Why Is It So Hard to Create a Good Brand?
Why is it so hard to create a good brand? (and seemingly so easy to ruin one?)
Growing a Fruitful Brand is back for season 2 and brand nerds, Raj Lulla and Ben Lueders are digging into what makes a brand good.
The recent blunder with the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, could result in a loss of over $44 Billion dollars in estimated brand value.
How could something like changing a name, be such a huge deal?
It all boils down to the 5 elements of brand identity:
Product
Value
Experience
Messaging
Look and feel
While the product is the core of the brand, the product itself doesn’t create the brand’s true value or customer loyalty.
The way consumers interact with a brand pre and post purchase, are major factors in brand experience and loyalty. You can have beautiful branding but drop the ball when it comes to how customers experience your marketing, the pronunciation of your brand name, and their payment options.
The intangible aspects of a brand go beyond the the practical value placed on the goods or services- you would be surprised how the simple act of remembering a customer’s coffee preferences goes.
Check out the episode now and use our brand worksheet to see how your brand stands up against these 5 elements.
We are so excited to bring you more value this season!
Ep. 41:
Why Is It So Hard to Create a Good Brand?
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Why is it so hard to create a good brand? Hey. Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees.
I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design & Strategy, and this is my business partner and brand strategist, Raj Lulla. Today, we're talking about branding. Brand seems to be in the news a lot lately. Has there been anything happening in your spheres in the world of branding lately?
Raj Lulla:
There's definitely not a giant dumpster fire going on over a brand that was formerly a bird and is now just the letter X.
Ben Lueders:
Formerly Twitter. Yeah, A lot of people are saying that Elon might have just wasted $44 billion in brand value with switching from the bird to the X, but it's more than just a logo, right? I mean, it's in the vernacular of the American experience.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. So many tech companies want to become a verb like, "Google it." "Venmo it to me." Tweet had become a verb and now nobody ... "Did I just X a thought out?" Like, "How do I talk about this?"
Ben Lueders:
That seems like it would be fraught with issues.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
It doesn't just roll of the tongue. I've seen some people say that he knew exactly what he was doing, Elon did, and he's the brand, and he gets it. Maybe so. This is a very complicated issue, and we might do a whole episode on this. Very certainly, we probably will.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
But all this to say it seems to be hard to create a good brand.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Threads just launched too, and there was a lot of initial hype. 100 million people joined faster than any other platform ever, including ChatGPT, and so it's like, "Oh. Okay, wow. These guys have it." Then, of course, usership plummeted pretty immediately.
Now, when Zuckerberg said that he knew this was going to happen, I actually believe him because the way that they had people sign up for Threads was just click a button from your Instagram. I had a Threads account sort of before I realized it. It was just like I was just following buttons and then just was curious enough to go find it.
Ben Lueders:
It's nice, when you own like three other social medial channels, rolling out another social media channel gets to be a little easier.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Facebook just passed three billion users.
Ben Lueders:
That's crazy.
Raj Lulla:
And so, yeah, it's a little easier to get to 100 million when you start on a third and a half base.
Ben Lueders:
I'm just waiting for Zuckerberg to change the name of Facebook to Z or something like that. That is going to be really interesting.
Raj Lulla:
X versus Z. Well, I think the billionaires have gotten enough free press from us today, but no, talking about this, even for billionaires, creating a good brand is hard, and there are a lot of reasons for that. The biggest part for me, I think, is that brands are multifaceted. When people come to us and they say, "Hey, can you make a logo for me?" you and I both kind of cringe a little bit because we know that that's not actually what we do for people.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
It's so much bigger. It's helping them create the foundation for their brand, almost interchangeable with the word, company, because that's how important it is. It consists of your entire reputation across a number of places. That's what really we're going to dig in today is some of the core areas of a brand and why is it so be hard to good at all of them, and what makes the difference between brands, companies who get this right and ones who don't.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, that's really good. I especially like how you said, when you say brand, we're not just talking about a logo. Because when we call ourselves Growing a Fruitful Brand, we talk about all aspects of the business, and these things really do need to be thought out. Let's dive into it.
