Key Branding Questions
Asking yourself good questions and coming up with good answers are the two most important steps to successful branding. Questions and answers guide everything.
Here are the questions I start with:
Who are you?
What is your story?
What do you stand for?
Who is your customer?
What are you promising?
How is that promise unique?
Why is that promise important to your customer?
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In a small but influential book called The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier asks three essential branding questions:
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why does it matter?
In another important branding book, Designing Brand Identity, Alina Wheeler asks four key branding questions:
Who are you?
Who needs to know?
How will they find out?
Why should they care?
In Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith addresses the positioning of service organizations. He asks seven questions:
Who are you?
What business are you in?
What people do you serve?
What are the special needs of the people you serve?
With whom are you competing?
What makes you different from those competitors?
What’s the benefit? What unique benefit does a client derive from your service?
Convey good, honest answers to any set of these key branding questions and you’ll have the foundation of a strong, highly focused brand.
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Here are 33 Additional Branding Questions.
Why did you go into business?
What do you do better than anyone else?
If your product or service didn’t exist, would anyone notice?
What do you admire about your competition?
How are you different than your competition?
Why does that matter?
Why should your competition be afraid of you?
What are you doing to stay ahead of your competition?
What are your core strengths?
Why does the world need your product or service?
What makes your business great? Special? Unique?
How have you improved your product or service over the years?
Who is your current customer?
Who is your ideal customer?
What do your customers currently believe about your brand?
What would you like your customers to believe about your brand?
What are the most important reasons customers buy from you?
Why should people believe what you claim?
What are your customers really buying from you?
How does doing business with you make your customers feel?
How does experiencing your product make your customers feel?
What does your name communicate about your product or service?
What is your brand’s story?
How do you describe your brand’s personality?
Does your brand have a distinctive look and feel?
Does your brand have its own voice?
What is the most important thing people need to know about your product or service?
What three words best summarize your brand?
What benefit can you own in the minds of your target customers?
Is there a single word that you can own?
How do you measure success?
Where do you want to be in five years? Ten years? What steps are you taking to get there?
If people only remember one thing about your company, product, or service, what should it be?