Launch a Brand: Ideas from Experience
I’ve been approached quite a few times over the years by friends, family, and acquaintances asking for help to launch a new brand. With my experience in online marketing, it stands to reason I would have some useful advice. Throwing modesty aside, I do.
What do you need to consider when you launch a brand?
- You are not Nike. It took the folks at Nike over 20 years to become an overnight success. The same will hold for you too. I was just reading an article today about the founders of Vineyard Vines. It’s in the April 30, 2018, edition of Forbes magazine if you are interested in reading it. The founders of Vineyard Vines were selling ties in the parking lots at Martha’s Vineyard in 1998. Fast forward 20 years and they are doing about $500M in sales. It takes time to grow, so plan for it. Oh, one more, take a look at Starbucks. There is a great book about the founder Howard Schultz called Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. It’s a really good book, but for our purposes here, the short answer is 1987.
- You need awareness. Online marketing today provides us an opportunity to measure our success. We look at visits, leads, conversions, and other data to gauge our success. This is all fine and great, but it doesn’t hold up when we are working on branding. Branding success is built on awareness. You need eyeballs, recognition, and association. You want people to know what your brand is and you need to position it in their minds. Buy some eyeballs. Get into Google’s search results, buy Google ads, use their retargeting, advertise on YouTube, and put your ads on Facebook. Get out there. Quick note: You will need cash. You will need quite a bit of cash.
- Build a nice website. You will need it. Your prospects will want to learn more about you, your brand, your offering, your culture, your jobs, your philosophy, and your policy on bringing pets to work. The last one is a bit of a joke, but also a bit of a truth in today’s world. Make your website informative. Make sure your site is fast. Give people a way to learn about you and interact with you.
- For goodness sake, grab your social profiles. You need to be on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+. These need to be company or business accounts, not necessarily your personal accounts. Post and post often. Show who you are and what you are about, because the world needs to know and they will want to know.
An Overnight Success
As I mentioned above, launching a brand takes a lot of time. Be prepared to stay in it for the long haul. The first few years (yes years) will be rough. You will be trying to find yourself. You will be looking for a voice. Your business will be focused on the initial concept, sourcing, inventory (maybe), distribution, your image, cash flow, early investment, trying to stay afloat, and more. Take time to work through each of those areas. Make sure your business is good and your operations are better.
Let me ask you a good question. Could you handle huge orders if they started coming in all of a sudden? Most people’s initial reaction is yes, but then they think about it a bit more. Let’s say you sell coffee. Let’s say you roast that coffee, grind it, and then bag it. In our hypothetical situation, you have a local grocery store chain that agrees to give you shelf space. All of a sudden you have the need to place thousands of bags of coffee across your local region in these supermarkets. Can you do it? How long will it take you? The thought of that first sale has certainly slowed me down before and you should give it some real thought too. What happens if a huge order is placed? Are you ready?
It’s About Awareness!
It pains me to have this conversation with people. We all want the shortcut to success. Give me the recipe. I will mix up the ingredients. Out will come the success. Perfect! It doesn’t happen that way. Trust me, I wish it did.
You need people to know who you are, what you sell, what your product will do for them, and they need to want to part with their hard earned money to get what you are offering. Do you want to launch a brand? Do you want to be Under Armour or Yeti? Me too! Let’s all start a new Under Armour tomorrow morning and then we can meet for lunch in our brand new cars.
Are you willing to pay $75,000 for a full-page ad in Golf Digest?
Will you spend $10,000 per month on Google ads?
Do you plan on working at local farmers’ markets each weekend?
Will you sell t-shirts out of the trunk of your car?
The questions above go from more expensive to less, with respect to money. The bottom two could be more expensive with respect to time commitments and missed opportunities with family and friends. The point is, you will have to work at it. You will have to commit. I, of all people, know what it looks like to have a cool idea and then to find out how much work it will take to launch it. Take a look at some of the ideas I have come up with over time. Now, here’s the one that worked.
Get Awareness via a Great Website
So you understand the need for awareness. The next question is, how do you get it? Start with a great website.
Your website is your front door. It’s your public face. Your website is your trophy case. It’s the best foot you are putting forward.
- Don’t scrimp. You can build it yourself. Your nephew can build it. I’m sure there’s a talented neighbor or a co-worker with a son or daughter who builds websites. That’s all fine and good, but they, and you, had better be really good at it. It’s easy to tell when someone doesn’t know what they are doing. Your website will reflect on your brand. Make sure it’s shiny and cool.
- Take time to build it right. See bullet above. Good work takes time. If you are told your new website can be up in a week, then you were just told that it won’t be very good. Use some common sense here. Rome wasn’t built…
- Make sure you think through the content.
- Give some thought to how people will use it.
- Try to make it fast and easy to find information.
- Think about the mobile experience. How will your website look on a phone? How will people navigate through the site when they are on their phone? Is it fast?
- Please tell me you have spent some time on SEO. Back up real fast. Please tell me you know what SEO is to begin with.
You Have to Socialize with the Other Kids Jason
OK, so maybe I heard that as a kid and maybe I didn’t. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you hear it from me now. You have to be out there. An outgoing personality is great. A personality is a must. Find one and share it with the world. Where should you share it?
Social Sites for Dummies
I realize I am missing others. These are the big ones. Get an account and get going.
What do you do with a social account?
Please talk to a child, a teen, or someone in their college years. They can help. The reason they never look you in the eye is because they are looking you in the eye on their phone. If you want them to look at you, then get yourself a website and some social accounts. They will look at you.
- Set up a custom profile picture.
- Use a custom banner or background.
- Post often.
- Be helpful.
- Be social. Like other people’s things. Share their posts. Follow them (Sounds creepy, but it’s what we have to do.)
- Give stuff away.
- Tell your story.
- Be funny.
- Have a personality. It feels like I already mentioned that, but it is worth saying again. You have a personality, so share it.
- Use hashtags. If you don’t know what these are, then do some research. Start with Google.
- Target specific keywords that your consumers use.
Just the Tip: Launching a Brand Will Take Time
So this is just the tip of the iceberg as they say. As I’m sure you are aware by now (I hope), launching a brand takes time, money, patience, perseverance, time, money, patience, perseverance, awareness, luck, and time. And I think I forgot luck, money, perseverance, and time. Hang in there. Plan for discouragement. It’s worth it when you make it. Go into it with both eyes wide open. It can happen.
And one more thing…
Overnight. It’s, Rome wasn’t built overnight. (If that doesn’t make sense, then you didn’t read this word-for-word. I caught you skimming.) 🙂