Raj Lulla:
Really, it comes down to these five things, and we'll go through them in-depth. Product, value, experience, messaging, and look and feel. Again, some people might combine some of these things. They might split them out a little bit differently, but you have to nail all five of these things in order to have a truly great brand.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, and feel free to drop a comment or send us a message if you think it should be cut up a different way, or if-
Raj Lulla:
Yes. Argue with us.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, argue. It'd be interesting to hear because it does definitely include these things, but the way that you cut it up could be different, depending.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Starting with, let's just start with your product. Just a simple question to ask yourself is, "Does this good or service do what it's supposed to do?" It might seem super obvious, but this part of where we wouldn't brand certain companies.
Ben Lueders:
Sure.
Raj Lulla:
There's those crypto scams out there that you constantly get hit with on social media, and-
Ben Lueders:
On X.
Raj Lulla:
I'm sure they have a lot of money that they're stealing from old people and children, and we don't want to be a part of that.
Ben Lueders:
Sure.
Raj Lulla:
We don't want to help platform and give a foundation to a company, a brand that is disreputable.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. Casinos, lotteries. Some of those things too.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, we talk about we don't brand what we would call vice businesses. It's not to say that those places don't have right to exist, or whatever. That's not our judgment to make. It's just that we know that we can't do our best work in helping create a foundation for those places because we don't fundamentally believe that the product is good for us or other people.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. It's in what we say every week here about making the world a better place.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
Growing a Fruitful Brand, for it to be truly fruitful, in our eyes, it's got to be doing good in the world. That could be subjective, I guess, but we get to be subjective.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, but I think that's actually a great place to start, is if you're looking for a branding agency, a lot of people think, "Well, they're a provider, and so if I've got the dollars, they should serve me," but because brand is so much bigger than just the creation of a logo or some messaging and it goes into all of these other areas, you're actually bringing about 50% or so to the branding conversation. You've already got the product value experience, that stuff already locked down or at least in progress. If it's not a good fit for your branding agency, they should know that and they should be honest with you about it.
Ben Lueders:
Sure.
Raj Lulla:
There are certain businesses and organizations we don't work with. There are some businesses and organizations we work really great with.
Ben Lueders:
Well, and on the flip side, I think there's a lot of organizations out there that wouldn't work with us because we're just not the right fit too. It's kind of a matchmaking service there, that you want to find a branding agency that you align with in your values and your work. That's why everyone's always interested to see, "Who are some of your past clients? Who are some of the ... Have you done anything kind of like this?" You always hear that.
Raj Lulla:
"Do you have experience in the industry?"
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, yeah. It's like, "I have a non-profit that has this specific kind of bent. Have you done anything like that before?" They want to see ... They don't expect you to have done work exactly like their thing, but they just want to make sure that we would be a good fit, that you understand this world in some way.
That's why you see a lot of people kind of niching down in industries, and along ideologies or values because those kind of people just get those kind of people and they work well together. There are maybe even some good organizations and things out in the world that maybe we still wouldn't necessarily be the best fit for just because of just how our makeup is.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, yeah, and even just the types of things that those clients want or expect, and even in terms of communication, all those things. There's a certain rhythm back and forth, a relationship that you want to have.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly.
Raj Lulla:
Moving from product, so product's number one. Do you actually have a good or service? Let's start there. Does it do what it's supposed to do? Then that goes very naturally into value. Value asks the question, "Does this solve the problem for the right price?"
We were talking about how there's these services that you pay for that you kind of roll your eyes at. It's no offense to these industries at all, but it's just that it feels expensive for what it is. The one that comes to mind for me is a plumber, where somebody comes into your house and they-
Ben Lueders:
They just tighten one thing.
Raj Lulla:
Well, a lot of times, they'll crawl under your sink or go in whatever room has the problem. They look at and they come back, "Okay. That's going to be $500," and you go ... I mean, it has to be done, and so you reluctantly, begrudgingly do it. Don't get me wrong. There are ways, even in those industries, to improve the sense of value. The folks who put the little shoe covers on as soon as they come into your house so that they don't track mud through your house or dirt, whatever. During the pandemic, people who would call you in advance and ask you if you wanted them to wear a mask in your house, like those types of things.
You can, even in those industries where people begrudgingly pay for it, you can improve the value that you feel like you're getting. Showing up on time. Giving people more a more reasonable window of times of, "It's going to be between April and June." It's like, "Okay. Well, that doesn't feel great."
