Guide to launching your brand on the Web in 2023: creating 1/3
No one is waiting for your brand, product, or service—even if it meets a need. You can put in all the effort you want, but if you haven’t planned your launch, you risk failing. Digital marketing is a strategy for launching, acquiring, and retaining customers. But even it requires a strategy. To succeed with your digital marketing strategy, you need to master SEO, copywriting, and storytelling. These three powerful tools can raise awareness for any brand—even those that didn’t exist before. How? We’ll walk you through the steps in three articles:
Step 1 - Create Your Brand
Step 2 - Promote Your Brand
Step 2 - Building Brand Longevity
Editor's Note: This comprehensive guide summarizes and expands on the ideas discussed during the talk “Storytelling, Copywriting & SEO: The Startup Pack,” presented by Camille and Morgane at the SEO Garden Party in July 2022.
Preparing for your launch: simple, straightforward.
Just as you wouldn’t blindly throw a pebble into the water and hope it creates ripples, you shouldn’t blindly launch a brand and expect it to succeed. Does that seem obvious to you? It does to us, too.
Even the most innovative idea or the best-performing product or service is worthless if it’s promoted in the wrong place, to the wrong people, and at the wrong time. The success of a marketing campaign depends on thorough preparation beforehand.
One of the best examples of this is the “Tablet PC.” It was 2002 when Microsoft partnered with HP to release a laptop with a rotating keyboard and touchscreen (with a stylus). That was eight years before the release of the first iPad in 2010. When Microsoft launched its new product, the public wasn’t interested. The culture of touchscreen technology didn’t exist yet; the device was not very ergonomic and, above all, too expensive. True to its essence, Apple launched a consumer-friendly product that was easy to use and went on to become a revolution. It would be years before Microsoft’s Tablet PC made a comeback and was hailed by critics.
But what does this story teach us? That even the best innovation can fail completely if it isn't conceived and marketed to the right people at the right time.
How can you avoid this? By being strategic. You need to think ahead about the brand you’re promoting. Understand your target audience, understand the current climate, and implement a tailored communication strategy. Then, you need to measure the ROI and make adjustments as needed.
Building Your Brand
Creating a corporate brand or a product/service requires preparation. What are we selling? To whom? Where? How? These four essential questions come up at every stage of the project.
But before embarking on an SEO and content marketing strategy, we must first answer the first question: Who are we? Who is speaking? What do we have to say?
"We've created a revolutionary product that combines the power of a computer with the simplicity of a touchscreen."
This sentence may be well-written copy, but it focuses solely on the product’s features. And nobody buys that anymore. Today’s consumers buy an experience. A story. But every audience is different. What’s yours like?
Who are you?
A brand is like a person: it is, above all, a combination of values, goals, and presentation.
Let’s revisit the example above involving Microsoft and Apple. At the time, Microsoft was a business tool for companies. Its narrative focused on performance and reliability. Apple, on the other hand, was a disruptor and an enabler. Their motto? Making creativity accessible and fun. Apple’s “Get a Mac” ad campaign is a prime example of this. What this “war” teaches us is that two brands in the same industry can have very different values and opposing communication strategies.
But before you can create unique, viral content, you need to know who you are. What are your values? Before any communication efforts begin, you need to focus on storytelling. Building a brand reveals its DNA, and it is that DNA that will be communicated. To formalize this, you create a “Brand Book” that includes:
Your values,
Your message,
Your brand identity,
Your storytelling,
Your editorial guidelines.
The purpose of this Brand Book is to bring together the key elements of your brand in a single document, so that everyone involved can use it to effectively convey your message and achieve your goals.
Who are you talking to?
Is your product or brand suitable for a younger audience? For people who value reliability above all else? For people who want to make a social impact?
To launch a brand, you absolutely must understand your market. You must also have identified a segment in which to position yourself. Today, no one would even consider taking on the entire computer or smartphone market head-on without a unique positioning strategy. This positioning is discovered by understanding what resonates with the identified personas.
Alain, 40, a business owner in the construction industry, couldn't care less whether his smartphone takes great photos. He wants it to be durable and connected to his SaaS invoicing solution.
Soraya, a 22-year-old business school student, couldn't care less whether her phone lasts more than three years. She just wants it to take the best photos for Instagram.
Both groups belong to the market of “people who need a phone,” but their profiles result in specific needs—and therefore require tailored communication.
What's your name?
Coming up with a name for your brand or product requires careful consideration of your values and target personas beforehand. Becausea name is, in itself, a narrative promise. It conveys a future customer experience—whether with the product or with the brand as a whole.
The naming phase combines storytelling and copywriting. It’s based on your values and the message you want to convey. To come up with a good brand name, you’ll either aim to quickly convey what the brand is about or promise an experience:
Microsoft for Microcomputer Software
Apple as the forbidden fruit, the attainment of forbidden knowledge or /power
Here are a few tips to help you come up with a good name:
The verb,
The portmanteau,
An Anglicism or a translation into another language,
Onomatopoeia,
Etymology,
The proper noun,
Adding a prefix or suffix,
The abbreviation or acronym.
Alain is more likely to buy a “Duraphone” from Nokia than a “Nicephone” from Google. The latter will undoubtedly appeal more to Soraya, who is also more sensitive to the eco-friendly approach behind it.
💡 Can’t decide between several names? Conduct tests with a panel of users. Ask them:
What kind of product would you associate with a name like that?
What values does the brand name convey?
Test the level of trust associated with the brand name.
What's next? The website? The content?
All of this is part of brand promotion and should be integrated into a broader communication strategy. Build your brand awareness by combining SEO, storytelling, and copywriting.
This is the second step in your strategy and the focus of our next article: Our Tips for Promoting Your Brand Online in 2023.
