Guide to launching your brand on the Web in 2023: creating 1/3
Nobody expects your brand, product or service. Even if it meets a need. No matter how hard you try, if you haven't planned your launch, you're likely to fail. Webmarketing is a launch, acquisition and loyalty strategy. But it too needs a strategy. To succeed in your Webmarketing strategy, you need to master SEO, copywriting and storytelling. These three powerful levers make all brands known, even those that didn't exist before. But how do you do it? We explain the steps in 3 articles:
Step 1 - Creating your brand
Step 2 - Promoting your brand
Step 2 - Sustaining your brand
Editor's note: This complete guide takes up and develops the ideas discussed at the "Storytelling, Copywriting & SEO: the startup' pack" conference given by Camille and Morgane during the SEO Garden Party in July 2022.
Preparing your launch: simple, basic.
Just as you don't blindly throw a pebble and expect it to work wonders on the water, you don't blindly throw a brand and expect it to work. Sound obvious? So are we.
The most innovative idea, the most successful product or service, is nothing if it's advertised in the wrong place, to the wrong people, at the wrong time. The success of a marketing project depends on upstream preparation.
One of the best examples of this is the Tablet PC. The year was 2002, when Microsoft teamed up with HP to bring out a portable computer with a rotating keyboard and touchscreen (with stylus). This was 8 years before the release of the first iPad in 2010. When Microsoft released its new product, the public wasn't there. The touch culture didn't exist, the machine wasn't very ergonomic and, above all, it was too expensive. True to its essence, Apple launched a mass-market product that was easy to handle, and became a revolution. It would be years before Microsoft's Tablet PC would make a comeback to critical acclaim.
But what does this anecdote teach us? That the best innovation, if not thought out and sold to the right people at the right time, can sink completely.
How do you avoid this? By being strategic. You have to think upstream about the brand you're showing. Understand your personas, understand the times and put in place an appropriate communications strategy. Then it's time to measure the ROI and make any necessary adjustments.
Creating your brand
Creating a corporate brand or product/service requires preparation. What are you selling? To whom? Where? How? Four essential questions that recur at every stage of the project.
But before embarking on an SEO and content marketing strategy, you need to answer the first question: who are we? Who are we talking to? What do we have to say?
"We imagined a revolutionary product that combines the power of the computer with the simplicity of touch."
This sentence may be copywritten, but it's only interested in the product's features. And nobody buys that. The public now buys an experience. A story. But every audience is different. What's yours like?
Who are you?
A brand is like a person: it's above all a combination of values, objectives and staging.
Let's go back to the example above between Microsoft and Apple. At the time, Microsoft was a business tool. Its narrative focus was on performance and reliability. Apple, on the other hand, is a disrupter, a facilitator. Their credo was to make creativity accessible and fun. Witness Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign. What this "war" teaches us is that two brands in the same sector can have very different values and opposing communication axes.
But before you can create unique, viral content, you have to know who you are. What are your values? Before any communications work, you need to do some storytelling. The creation of a brand reveals its DNA, and it's this DNA that will be communicated. To formalize it, you create a "Brand Book" in which you list :
Your values,
Your message,
Your graphic identity,
Your storytelling,
Your editorial charter.
The aim of this Brand Book is to bring together in a single deliverable the key elements of your brand, so that everyone involved can use them to deliver your message correctly and achieve your objectives.
Who are you talking to?
Is your product or brand suitable for young people? To people who are looking for reliability above all else? To people who want to make a social commitment?
To launch a brand, you need to understand your market. You also need to have identified a segment in which to position yourself. Today, no one would dream of attacking the entire computer or smartphone market head-on without a unique positioning. This position is found by understanding what runs through the personas you've identified.
Alain, 40, a company director in the construction industry, doesn't care if his smartphone takes good photos. He wants it to be solid and connected to his SaaS billing solution.
Soraya, a 22-year-old business school student, doesn't care if her phone lasts her more than 3 years. She wants it to take the best shots for Instagram.
Both belong to the "people who need a phone" market, but their profile brings specific needs, and therefore adapted communication.
What's your name?
You can't name your brand or product without first thinking about your values and target personas. Becausea name is already a narrative promise. It conveys a future customer experience, either 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 find a good brand name, you'll either need to quickly convey what it's about, or promise an experience:
Microsoft for Microcomputer Software
Apple for the forbidden fruit, access to forbidden knowledge/power
There are several tips to help you find a good name:
The verb,
The word-valise,
Anglicism or translation into another language,
Onomatopoeia,
Etymology,
The proper noun,
Adding a prefix or suffix,
The acronym.
Alain is more likely to buy a Nokia "Duraphone" than a Google "Nicephone". The latter will undoubtedly appeal more to Soraya, who is also sensitive to the associated ecological approach.
💡 Can't decide between several names? Test with a panel of users. Ask them:
What product would be associated with such a name?
What values does the brand name convey?
Test the trust associated with the brand name.
What's next? The website? Content?
This is all part of brand promotion, and must be part of a more global communications strategy. Build brand awareness by combining SEO, storytelling and copywriting.
This is the second stage of your strategy, and the subject of the next article: Our tips for promoting your brand on the Web in 2023.
