You know what your blockchain project wants to achieve and what it will take to get there. The project roadmap is clear, and you are progressing. You have fantastic, enthusiastic teammates committed to the project and have started gathering a community that sees the impact your project could have on the blockchain industry and the world.
What next?
Whether you are running a bootstrapped project looking to launch your project within a specific timeframe; or looking for investors to further develop the project, you will need to package your project appropriately. That is what a brand is - creating a package to define and tell your project’s story.
To decide what your brand stands for, you need to pin down and isolate your Unique Selling Position (USP). To that, follow these five steps:
1. Define your project’s core values
Unpack the intangibles of your project - this step is key to developing the brand story and the storytelling employed as the brand is grown.
What is your brand’s promise? That is, at the core, what does your company or product do for the customer in the most direct and in the most simple terms?
What is your project's origin story?
What are your motivations or overall intent for and with the project?
As the project owner, what do you want your users and audience to know about the project?
If your brand had a personality, what would it be? (Brand persona)
What would your project look like, or how would it speak? What is your tone of voice (brand voice)?
Who are your team members, and why have they committed to the project?
What belief system drives the project - from that, what would resonate with others? What are your values?
Ask yourself why people would work for this project or use our services/product?
AmaZix has a systematic approach to pulling these, sometimes hard to grasp and communicate concepts from a project team. This is an essential step in the process, so essential to ensure it is done correctly!
Competitor brand research
To plot yourself in the market, you need to conduct an honest and objective study of the market within which you operate. Ideally, you do this with a consultancy like AmaZix who can be systematic and objective in the approach but guided by your knowledge of the industry.
Determine who your direct competitors
Decide which competitors you aspire to compete with, whether direct competitors or an ideal/aspirational established brand.
Analyze both sets of competitors visual marketing and the tone of voice they use
Do an inventory of which platforms these competitors use to engage with and meet their audiences. Include an analysis of the frequency of contact with the audience.
Answer the question: Why would a user choose you over a competitor?
This step guides you to your positioning - where will your project play, which you will serve, and how you are different.
Product research
Unpack how your product is different from your direct competitors
Is it a feature?
Is it the price point?
Is it the availability, accessibility, or geographic location?
The customer segment?
Could it be the brand ethos, culture, personality
Or the product advertising?
Delivery on the brand promise? Proof of your value proposition.
Is it related to service - is your after-sales service exceptional?
Audiences you want to reach
A project is nothing without its adoption or users, i.e., audience. In this day and age, the effort exerted by any brand should always be to meet the brand promise made to the audience.
To reach your audience, you need to understand them by doing the following:
Putting together a profile of the types of users you think your project will appeal to - that have the same values as your project
Research competitor communities and followers/audiences
Outline your audience demographics -age, gender, geography, income group
Unpack your audience’s personality types - who they are and what resonates with them. For example, are they cautious or curious?
Based on your findings, build primary, secondary, and, if necessary tertiary user profiles so you know who to aim your brand at and how to do that.
Once you have profiled the audience you want to reach, you need to determine what the customer touchpoints for your brand are from initial introduction to product use, customer care, payment, collections, loyalty, and evangelism? This will take you from brand awareness to brand contact and then all the way through to delivering on your brand promise and creating brand loyalty.
Narrowing down the type of people you want to target will be the basis for your marketing strategy and the content or campaigns that will result from it. Then craft messages that resonate with specific customer segments (locally, regionally, and internationally) while staying “on-brand” globally.
AmaZix is a niche boutique consultancy that operates only within the blockchain, crypto, and DeFi space, so we are very aware of audiences’ types in this space and tailor the branding, positioning, and messaging of a project to them.
What are your objectives?
Apart from launching or raising funds and now delivering on your brand promise, what do you want to achieve? Where do you see yourself in a year, three years, and then five years? Being very granular in your approach to the future will also inform how your brand/project is packaged and portrayed over time.
Knowing your long-term objectives helps you break down the story you are telling about your brand, from introducing yourself to the market and audience you have defined to compete with the brands you aspire to eventually.
Take the first step in defining your brand; reach out to AmaZix for our expertise and guidance through this process and to make sure when you do unveil your project, you hit the nail on the head!