioning, growing brand. Read on to learn what we do!
Are you familiar with business terms like brand strategy, client acquisition, SEO optimization, but not quite sure what they mean and how they apply to you? That’s ok! It’s a lot to take in and a lot to learn. (Read our blog on these definitions) No entrepreneur is expected to be able to do everything and if they try to, chances are that they won’t do everything very well. It’s perfectly normal to seek help- whether from a mentor, an assistant, or an agency that you can outsource to.
At PlanIt Branding, we don’t provide you with an assistant per say, BUT through our paid consulting services and the brand culture of our business that prides itself on the idea of a like-minded ohana, we are able to act as a guiding mentor and a helpful ear. We also, of course, can serve as an agency to literally take those tasks off your hands with a level of expertise and professionalism that will only benefit your brand.
But let’s start with the basics.
1) What is a brand?
2) How do you create your own brand strategy?
3) What does it mean that we focus on brand building?
Your brand is what your business is all about and how you want to be presented to the world. You create your strategy based on the basis of your business and your target market. At PlanIt, we focus on all that goes into building your brand, from inception to scaling, we are here for the ride!
It’s easier to work with examples so here you go….
MARY AND HER SUNSCREEN IDEA (*** WE FULLY MADE THIS UP)
Mary always wanted to start a sunscreen brand that filled a hole in the market that she saw.
(Businesses are often most successful if they satisfy a need rather than simply capitalize on a current trend. Unless your plan is to create, scale, and sell!)
She did her research...
1) She had noticed that there were awesome looking packages of sunscreen on the market that smelled amazing, but were harmful to the environment and not great when it came to sensitive skin and clogging pores.
2) She saw some great clean products for the ocean, but they smelled horrible and often clogged pores.
3) She saw some that mildly addressed all her concerns, but the packing was in no way sustainable and they weren’t water or sweat resistant for all her outdoor activities.
Mary set out to create a reef safe sunscreen, that smelled amazing, didn’t clog pores, was water resistant AND was in a really attractive, refillable container with a refill product that was shipped in biodegradable packaging. (AMAZING RIGHT, SHOULDN’T MARY MAKE THIS???)
Mary was a chemist and it still took her years to perfect the actual product, and many more months to find sustainable packaging options- luckily some of her chemistry knowledge helped her to weed out the greenwashing packages and know what would truly be the most beneficial for the planet. But when it came to creativity, she was lost. She also knew that without the right packaging design, the right name, the right logo, the right marketing, the right website, in order words, THE RIGHT BRANDING, her incredible product would flop.
Sad truth- an incredible product can still fail if the brand quality doesn’t match the product quality. So what did Mary do? She found PlanIt!!
Mary shared her product with us. She explained why she created what she created. She explained the problems solved through her product. PlanIt could tell she cared about the planet and hadn’t failed to recognize that there are other factors (smell and effect on the skin) that are equally important for business growth.
The first thing to think about in terms of the branding was the name. What encapsulated Mary and her product?
Once the name was agreed upon between PlanIt and Mary, the next step was logo, followed by colors and fonts. Once again, what encapsulated Mary and her business, but this time, what ALSO fit with the newly chosen name of her business?
Next, what would the package label itself look like? Based upon her research, she had found the container shape and size that was the most eco-friendly. So now, how could the selected creative elements be turned into a label that fit nicely with the package that the sunscreen would come in?
Once those items were selected, the next plan was- figuring out where to use these branding assets and making a to-list of other things needed prior to product launch!
For the to do list, PlanIt told Mary to do the following:
Come up with a list of words and phrases that your target customers will input into Google that you hope will lead them to your website. Using this list of keywords, we will perform a keyword analysis
Web design. We suggest the following pages for your website > Homepage, About, Shop, Sustainability, Contact. Templates will be created for each of these pages with a list of questions to help us write the copy for each page. We will need responses to these questions in order to write the pages and the meta descriptions of each page. Keywords to be integrated across all aspects of the website for SEO
If Mary hadn’t already done a true SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), competitive analysis, and target market research prior to product completion- NOW is the time! Now that Mary knows exactly what her product will be and how it will look, she is also able to better conduct her SWOT and competitive analysis. She can also look at what social media channels her competition is using and how effective those channels are in terms of engagement and popularity.
After the above analysis, there should be more fire under Mary and a greater understanding of what her brand will need in order to compete and stand out from the rest. Mary now needs to come up with a monthly budget for marketing. This will include paying someone to help her with social media and money to put towards Instagram ads.
Set aside an additional budget for website creation
Set aside an additional budget for content creation for your website, ads, and the first 3 months of your social media strategy
Once your product and website photography is complete, Mary is ready to set up her Instagram shopping and PlanIt can finish her website and launch.
Set up a sales plan for the next year to help with benchmarks and direction. For Mary’s product, this meant making a list of local markets where she could pop up with testers and product to sell. It meant finding local shops in her immediate area that would most likely want to carry her product and going in with samples and easy to process information about the science behind the product and the packaging. It also meant making a list of ideal channels of distribution- kinda like your reach schools when filling out college applications. No sales meetings or markets should be attended without having an Instagram set up, and ideally a website as well. There NEEDS to be a secondary way for customers to purchase besides that market or store.
Set aside a budget for video content. Remember that Instagram favors video and TikTok and YouTube Shorts are two of the best ways to attract more customers.
NOW for how PlanIt was able to use the Brand assets it created for Mary….
Make a list of Instagram highlight categories and design highlight covers in Canva
Make an Instagram friendly logo
Make and store a brand guide into Canva to be used on posts and stories
Map out the social media plan for the next month at minimum using the new content, and any specific promotions (sales, holidays, product launches, scheduled business announcements)
Create stories using the brand colors, fonts, and new images that correlate with the social media schedule
Make any other background and brand assets needed for pages such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, etc.
Create a plan for videos and the topics for each video so they have purpose. Shot lists, topics, and audience should be mapped out. Captions need to be written for any videos that will function as ads as well. The way the videos are filmed and any text on screens will correlate with the branding strategy
Ok, we won’t give away any more of our strategies or secrets BUT hopefully you get the idea of what PlanIt can offer Mary and how much work Mary actually needs to do as well, in order to make her business as successful as possible!
Contact us today if you identify with Mary and want to work with PlanIt! :)
