BRAND LAUNCH - Mishti Khanna

 Brand launch, is the process of creating a professional services brand where none currently exists. Since you are starting from scratch, you have a unique opportunity to choose how you wish to position your firm in the marketplace, which clients you want to serve and what services you will provide to them. It is the perfect time to develop a compelling value proposition.

3 Steps to build your Brand Launch:

Step 1-Get the Brand Strategy right

This phase is aimed at making sure you have positioned the firm properly and have a compelling, easy-to-understand value proposition. As with any branding exercise, it starts with research. Since you don’t have existing clients, you must rely on interviews with prospects and influencers. Often, your initial positioning will be built around the founders’ reputations and experience. In this case, you can research clients from past engagements to uncover key positioning elements.

Next, you will develop a core set of brand documents. These include a positioning statement and your messaging architecture, which identifies your primary audiences, the key messages to each, barriers to overcome and the proof points that equip you to defend each message. Together, these documents form the strategic foundation for your new brand.

Step 2- Build the brand

In this phase, you develop your firm’s name, tagline, logo, website, marketing materials and other brand identity tools. Since you are unlikely to have a wealth of case studies, you may want to talk about why you founded your firm and what compelling benefits you bring to your clients.

This stage is usually capped off by the development of a brand rollout plan. This plan lays out exactly how the brand will be introduced and developed, including which audiences you will target with your rollout, and in what order. A detailed launch calendar is a great tool to use in your planning process. In the context of a brand launch, the rollout plan takes on a lot of significance, so be sure to allow sufficient time to do it right.

Step 3- Brand Rollout

You’ll need to implement the plan and introduce your brand new brand to the world.  If your new brand is well positioned, it will appear fresh and innovative to the marketplace — and offer prospective clients a benefit that is both unique and compelling.

When new brands stumble at this stage, their problems can often be traced back to a failure to get the strategy right. These firms rush to market with a “us-too” market positioning that fails to deliver any real differentiation or competitive advantage. Attempting to be just like your competitors without the benefit of a track record is not a formula for success.