Before Branding: 30 Questions to Help Focus Your New Business Ideas

You have a great idea for a new business! You are excited! You are passionate! You want to stand up in the middle of a crowded room and exclaim your brilliance to the world! Whooo, Nelly! Not just yet, get your plan together first.

This is a sweet moment in time. Enjoy it—Let’s put all that energy to work—Use your excitement to capture your message.

Debbie Millman defined branding with beautiful simplicity as “Deliberate Differentiation”. Branding is the process of developing your business’ “identity.” It will be how you describe your business to yourself, your employees and the public. Branding is the who, what, where, when and why of your business.

To get your new business to market you’ll most likely be planning a strategy for your brand soon. Until then follow these suggestions to prepare yourself before the creative process begins:

PURPOSE

1.What is your product/service?
2.What does it do/offer, in other words, what is the deliverable?
3.Does it serve a purpose or have a specific intent?
4.How has your life or career uniquely suited you to sell this product/service?

BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE

5. Who are the decision-makers in your company going to be?
6. What is your timeline to go to market?

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

7. What opportunities will there be to connect emotionally with your audience?
8. Is there a story behind how you came up with this idea for your product/service?
9. What are some qualities you want your business to include?
10. What are some qualities you don’t want your business to include?

“You’ve Got To Stand For Something, or You’ll Fall For Anything.” – Arron Tipp, Country Song Lyrics

11. What values and beliefs will you and your business uphold?

AUDIENCE

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziggler

12. Who are you selling to–Who is your target audience / ideal customer?
13. What is your focus demographic?
14. Where are they, both geographically and emotionally?
15. Can these ideal customers be grouped or segmented into smaller categories?
16. Where are you going to be able to connect to them—i.e., online, events, publications, social media?
17. Why do they need what you have to offer?

CURRENT MARKET

18. Who are your competitors going to be?
19. What intel do you have about them?
20. What are they doing well?
21. What are they not doing well?
22. What brands do you admire and why? Not just in your industry, but think about companies elsewhere in the marketplace that you can pull inspiration from.
23. Do you have access to any market research?
24. Have you identified any opportunities and threats in your industry?

DISTRIBUTION

25. What steps will it take to create the product/service?
26. How are you going to distribute your product/service?
27. How are you going to communicate visually and verbally?

DIFFERENTIATION

28. What is going to set you apart?
29. What are the benefits and features of your product/service?
30. Will your product be chosen based on price or quality?