Top 3 Things to Consider Before Launching a Brand
Before launching a brand it is crucial to define, prepare, and create the message that the brand intends to sell. This excerpt aims to expose how to build a narrative that defines a brand, how to prepare a media strategy to propel a brand globally, and how to create a product line that carves out a clear sales funnel for any organization.
1. Effective Story-telling
In most industries – especially beauty and fashion – consumers aren’t leaping for a product per se, but rather they are buying into a narrative that is either aspirational or relatable. The products that people purchase are usually a reflection of how they feel. According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, “95% of purchasing decisions are emotional”.
So this begs the question, what do we want the customer to feel? And secondly, how can we as strategists derive that feeling? This is done through heightening the five senses (or at least as many as one can). The most common sense is visual, especially for online retailers. Heightening emotions through visual cues can be done by using strategic colour palettes, to the messaging, marketing campaigns, and in-person experiences. To transcend those offline experiences is by heightening those remaining senses: auditory, smell, touch, and taste. All five senses heavily influence consumers’ associations with the brand, and that is why effective story-telling is crucial to the overall likeness and longevity of an organization to its audience.
However, before a brand can begin exploring the senses that they wish to utilize to tell their story, they must first identify the brand promise by making a mood board of media that reflects the brand’s direction and intention; then summarize those images into words. Take those descriptive words and analyze the feelings that are attached to them. It is those feelings that the brand is promising to deliver. Once those feelings have been identified, they should clearly and cohesively be reflected in all brand assets and store locations.
To ensure continuity across the former, it’s important to have those feelings as the “North Star” to all creative campaigns and product design. A cornerstone to successful branding is to have a level of predictability from an organization, by evoking the same feeling that the brand promised to bring since day one.
2. The Product Lineup: Size, Price & Quality
Once you’ve defined the brand’s promise that will help determine the price, quality, and size of the product line. Rarely can the majority of customers afford to purchase an entire high-end line of products all at once, and conversely sometimes people will associate a bundled offer with lower quality products. Therefore, the brand promise should help guide the decision of price, quality, and how many products will be made available for purchase before the launch.
The size of a product line can help influence buying patterns by identifying clear upsells on gateway products. The larger the line to launch, the larger the gap in understanding, and the greater the distraction there is for the customer. This can make it more difficult for a brand to define their signature product that they want to be known for as they are just starting to position themselves in the market.
A popular method employed by beauty brands is starting with a small, high-quality line of products, which gives the brand the opportunity to carve out their desired sales funnel. Always having a gateway product that is the crowd favourite, to which is reasonably priced to the desired audience and will serve as a lead magnet to the brand.
For example, Rhode Skin launched in June of 2022 with three hero products, one of which was a lip treatment that caught the world by storm. This happened for a few reasons, one of which that we can’t ignore is the celebrity founder — Hailey Bieber, and secondly, the product delivered on the brand promise. They promised affordability, effectiveness, and timelessness to which the customers received and responded well too. The line was small to start offering skincare basics. To this day, the Rhode lip treatment serves as a major lead magnet and gateway product to the company.
There truly is power in numbers, when a beauty company launches they should launch in odds numbers allowing for a product-hierarchy sales funnel. The numbers of product in a pr kit is contextual for every brand, however, the ideal number of products for pr launch in are 3 or 5. This allows influencers and giveaway winners to delve into each product and not feel overwhelmed by choice. Remember less is more!
3. Social Media and PR Strategy
Since we live in an era where anything important or worth knowing about travels through social media, it’s important to have the proper media and PR rollout ready months out before launch. The bigger the runway, the more room for awareness, the bigger the anticipation builds. This can be done several different ways, however in the beauty industry the best and most effective way is to target influencers that fit the aesthetic and audience that the brand is attempting to attract; then organize events and meetups in the major cities across the world to build lasting relationships with them. By gifting all attendees the products to try or even send the products to the ones that could not attend. It is almost second nature to brands that are in the know to utilize this technique. Reason being is because it’s almost always bound to work!
It works because in psychology, there is a cycle of “give-to-get given”. The more we give to people, the more likely they are to give back – as people will subconsciously feel indebted to a party in order to level the playing field by reciprocating that same level of effort or enthusiasm. And so, it is important to invite the influencers to these events first and show them a uniquely, enjoyable experience before asking them to post about the product on their social media.
To start a relationship off by immediately asking for something does not bode well for long-lasting relations. Instead, showing generosity to the influencers to show that they are intrinsically valued, they would be more likely to organically promote the products. Which in turn will inspire their followers who buy into their lifestyle, to purchase the product and create user-generated content to feel a part of a relatable or aspirational community of product users.
It’s important to make each stakeholder included along the way and the easiest way to do that is online. Whether that is through an influencer expressing a likeness for a particular product, or the consumer discovering the brand organically on social media, having the product being consistently talked about and seen is the most effective way at building a strong brand identity.
To launch a brand is one thing, but to launch a brand so that it’s set up for overall success and longevity is another. By taking into consideration the brand’s narrative, social media rollout, product line, price, and quality it can greatly change how a brand is launched to the world and whether or not the brand can stand the test of time.
More insights to come. 🎀
Till next time,
Emma
