Discovering Your Brand Essence

When you see the How-to-Branding.com Toolbox, it designates that the following content is a tool, exercise, or technique you can use to help develop your affordable brand strategy.

Here’s a simple exercise that will help you arrive at your brand essence.

1.) Start with a listing of the organization’s products, services, and all offerings. List everything (the various ways customers engage with your company.)

2.) Develop broad categories in which to fit the above listing of offerings.

3.) List fundamental customer needs (emotional and tangible) that are met through those categories (empowerment, control, peace of mind, community, success, etc.)

4.) Now...what is the ONE THING—the common denominator—that ties it all together? This is the chief offering or brand essence of your business.

5.) Finally, flip the triangle over, and you have the Inverted Pyramid—your brand essence and the construct through which you can begin building brand-centric messaging.

The tip of the pyramid—your brand essence—is the ONE THING that will allow you to focus, align, and link your offerings. It’s not about what percentage of the existing market you can own, rather how large a market your new brand can CREATE because it owns a single word or thought—an attribute—in the mind.

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