Marketing

BUIDLing Brand Awareness – The Complete Survival Guide For Properly Establishing Brands In The Web3 Domain

23 May 2023

In today’s hyper-competitive world, building a brand and establishing its identity is vital to success. In the Web3 era, it becomes even more critical as the niche communities that are the key audience of blockchain-based products/services are highly specific and well-informed, with a profound capacity to engage in the brand-making processes within the respective user bases that they’re a part of. In this brand awareness survival guide, we will discuss the general aspects of branding and corporate identity while providing specific guidance on branding for the Web3 industries.


General Aspects of Branding and Corporate Identity

Branding is not just about designing a logo or creating a tagline; it’s a comprehensive process that includes all the activities and strategies contributing to building a brand’s identity. A brand’s identity is the way it’s being perceived by its target audience. This is shaped by various factors such as visual design, messaging, customer experience, and online reputation. Those are the fundamentals that any concept must duly fulfill to effectively establish a brand at all, regardless of any additional context.

Some parts of the ideation process for the branding strategy are pretty fine to be initiated even before the product or service is solidly defined. In contrast, others are critically dependent on what can be regarded as the essence of what the brand will be offering.

To build a strong brand, you need to start by defining your brand’s purpose, values, and personality. Your purpose is the reason why your brand exists, and it should be rooted in the needs and aspirations of your target audience. Your values are the principles that guide your brand’s behavior, and they should align with your target audience’s values. Your personality is the set of (human) characteristics your brand exhibits and should be consistent with your purpose and values.

Once you have defined your brand’s purpose, values, and personality, you can start developing your visual design and communication guidelines. Your visual design includes your logo, color palette, typography, and imagery. The communication strategy should define the messaging and can consist of your brand’s tagline, brand story, value proposition, and tone of voice. Both your visual design and messaging should work together in unison, all while being consistent with your brand’s purpose, values, and personality, and should resonate with your target audience.

Another crucial aspect of branding is customer experience. To build a strong brand, you must provide a consistent and positive customer experience that meets or exceeds your target audience’s expectations. Your brand’s customer experience includes all the touchpoints your target audience has with the brand, such as your website, social media presence, customer service, and product/service quality.

Finally, your brand’s reputation is a vital component of your brand’s identity. Your brand’s reputation is the sum of your brand’s perceptions, and it’s influenced by various factors such as customer feedback, media coverage, and social media conversations. To build a strong brand reputation, you should consistently deliver on your brand promise, engage with your customers proactively, and promptly yet sensibly respond to negative feedback.

A dedicated community manager/strategist should be capable of contributing to a brand’s quality as a whole by having excellent communication skills, deep knowledge of the industry, passion for your brand, strong critical thinking and analytical skills, a proactive attitude, creativity, imagination, flexibility, and a collaborative approach. Even though it’s hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution, we will still feel comfortable claiming that by combining these skills and qualities, a community manager can succeed and help you build a strong brand that resonates with the target audience and contributes positively to the brand’s success and reputation.


Branding for Web3 Industries

The Web3 industries, which include blockchain, cryptocurrency, and decentralized applications (dApps), are rapidly growing and evolving. To build a strong brand in the Web3 space, you need to understand the specific aspects of the products and niche communities that are the key audience of blockchain-based products/services.

One of the unique aspects of Web3 is the focus on decentralization and trustlessness. Blockchain technology enables trustless interactions between parties, which means there is no need for intermediaries such as banks or governments. This focus on decentralization and trustlessness is a fundamental value proposition of many blockchain-based products/services. It should be embedded in the way that your brand’s purpose, values, and communications are being formed.

Another unique aspect of Web3 is the focus on community building and engagement. Many blockchain-based products/services are built by and for niche communities that share specific values and interests. The main challenge is that these communities appear to be relatively closed off to ‘outsiders,’ and it takes a specific level of mutual understanding between these individuals and groups on the one hand; and your brand and the way you establish its presence on the other. To build a strong Web3 brand, you need to properly understand these niche communities, their concerns, aspirations, needs and the stage they’re at in terms of community lifecycle, and to engage with them proactively. This includes participating in community events and forums, providing educational resources and support, and collaborating with other projects in the same niche. Simply being honest and handing out relevant information in the most transparent manner can quickly spark great interest if wisely delivered “at the right time” to the “right groups” of people “in the right places.”

In addition to these specific aspects of Web3 there are some widely applied good practices and postulates that also apply to branding, which works together quite nicely with the principal direction you’ll derive from the above-mentioned particular tendencies of the Web3 domain. These include:

  • Consistency: Consistency is key to building a solid brand. Your brand’s visual design, messaging, and customer experience should be consistent across all touchpoints.
  • Authenticity: Authenticity is essential to building trust with your target audience. Your brand’s purpose, values, and personality should be authentic and aligned with your target audience’s needs and aspirations.
  • Differentiation: Differentiation is crucial in a competitive market. Your brand’s value proposition should differentiate you from your competitors and provide a unique benefit to your target audience.
  • Flexibility: Flexibility is vital in a rapidly changing industry. Your brand’s visual design and messaging should be adaptable to new trends and technologies while remaining consistent with your brand’s purpose, values, and personality.
  • Engagement: Engagement is what makes or breaks the building of a strong brand reputation. As stated before, you should proactively engage with your target audience and promptly respond to their feedback, bolstering further engagement and multilateral interactions.

Again, while it would be ideal to excel at all of these at once, there is nothing wrong in prioritizing some versus the others, especially in the early stages of building your brand (given, of course, that you won’t be completely neglecting any ones at any time).

Gradually progressing through the steps of your branding process might reveal even more of the unique branding aspects (that apply to your brand exclusively and might be entirely outside of, or even, on some occasions, against some of the advice laid out herein). However, by investing time and resources into building brand awareness and following through with the good stuff from this guide, we’re confident you will have grown more than enough by that point in order to make the right decisions and overcome any of the (certainly oncoming) challenges and potential pitfalls associated with branding your project, whatever it may be…


Let’s recap

BUIDLing a strong brand requires truly grasping the specifics of the blockchain-based industries and the niche communities that are the primary audience generating the growth. To build a great and distinct brand for Web3, you should start by defining your brand’s purpose, values and personality, then develop your visual design and communications strategy accordingly. You also need to provide a consistent and positive customer experience and engage with your target audience proactively. By following these general principles and specific guidance, you can build a strong brand that will resonate with your target audience in the right way and help you stand out in a competitive market.

Make sure to follow 42 Studio and master the magic of propelling your Web3 brands to achieve stellar results:

Check out the rest of 42’s blog for more web3-related articles.

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