Ben Lueders:
And daytime or nighttime. Possibly hours.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, asking this question of value of, does it feel like it solves the problem for less than you would have paid to solve it? Therapy, for example. At $100 an hour, you might feel like that's expensive, but if it keeps you from quitting your job and losing $100,000 a year, then, man, $100 an hour seems cheap at that point.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly.
Raj Lulla:
Especially if it's only once a week or once a month. It's like, "Okay. Well, that $1,200 I spent this year was worth $100,000." When you multiply that over interest on your savings, and longevity of your career, selling your business, all of those things, that $100 a month might be worth literally millions and becomes so, so worth it. Your brand is a combination of product but then also the value that it feels like that product or service is worth.
Then we get into experience. Again, all these are interrelated, for sure. Experience comes in two spots. It's both before purchase and after purchase. Pre-purchase, post-purchase. That's easy to think of as maybe sales and marketing, and then fulfillment and follow up, but from the beginning, we think about brand a lot as before you've even entered the room, what do people think of you? That's sort of that pre-purchase identity, reputation piece of it.
Then also, what's your website like? How easy is it to schedule a call, or add to cart, or any of those things? That's all pre-purchase. You are creating the experience for them before they are even doing business with you.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
In fact, a lot of the new research on purchases say that people do 70% of their research on you before ever reaching out to you, so they are almost ready to purchase. We talk about funnels all the time. They're already three-quarters of the way down the funnel before you even hear from them for the first time. That's what most research is saying now.
Ben Lueders:
So crazy.
Raj Lulla:
That puts a lot of emphasis on your pre-purchase experience. Is your website good? Is it accessible? Is it responsive on mobile phones? All of those things.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
Then we'll get into look and feel in a minute, but is it attractive to people? How did they hear about you? Did somebody recommend them to you? All of those things are all part of your brand, and you do have an amount of control over those things, of whether people recommend you or not.
Ben Lueders:
Well, and I think one of the things that comes to mind when you think about these two aspects of experience, pre-purchase and post-purchase, the goal is that both of those are equally awesome. You know?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, yeah.
Ben Lueders:
The goal is that the pre-purchase, the level of experience in the pre-purchase phase matches post-purchase, or maybe post-purchase even exceeds what you got in the pre-purchase. I think it can be really easy for us to focus on one of those and neglect the other. Some people are better at the sales and marketing, but as far as client retention, and follow up. All that kinds of things can fall apart, and so that's super important to keep in mind.
You may have a great sales team or a great marketing partner, but you don't know what to do with people once you get them. That's a huge experience problem because if you're really, really good on the front end and then really disappointing, you're not going to get repeat business.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, I think the-
Ben Lueders:
It kind of destroys ... It feels like you made a promise with the experience on one hand, and then you let them down.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and the opposite happens a lot too, where your customer service, your product, your experience is really great, but people have no way to find you because you don't have a website, or your website is terrible to work with. Then you feel like you're a really well-kept secret, and you don't want to be a well-kept secret when you're in business because-
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. We've seen a lot of people that fall into that category.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and so-
Ben Lueders:
We can help them.
Raj Lulla:
... if you're struggling with the first thing that Ben was talking about where your sales and marketing team is great and then you fumble with onboarding, or with delivering on time, or any of those kinds of things, then it's helpful for you to think of your onboarding as part of your marketing process. If you've got marketing nailed down, then think of onboarding as the last part of the marketing process, and then if your team can't handle it from there, then maybe make some changes.
If the opposite problem is true, if you have great customer service, but your sales and marketing are lacking, then think of the pre-purchase experience as pre-customer service. If you have a great customer service culture, then just copy and paste that ethos, that passion into the front part of the experience. You might even work backwards from onboarding. "Hey, we onboard clients really great once we finally get them," so cool. How can we go one step before that? How can we make it easy for them to schedule that call? Or, how can we make it easy for them to just add to cart? You wouldn't believe. I mean, we would, unfortunately, but how hard it is for some places, for you to give them money.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yeah.
Raj Lulla:
Even just the ... I was at the doctor's office the other day, and they're like ... There's a sign on the counter that says, "Co-pay is due at the time of appointment," so I got my card out and they go, "Our card machine is down." It wasn't their fault, but how many places are they ... It's like you have some sort of electronic payment checkout thing on your website that's really sketchy. My friend, Dave Miller, talks about how, he's like, "There are some charities that I will donate to where I just assume that my credit card details are going to be stolen because the website's so sketchy," and it's like-
Ben Lueders:
That's a great feeling.
