How to build a high-value brand

Hello and happy new year! Ready to make 2023 the year that your brand starts contributing to your profits? Brands should be more than just pretty colour palettes and instead be a real value driver for your business. Whether you're looking to increase revenues or close out successful funding rounds, this newsletter will help.

We're going to start by introducing the RICHES? framework we use here at Genius to build high value brands. And for the more sceptical or hesitant among you, each step is illustrated with examples of what impact that step can have. Feel free to steal any of those examples to get buy in from the board!

Research

The first step in building a really valueable brand is to confirm what your secret sauce is in the eyes of your clients and prospective clients, plus what your competitive landscape looks like. Why? Our client planned to launch their new venture in London, but research revealed almost prohibitive competition in London and a virtually untapped opportunity in Nigeria, on track to be worth over $1bn by 2024.?

Identify

Next you zone in on commercially relevant white space, adjacent to the noise of the market, space that you can truly own, then you develop a brand position and story to match. For one of our clients, this meant shifting the emphasis from product, where they were similar to their competitors, to service, where they were the only one to service their own kit and building an owned service network from scratch was prohibitive. This has resulted in multiple record-breaking years of sales. Conversely, another client learned that they were 3 years clear of their competition on product sophistication, a virtually impossible gap to close, so that's where their focus is, and it has closed several very successful funding rounds.

Create

Now we're on to what most people feel is the fun part! It's time to design a visual and verbal identity that has the WOW factor, communicating exactly what you stand for. Creating an identity that was an exact match for what a particular group of investors would buy into helped a start-up client close ￡14m in seed funding in just 3 days.

Harmonise

Branding isn't a solo effort, or even just a marketing team thing. Once you have an identity, it's time to get your teams on board with the new messaging and how they’re going to live the brand values day to day. Getting our clients’ teams on brand transformed their sales conversions, taking them from loss making to a profitable ￡8m per annum revenue.

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Now that you have an awesome brand identity, let’s make sure the whole business is using it consistently across every possible touchpoint. It's daunting and even really huge companies don't manage to get this perfect, so don't beat yourself up if you miss something. Just focus on the highest profile touchpoints first. Creating a consistent, congruent brand presentation took our client from relying solely on referrals to getting leads through their website and events worth >￡20m.

Solidify

Finally, you need to expand and cement awareness into your target market, reinforcing the brand position to your prospects until everyone knows what you stand for and why they should work with you, and you alone. Taking our client’s proposition from a 90-minute demo to a 90-second video ad, supported by webinars, helped them uncover and close new opportunities with the likes of Virgin Atlantic and secure two successful 8 figure funding rounds.

If you're still reading, then you're ready to find out where you stand. Take just 3 minutes to fill in our Brand Benchmarking Tool and you'll not only receive a detailed breakdown and explanation of your scores against the RICHES? framework, but also a free 10 page report that will help you understand the framework in more detail.

Thanks for reading and until next time, take care...

Best wishes,

Emma