Some companies seem to have the magic touch.

On the other hand, many startups struggle for years to gain traction in their market. 

Why do some companies capture the attention of an audience while others get dismissed?

That’s right — it all comes down to building a phenomenal brand. 

But before we get into that, let’s talk about what it actually means to build a brand in the first place. 

Branding is a word that gets tossed around a lot in the marketing industry. 

The only problem? 

Nobody can seem to define what a brand is. 

Let’s clear up the misconceptions.

Branding is an emotional feeling about a company that makes them seem like the better choice against their competition. 

OK, I know what you’re probably thinking. “That sounds really vague. How can we turn momentary sentiment into something tangible?” 

That’s what I set out to learn when I interviewed senior marketing and brand expert Bernie Schroeder.

He’s the author of Brands and Bullshit: Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter and has a marketing background that includes launching strategies for major companies like Apple, Amazon, Yahoo! and Adobe.

I invited Bernie to speak on the Everyone Hates Marketers podcast to discuss:

• Why branding matters in business
• The mistakes companies make with branding
• What happens when you ignore branding
• How to build a brand that attracts customers

Why Is Branding In The Digital Age Important?

Companies who ONLY focus on marketing tactics without a branding strategy become a commodity in the marketplace. 

Without a brand-building system in place, you’re unable to differentiate yourself from every other business that offers a similar product or service. 

This means any new company can pop up, copy your business model, and do it at a lower price than you. 

Do you see where we’re going with this? 

If you listen to my podcast, you already know that I like to challenge my guests to break their methodology down so you can walk away from each interview with a practical step-by-step.

What follows is the specific approach Bernie Schroeder uses to build a brand identity — whether you want to leverage the benefits for a brand you already have or you’re starting from the very beginning. 

Let’s dive into his step-by-step guide.

5 Steps to Build a Strong Brand

Step 1: Find Out How Your Company is Perceived

The first step in branding according to Bernie Schroeder is to figure out how your company is perceived in the marketplace.

Where should you look in order to learn this? 

Go to your customers. 

Bernie recommends getting a list of the top 100 customers and reaching out to some of them. 

Here’s why: Whether you're working for an agency client or you're an entrepreneur running your own business, you need to take a step back from what you THINK you already know about your customers’ perspective. 

We’re too close to our own business to see it the way our customers do.

Talking to your customers is important. While they don't always know what they want, they can tell you what they don’t want. 

In addition to that, customers can tell you what problems they’re suffering from and describe how it affects their own personal situation.

This circles back to the #1 rule of good marketing: Treat people like humans. 

Business is about solving problems for your customers [problems that are a real pain point].

According to a study ran by CBInsights, 42% of businesses fail because there’s no market need for what they’re selling.

Talk to your customers. 

Research the customer journey from their perspective (without leading them into what you think it looks like).

Bernie Schroeder explains that when you speak to customers, you must ask them simple questions. 

Your questions should be 5 words or less because if you ask questions that are too long they become leading. 

But the more simple the question? The more you can dig a bit deeper into each question and get the customer to slowly open up. 

Ask open-ended questions like you're a journalist, not a salesperson. 

We’re not trying to SELL anything at this stage; we’re just trying to understand the customer on a deep level.

For example:

• What brands are you considering?
• Why are you considering that brand?
• Why do you buy from us?
• What items are you considering buying?
• What made you purchase this from us?
• Did anything nearly stop you from purchasing it?

It really is that simple.

Step 2: Identify Your Competitors

How do you know who you’re competing against? You have to...

Distinguish between your direct competitors and indirect competitors. 

Your direct competitors are companies who sell or market the same products/services as your business. 

The easier way to understand this is to think of famous brand rivalries. Take a look:

• Netflix vs. Hulu
• Spotify vs. Apple Music
• Skype vs. Zoom
• Nike vs. Adidas
• Marvel Comics vs. DC Comics
• FedEx vs. UPS

Odds are that you know some of your direct competitors off the top of your head.

Adidas is a direct competitor to brands like Nike, Puma, and Reebok.