Raj Lulla:
... "We didn't want to pay the PayPal fee," or, "We didn't want to pay the Stripe," or whatever. It's like, be standard with that stuff. It's worth every penny. There's a reason these companies are huge and growing. It's because-
Ben Lueders:
Trust.
Raj Lulla:
... people want to have that confidence that when they swipe their credit card, it's not going to be stolen. Pre-purchase, post-purchase, huge parts of experience. Post-purchase, just one note about that is that's where you have an opportunity to influence whether or not people recommend you to other people. When you finish well and then ask for a referral is a huge, huge thing. If you've served them really well, then they're going to have this huge rush of dopamine, endorphins, whatever, depending on what your product is. That's the right time to ask them, "Hey, would you leave us a review? Would you refer us to someone?"
I remember talking to Summer, the owner of Trio Salon, and she was talking about how the best time to get a review is when you've just massaged somebody's head, they feel great. For us, it's like the beard's all trimmed down and not looking all scraggly. It's like that person feels great at that moment. Don't wait until they've showered and two weeks later, they can't figure out how to make it look as good as it did in the salon.
Ben Lueders:
They found the part that you missed. Not at Trio's.
Raj Lulla:
Don't wait until they've kind of ruined the product for you, and send them an email in two weeks, and be like, "Oh, by the way. I hope you had a great time at your appointment. Leave us a review." Ask them while they're in the chair. We made little signs for them that had QR codes, or whatever, to get them to the reviews as quickly as possible and it helped. It was huge.
Ben Lueders:
Mm-hmm. We've talked about product. We've talked about value. We've talked about experience. Let's get into messaging.
Raj Lulla:
People buy your product because of the words you say. I know that it feels like in a world of social media, and video, and TikTok, all these things that it's like, "Oh, we have to grab people's attention in these creative ways, and we have to dance," and all these things, but at the end of the day, people buy your product because of the words you say, or write. Whatever they read or hear from you, that's what helps them make that purchasing decision.
Again, they make 70% of their purchasing decision before they even talk to you, and I promise, it's not because how good of a dancer you are on TikTok, for the most part, unless you're selling dance lessons. In that case, they still need to know how much it costs, how they can get them, all those things. People buy your product because of the words that you say.
Now, we're a story brand certified agency. We really, truly believe in positioning your customer as the hero of the story and positioning yourself as the guide. It's so often that we get so excited about our thing, our process that we dive into that first. We don't bother explaining the problem the customer has and how this is a solution to that, and we do that at our own peril. We throw away sales when we start talking about the features before we've even helped the customer identify that they're even in the right place. If you thought about walking into a great retail store or restaurant, and all of them, all the good ones, they welcome you when you come in.
Ben Lueders:
Mm-hmm.
Raj Lulla:
Now do not put the word, welcome, at the top of your website. So many people do that. It's a huge waste of space. What you should do is welcome them with an identity, with a word, with an aspiration that says something like, "Do you want to feel better? Do you want to grow your business? Do you want to drive the car of your dreams?" Words like that that help people identify, "Oh, I'm in the right place. I've been welcomed in this place because they already knew that I was going to be here."
It's like when you ... Darcy on our team used to run a Barnes & Noble cafe, and she had regulars whose orders were taped to the register. Even their membership number was taped to the register so that as soon as that person walked in, their drink was being made and they were already rung up by the time the person hit the counter. What an amazing experience that is. "We were anticipating you being here. You come here every day. We know what you're going to order, and we know the kind of day you want to have. We can make that that much easier." That's what your words do for people on your website, but those words are only effective if they are encompassed in a look and feel that they can identify with.
Ben Lueders:
Now we get to the best part.
Raj Lulla:
You've been waiting this whole time for your favorite part. Let's talk about look and feel for a minute.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, well, I think there's some negative connotations around it sometimes. People think that, "Hey, if I got all these other things working, isn't that just kind of like a vanity play to make it look a certain way? Especially, invest a lot of money in making a nice logo, and a color palette, and that kind of stuff. It's like what really matters is the product that we deliver," or et cetera. Look and feel is interesting. It goes way beyond just, again, the color palette, and textures, and things like that. It can get all the way down to ...
