In this post, we\u2019ll be sharing some tips and strategies to help you to build your brand. These insights all come from our new podcast series \u2014 it\u2019s called Breaking Brand and it\u2019s out there for you to listen to right now<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before we jump into some strategies and tactics for creating a brand your customers will truly care about, let\u2019s first look at what exactly a brand is.\u00a0<\/p>\n The word \u201cbrand\u201d is used a lot in marketing today. But what exactly <\/em>does brand mean? That question that might sound simple\u2026 but is actually pretty complex, and there isn\u2019t a one-size-fits-all answer.<\/p>\n David Ogilvy describes a brand as \u201cthe intangible sum of a product\u2019s attributes.\u201d<\/p>\n Marty Neumeier, an author and speaker who writes about branding and innovation, says<\/a> \u201ca brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.\u201d<\/p>\n And Camille Baldwin, one of the Pattern Brands founding team, and star of Breaking Brand<\/a>, says \u201cbrand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.\u201d<\/p>\n Brand to me is identity. It’s all of the things that make up identity, your values, your principles, who you are, your characteristics and your intention.<\/p>\n Camille Baldwin, VP of Brand, Pattern Brands<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So to summarize\u2026 Your brand is the identity of your business, and how it makes people feel.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s dive into some takeaways from Breaking Brand to help you build a buzzworthy brand that stands out against your competitors.<\/p>\n Most people are really good at explaining the \u201cwhat\u201d and the \u201chow\u201d of their business. For example, say you\u2019re an accountancy company, describing the what and the how is pretty simple\u2026<\/p>\n And the thing that will help one accountancy company stand out from its competitors is moving from the what and the how to the why.<\/p>\n The <\/strong>\u201cwhy\u201d<\/strong><\/em> is what will make a potential customer choose your business over another. The \u201cwhy\u201d is your differentiator.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In general, consumers aren\u2019t too fussed about how you do your work \u2014 the tools you use, your internally processes, and things like that. What consumers care about is \u201cwhy does this business matter in my life?\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n And to go back to the accountancy example \u2014 we already explained the what and the how \u2014 but the \u201cwhy\u201d might not be so obvious. For example, if an accountancy company mostly serves small businesses, the \u201cwhy\u201d might freeing up time for the business owner to spend with family and friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n Customer research is a great place to start.<\/p>\n At Buffer we often do research interviews with customers<\/a> to learn how our product helps them, and to better understand how they describe the benefits of Buffer. We\u2019ve even had teammates spend the day with customers at their offices to see first-hand how Buffer fits into their routines and workflows.<\/p>\n And in Breaking Brand,<\/a> Emmet Shine, co-founder of Pattern Brands, talks about the importance of knowing the customer when it comes to building a brand consumers will care about. <\/p>\n Before starting Pattern Brands, Emmett helped over 50 businesses launch to market, and one of those businesses was Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain selling healthy salads and grain bowls.<\/p>\n When working on the Sweetgreen brand and trying to understand its customers, Emmett and his team spent countless hours at Sweetgreen restaurants. They would watch how the staff would prepare salads, listen to how customers would place orders and immerse themselves in how the company works. <\/p>\n Essentially, they were trying to understand every tiny detail about what made Sweetgreen unique and special.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This enabled the team to craft a brand that really emphasised what customers were looking for from Sweetgreen and helped them to find their \u201cwhy\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now Sweetgreen has over 75 restaurants and reportedly generated in excess of \u00a3100 million in 2018. So they clearly have a brand that fits what consumers are looking for. <\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve done your customer research, you can begin to think about the various types of benefits your business offers consumers.<\/p>\n In episode one of Breaking Brand<\/a>, Pattern\u2019s VP of Brand, Camille Baldwin shares how the brand pyramid framework can help you to define those benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brand pyramids have been around since the late nineties, but still play a key role in brand strategy. Pyramids help you to answer fundamental questions about your business and its place in the market.\u00a0Here’s an example brand pyramid from Insead Knowledge<\/a>:<\/p>\n Three of the key elements of any brand pyramid are the technical, functional and emotional benefits <\/strong>your business offers consumers.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the bottom of your pyramid, you\u2019re thinking about the technical benefits<\/strong> of your brand (labeled ‘Features and attributes’ in the above image). Essentially this will help you to define what you do as a company.\u00a0At this stage you\u2019ll want to ask questions like: How is this business benefiting the consumers? How will it make money? What are we offering?\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, at Buffer we might say the technical benefit of our product is to manage all of your social media content and profiles in one place.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, with the technical benefits of your brand defined, it\u2019s time to look at the functional benefits<\/strong> you can offer consumers.\u00a0Functional benefits are essentially what your customers get when they buy your product or service.<\/p>\n Functional benefits tend to focus on things like how a product can improve your life, help you stay connected to others or help you to make forward progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n At Buffer, a functional benefit might be not having to hit publish manually every-time you want to share to social media.\u00a0Or in the case of a car: a big, spacious family car will offer the functional benefit of space for your whole family to travel in comfort.\u00a0<\/p>\n Next up, are emotional benefits<\/strong>. And these are really what makes one brand stand out from another.<\/p>\n Emotional benefits are how your brand makes someone feel based on the stories you tell consumers.\u00a0<\/p>\n One emotional benefit of Nike, for example, is that its equipment will make you feel like a professional athlete. And at Buffer we might say the emotional benefit of our product is peace of mind knowing that your content will be posted to social media platforms at exactly the right time every time.\u00a0<\/p>\n As you go through everything you\u2019ve learned during your customer research phase, start looking out for emotion-based words your customers, or potential customers, use to describe your company or the problem you\u2019re solving.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whenever someone says \u201cI feel\u201d or \u201cit made me.. happy, relaxed, proud, or healthy\u201d, for example, this helps you to identify the emotional benefits your company delivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just Do It, Think Different, I\u2019m Lovin\u2019 It\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n Those are all examples of great brand taglines.\u00a0By saying just two or three words, I bet you knew exactly which businesses I was talking about. And that\u2019s the power of being able to boil your message down to something simple, and memorable.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buffer.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/facebook_feed_600x314@2x.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\nWhat exactly<\/em> is a brand?<\/h2>\n
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4 Ways to build a memorable brand <\/h2>\n
1. Know what your consumers care about<\/h3>\n
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So how<\/em> do you find your why?\u00a0<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buffer.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/sweetgreen.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n2. Find the technical, functional, and emotional benefits of your business<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buffer.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/patrick_mork-brand_pyramid.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nTechnical benefits <\/h4>\n
Functional benefits<\/h4>\n
Emotional benefits<\/h4>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>3. Craft a simple tagline and message<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/buffer.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Nike-instagram.png\")
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