Most startups, especially in Web3, are made by tech guys and extremely fast. There are no brand or marketing experts, but they must start communicating with potential users on social media or at events.
If you start your public communications process, you can find that it needs a clear branding, marketing, and communication strategy.
My name is Daria Volkova. I'm a Web3 strategist, brand marketer, and communications expert. In this article, I explain how early-stage Web3 startups can work with a brand strategy and what to do if your budget is limited.
Brand strategy is closely related to business strategy and affects product and user interaction. Before building a brand, I recommend identifying people's needs for your product.
Start selling, evaluate scaling opportunities, and spend money on branding and marketing only in case of success.
Otherwise, you will get an attractive picture that will not have a proven business model.
This is what the MVP stage exists for. Many startups define it as the prototyping phase.
MVP is necessary to understand whether you are selling before spending on expensive branding and launching marketing campaigns.
If not only your friends and relatives are ready to pay for a product or service but also many people in the market, it is logical to start building a brand that will add value and recognition to your product.
What Do You Need to Know About Brand Strategy?
The goal of branding is to highlight the strengths of a product or company and convey them to a potential audience as clearly as possible. I do not separate marketing strategy, brand, and communications because they are all interconnected and never work in isolation.
Here also, a sales strategy can be added because branding and marketing are done with one ultimate goal — to increase capitalization and profit by increasing the number of sales and the brand's value.
The development of a brand strategy from my side usually consists of the following stages:
- Audience Analysis and Customer Journey Map
- Positioning and Value Proposition
- Vision, Values, and Mission
- Competitive strategy
- Naming and headline
- Logo, colors, fonts, social media design, photo design, icons, and identity guidebook
- The tone of voice and communication strategy
- Brand book with strategy, design, basics of sales, and other details
In Web3 projects, you should add the following items to this list:
- Brand identity and tone for the community. These elements may differ slightly from the general identity but must be consistent.
- Tools and activities for engaging developers and building relationships with them.
- Look and feel of the brand in the NFT format or metaverse.
- A list of possible techniques to enhance the WOW effect of your brand.
This is an example of a brand page of Celo Foundation:
And here are a few pictures from a brand book of 1inch downloaded from their website:
How to Start a Brand Building With a Limited Budget?
If you are starting and your budget for marketing and brand building is limited, your main task is to get the highest possible ROI, which does not necessarily have to be measured directly in money.
It can be new contacts, network expansion, or growth of the company's and the founder's recognition. This principle is suitable for companies with any budget, but it is a matter of survival for early-stage startups.
For a start, you can interview early adopters and prospects who haven't used your service or product yet (but have a pain point you can solve).
You can learn more about user interviews by reading “The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick or learning the basics of sociology and product research.
It is also worth conducting a competitive analysis — see how your competitors look and position themselves, and formulate your positioning, which will most accurately and accurately present the value of your product.
12 Simple Questions to Create Your Web3 Startup's Brand Strategy
I'm sharing a simple but effective hint on fast validating your brand strategy and communication. Work through these questions by imagining you are in a small pub talking to the locals over a glass of beer.
Focus on conveying the spirit of the message in a way that resonates with the listener.
Vision:
- What impact do you want to have in the world?
- How would you like to be remembered?
Values:
- What would you not give up?
- What does an employee have to believe in for you to think they are the right fit?
Attributes:
- What pain do you solve for clients?
- How do your products differ from competitors' products?
Headline/Slogan:
- What would you put on the side of your truck to tell people you're selling what they need?
- What words might someone google if they were looking for your product type?
Storytelling:
- What jokes are told about you?
- Are there any unexpected challenges that you have overcome?
Key Messages:
- How do you get people to say “yes”?
- What would you say if you had to describe your products to your mom?
After understanding the audience's pain points and formulating your positioning, you should think about the image and name that will best convey the essence of your activity. You should not go to extremes and take the first best idea from Google or ChatGPT.
At the same time, there is no need to turn on the perfectionist and devise a name for two months. Remember that the main task of a startup is to scale a tested hypothesis quickly.
To create a corporate style, decide which elements are most important. For the Web3 project, the most important thing is the website, representation in social networks, and visualization in virtual spaces or application interfaces.
Mug branding and business card design are not worth spending time and money on.
A logo and corporate colors will suffice in the first stages, setting the tone of voice and emphasizing your idea. By the way, you can also make a logo in Canva or with the help of an AI tool like Midjourney.
How Can You Save Money on Branding in the Beginning?
I do not advise you to run to register a trademark immediately and spend several thousand dollars on it. Do this when your product becomes competitive.
Some startups register global trademarks to convince investors of their ambitions. Will this work as a compelling argument for investors? No. A proven business model and a working prototype look more convincing.
Initially, you can ask your friends to become your ambassadors if they have used your product or service. Also, you can ask influencers to make a promo if they like your project and are ready to do it for free or at a minimal cost.
If you plan to conduct user interviews, then there is no point in paying for them either. If people don't agree to give feedback on the product for free, they are not interested in your product.
Therefore, look for those who are interested in your product and can provide you with quality feedback.
How to Check That Your Web3 Product’s Brand Is Going Well?
If you've already started working on your product brand, you may have a logical question about how okay things are moving.
Below are some criteria to pay attention to:
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Memorability. You can achieve this through specific elements, such as a logo, name, corporate sounds, and colors. Your brand must be noticeable, readable, and easy to reproduce to be well remembered.
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Meaningfulness. The functions and promises of the product should be clear to users — what, how, and why is happening in the product.
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Sympathy. The presence of aesthetic appeal to users. Moreover, this is not about beauty but attractiveness for those using your product. If people who love biker aesthetics use your product (dark tones, leather, chrome, tattoos), then the pink-mint-peach gradients from Dribbble trends will be clearly out of their understanding.
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Scalability. If new features, services, or sub-products are to be added, the branding must support them. Polygon created a list of solutions with a comprehensive design system: Polygon PoS, Polygon Miden, Polygon zkEVM, and Polygon Supernets.
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Inclusiveness and kindness. If you know that people with visual or hearing impairments can use your product, your mission will be to make their experience more enjoyable.
For example, in trading applications, taking into account people with color blindness, it's worthwhile to approach the visualization of indicators and the "Buy" (green) and "Sell" (red) buttons more carefully in terms of accessibility — they should be distinguishable even in monochrome mode.
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Security. Brand elements must be protected by law, especially if you enter the international market.
Conclusion
Your brand strategy is a living thing, so it won't be perfect the first time, but it will give you something to build on. It should be good enough to allow you to make faster and better decisions to move your Web3 product forward.
If you have read this article, you are already on the right path to building brand ranks. I wish you success in developing the brand of your Web3 product or service!
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