Bernie Schroeder offers other ways to identify direct competitors:

Identify direct competitors in your research by searching online. 

Go to websites where people interact to solve problems, like Quora and Reddit. 

Consult your own network, and ask what competitors come to their mind. 

Or go back to your customers. What other companies were they considering using before coming to you?

Remember: Don’t forget your indirect competitors. ‍

These are businesses that sell a different product or service from you. 

However, they’re fulfilling the same need for your customer. 

In other words, your indirect competitors are solving the same problems as you.

For instance:

We’ve already established Nike and Adidas are direct competitors.

On the other hand, Nike’s indirect competitors are brands like Converse and Sketchers. 

They sell sneakers but they aren’t athletic shoes.  

You get the idea. 

Simply put, you’re examining how your products stack up against the other brands in your industry.

Step 3: Analyze Current Trend Reports

The next step in creating a phenomenal brand according to Bernie Schroeder is to take a look at trend reports. 

But what’s a trend report? 

In short, a trend report lays out patterns that analysts have identified by looking at a collection of information and data. 

These patterns are typically used to predict future events a.k.a. upcoming trends.

You may wonder how the average small business owner can get access to those types of resources. 

According to Bernie Schroeder, anyone can find trend reports. How? We have Google.

This part is easy. Search by industry to check if any analysts or other researchers have put data out on trends. 

You can also set up Google Alerts to look up keywords for you over time. 

Bernie Schroeder also recommends Trend Hunter for aggregated data.

A word of caution: It’s necessary to stay on top of trends but don't get caught up in “information overload”. 

There’s a fine line between market research and content addiction.

Step 4: Determine Your Positioning

But before we go into that, let’s discuss what market positioning really means.

Positioning is about identifying what sets you apart. 

Bernie Schroeder explains that the next step in building a brand is to make sense of the data you’ve gathered by analyzing it. 

Then you can determine your valuable market position. 

How do we make sense of this data?

He simplifies the data to what he calls a competitive landscape. What it means is this:

There’s a marketplace grid with two axes with the two most significant things to customers in that market. 

One item on the vertical axis and one important item for customers. (You’ll know what the two most significant things are to your customers because you talked to them and looked at trend reports.)

The key is to estimate where your company currently fits on that axis. 

Once you’ve identified where you are on the axis you can decide where to take your marketing strategy. 

This is based on whether you want to move on the axis or continue moving forward with your current positioning.

Let’s look at a real-life example.

Remember when Amazon was simply a bookstore? 

Well, Bernie Schroeder worked with Amazon at an agency back in 1995. 

This was in the early days of Amazon before they dominated the online marketplace. 

People weren’t used to buying things on the internet. 

When he talked to their customers, he discovered the two most important things to them were trust and ease of use. They needed to make Amazon easy to buy from, and they needed to earn their trust to deliver. 

The moral of this story?  

It turns out they used the vast selection of books to make Amazon stand out in the marketplace. 

This was about TRUST. 

Making Amazon look like the world’s largest bookstore gave them credibility. It made them appear trustworthy to new customers. 

The rest is history.

Step 5: Evaluate Your Visual Materials

Finally, this is the part where you decide on your visual assets. 

Visuals are what many entrepreneurs get stuck on when it comes to branding. 

Somewhere along the way, we decided visuals defined your brand identity…It’s actually the final step.

As Bernie Schroeder mentioned in the show, you complete a communications analysis of everything your company uses as visual assets. This is your website, business cards, logo, video, etc. 

He talks about literally laying out the physical assets on the floor. 

By now you’ll be able to realize whether or not your current communication materials are positioning you in the right category. 

And if your branding isn't communicating right for you? 

Start over.  

Create a refresh of the brand from scratch. Go back to square one with customer research and developing a stronger positioning. 

Once you’ve reset, then you recreate all of your communication materials so they’re in line with your strategic goals.

Build Your Brand One Step at a Time

Finally, a word of caution.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Chances are, there are much bigger brands competing against you.