We have a client that we're working with right now, who their clients don't know how to pronounce their name. They love their service, but they can't say the name because it's just very hard to pronounce. It's a made up word that just doesn't roll off the tongue, and it kind of looks like another company's name. It's just a really complicated thing, but that gets to the look and feel. That's not just ... Obviously, we're going to make a great logo for them, but it gets down to we want your company to be something that people love to say, to have it be able to become a verb like Twitter used to do, like tweeting used to be. Maybe that name's available now. Maybe that's their new name.
Those kinds of choices really matter because in that case, you want people talking about you. You're only going to be as successful as people being willing to share it. People can't share and be excited about you if they don't know how to say your name. Those kinds of things really do matter a lot, and we are humans and it matters how certain things just feel. The feeling that we get when we're around them through just type choice, the style of an icon or a symbol. Those kinds of things. A color palette, a certain ... These feelings are evoked, and we can feel safe. We can feel heard. We can feel feelings of joy, and stuff like that, all just through these very seemingly irrelevant things, but they're actually, they're deeply, deeply relevant.
Can you imagine if we lived in kind of a black and white world where there was no color? There are certain colors that just evoke certain emotions and feelings, and we can use those to our advantage. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that enhances our value, enhances our experience, enhances our product and matches those things. A lot of times, what we like to say is like, "You've got a great product. You've got a great thing that you're wanting to do in the world. We can help create a look and feel that matches that."
Raj Lulla:
Introduces people to the experience.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly, exactly. Because that's the ... Raj said it in an earlier point, but with look and feel you have the ability to attract too, to like, you're doing a great thing in the world with an amazing name, and a memorable logo, and symbol, and color palette, illustration, photography choices, video, like all that stuff. You have a way to attract and get people's attention. It really is about attention, but again, not in a ... I keep saying it, but not in this kind of vanity, kind of metric way, but in a way that conveys the truth of who you really are.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. There's tons of examples of this where if Apple computers, instead of having a sleek, metallic apple on the back of a laptop ... Ben's showing his off here on the video. If instead, it was that chalk font that kindergartners, or the kindergarten teachers use-
Ben Lueders:
Oh, that would be nice. Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
... and it just said Apple on the back, people would be so fast to get a laptop cover, if they even bought the product. Assuming that computers were still as good as they were, people would buy laptop covers. They'd be putting stickers all over this thing to just get away from the embarrassment of like, "I'm in a professional meeting in a boardroom with a chalk font on the back of my machine." It just doesn't feel right.
Ben Lueders:
Right.
Raj Lulla:
It also goes the other way too, where if Walmart's logo looked like Rolex or Bulgari or something, Bulgari, people who are value shoppers or budget shoppers wouldn't even step foot inside. If there's valet parking in front of Walmart, people would be like, "Oh. I think I'm in the wrong spot."
Ben Lueders:
Exactly.
Raj Lulla:
"I was looking for cheap toothbrushes here."
Ben Lueders:
That's a really good point though because, yeah, it gets to that point of you want it to match and support the value, and the experience, and the product because you're right. Some products are not as premium. Some experiences aren't, and intentionally so. We've talked about that on other podcasts. It's like you want your brand to look and feel like your company to convey ... It's a little bit of a promise of like, "Here's what your experience is probably going to feel like too."
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and take Walmart, for example still. There's still a high level of consistency in their branding across what the checkout looks like, the uniforms workers wear, signage, all those things. Even signage outside in the parking lot, all of those. I know we talk about it a lot as being like the cheapest thing, but it's not actually cheapest thing.
The thing below that is like the flea market that has taped up signs on poles. There are marketplaces below Walmart in terms of cost, but Walmart's commitment to consistency in their branding, it helps you know that, hey, most likely, it's going to be in stock. The truck isn't going to be late, and you're not going to have some person behind the desk be like, "I don't know. The truck will get here when the truck gets here." Whereas in a, whether it's a flea market or whatever kind of other environment where ... Or it's like, "Hey, man. There's a taped up pole here. This was a parking lot eight minutes ago. What do you expect from us?" You can't come here and expect to get dog food, and toothbrush, and some groceries for the week-
Ben Lueders:
You can expect to haggle on prices and stuff.
Raj Lulla:
... and oil for your car. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ben Lueders:
There's perks to that world.
Raj Lulla:
It's a different thing, and so even in their branding, it conveys the dependability of the brand, even if it's doing it at a price point that's lower. It's got the little smiley face that tells you, "Hey, prices are low here." That's great. Apple would not be caught dead with the smiley face in their window, like, "Hey, we cut our prices." No, it's not-
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. That's like the opposite of their brand, right?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, and so it's not just about this only works for luxury brands, or if you're planning on selling at a higher margin. What it's really about, what look and feel is really about is it's about building community.
Ben Lueders:
Mm-hmm.
Raj Lulla:
It's showing people, hey, again, you're in the right place. We're saying the words that tell you you're in the right place, and then we're doing all of the other nonverbal signals, whether it's our imagery, whether it's our logo, our fonts, colors. All those things that show people that you are in the right place and, "We're here to take care of you."
Just to wrap up, we talked about your brand consists of your product, the value you provide, the experience that people have, the way that you're talking about that experience with the messaging, and the look and feel. Those things are all really, really important. While we, as a branding agency, love to create brands or rebrand, we know that we only bring about 50% of that equation to the table.
We can help give you the foundation for your brand, but you bring the other 50%, maybe more, to the table with your customer service, with your sales, with your product. It's not enough to just have a great logo and a great message. It also does need to be a great product, a great experience, which is why even billionaires struggle to create great brands. It is difficult to do, and those of you who are out there doing it, keep going. The world needs great brands. They need great people like you who are proud of their work, who are telling their customer stories, who are entering their customer stories as a guide to solve their problems. Keep going. It's hard work and it's well worth doing.
Ben Lueders:
If you do feel like you've got a great product, you got a great thing going, but you are this best kept secret kind of a thing and you don't feel like your look and feel or your messaging are really helping you get that out into the world in an attractive and in a cohesive way, that is what we do. Shamelessly, we love bringing that part of an equation to help people get that message out there in a way that connects them with the right community.
Raj Lulla:
I will say too, sometimes, that piece of the process is the tail that wags the dog. When you sit down and you think about your customer's story and how you enter into that, sometimes, it gives you a little light bulb moment where you go, "Oh. Our onboarding should be better." Because when you ask, "What is this button on the website going to do?" It's like, "Well, it's going to schedule a call with our customer service team."
Can people actually schedule a call or are they just requesting a call? "Oh, man. It would be great if they could schedule a call directly from the website." Cool. We need Calendly. We need HubSpot. We need some kind of service that allows our customer services team to be ... their calendars to be directly schedulable on the website. That's great. Sometimes, going through the process helps you actually improve the other parts of your brand.
Ben Lueders:
Exactly.
Raj Lulla:
A lot of it's just about caring enough to do it.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
In order to help you with that, we're going to put together a brand worksheet. It's going to be attached to the blog post. We post a summary post for every episode that we do. The link will be in the show notes. That brand worksheet is just going to take you through all five of those areas that we talked about today: Product, value, experience, messaging, look and feel. It's just going to give you a strength and weaknesses chart to ... You can do it yourself if you wanted to, but we're going to have our wonderful design team put together a worksheet for you.
You can just sit there and work on it and think through, really, truly try to think of it from, "I've never heard of this company before. I'm experiencing it for the first time. Do I understand the product is going to solve the problem? Is it going to be at a price point that is worth it? How's the experience, getting from never having heard of this, all the way through telling my friends about it? Is the messaging clear? Is the look and feel, the website, the brand, all that up to date? Does it compete with our competitors? Does it outshine our competitors? Is it a little bit below our competitors? Is it living up to our own aspirations? Maybe it's not even our competitors. Maybe all of our competitors have bad stuff, but we want to be the Apple of plumbing," or whatever.
It's just going to be a great opportunity for you to sit down, work through this, and whether it's about look and feel or messaging, or not, we'd love to know what that surfaces in you. Feel free to reach out to us and we'll give you any recommendations. If you say, "Hey, we're weak in this area. Who can you connect us with?" Even, "Who's great with training a sales or customer service team or helping with product?" We know people in all of these areas because we work with them all the time, so we'd be happy to help you, in any way, build your brand because we're all about helping you grow a brand that's good for the world, good for your employees, good for yourself. That's what makes businesses work.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it.
Raj Lulla:
If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding, website, or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website, fruitful.design.
Ben Lueders:
Until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