Given their double jeopardy market advantage over you, competing with them head-to-head would very likely be a losing battle for you.

Instead, you can follow positioning principles to build trust within your corner of the market.

Only after you’ve become the de-facto brand leader for a corner of the market should you expand to another market or to another product/service within that market.

Until then, find a corner of the market that’s big enough to sustain you but small enough that the big brands aren’t paying attention to them, and go all-in to serve them.

And then to them, you’ll stand the f*ck out, and they’ll be likely to remember you, which is what branding is all about.‍

Key Takeaways on Building a Strong Brand

• Marketing strategy, branding, communication, and customer experience are essentially all the same thing.
• Good marketing starts with a good strategy. If you skip any step in the process you’re using tactics, not a marketing system. The strategy develops into a brand people can trust.
• There are no hacks. Marketing is building relationships and trust. Building those connections with people takes time.
• Visual assets play a key role in branding, but it’s mostly about finding your unique positioning.
• Build one step at a time.
  

FAQs

Q: Do I need to build my brand on all social channels?

Nope. In fact, it’s best to pick one channel to begin with. 

If that scares you, you’re not alone. 

Most of us are afraid that we’ll be lost in obscurity if we aren’t present on all channels at all times, but the reality is the opposite. 

Trying to be everywhere at all times for all people only adds to the clutter, and it doesn’t make you stand out. 

Instead, go all-in on just one channel to begin with, and go all-in to offer by far the best value to your segment on that channel. 

Essentially, you break through the noise by doing less, and you can read more about how that works here. 

The most important thing is that you’re not on a channel just to be on a channel. 

Your channel needs to be congruent with your one value proposition that you discovered through your customer research and then what you formulated in your strategy. 

For example, getting 10,000 followers on LinkedIn just because it seems like maybe a good idea is a waste of time.

Q: Got any examples of small companies with good branding?

Definitely. My solo business, Everyone Hates Marketers, is a hostile brand where my mavericks and I fight marketing bullshit. 

You can see the intensity in everything I do, from the language I use, to my high-intensity 8-week program. 

I’m able to keep my brand simple and clear because I stick with: 

• one value proposition — helping people stand the f*ck out 
• one segment — risk-takers sick of marketing bullshit
• one category — marketing programs
• one gift — my newsletter/podcast
• one spice — too intense 
  

Four Sigmatic and Shanty Biscuits are just two other examples, and you can find all of those in addition to a step-by-step on how to simplify your marketing to make your brand really clear in this article.

Q: What if I create a blue ocean product/service? Do I even need a brand to help me stand out and be remembered?

I see you’ve asked me a trick question, you tricky person you. 

There’s no such thing as a blue ocean. 

We’re all in one, gigantic, red ocean, full of the same fish. 

Each fish has needs, and businesses across industries fight to satisfy those needs. 

So, in short, every business needs to be noticed and remembered. 

There are no exceptions.

Q: Do you have any tricks to help me come up with brand ideas that will stand out from competing brands? 

Yup, although they’re not really tricks, just sound marketing ;-). 

First of all, when you’re talking with customers, you can ask them one really important question: “What do you hate the most about <your category>?” 

Their responses will reveal a lot of unconventional ideas to make your business really stand out. 

Once you have some customer feedback, you can strategize to pick one or multiple of the 26 types of brand positioning, the process of which is described in detail in my podcast episode with Ulli Appelbaum.

Q: Is it possible to be a challenger brand or even a hostile brand and still remain professional?

The short answer is, YES, absolutely. 

Being hostile means fighting your customer’s enemy, the status quo, to serve them in a way that otherwise they would be underserved by your competitors. 

Not only is that noble, but it’s highly professional. 

What’s unprofessional is slandering other people, being misogynistic, or generally just being an asshole toward other human beings.

Resources on Branding

• Brands and BullS**t: Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter by Bernie Schroeder
• Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
• The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
• SPIN Selling
• Episode with Bernie Schroeder
• 13 Positioning Principles From Hungry Hungry Hippos

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