Brand of a network company. Promotion of a new MLM project

What is a company brand

Objectively speaking, a brand is a set of associations and emotions linked to a company in people's minds. When talking about a project's branding, it refers to the process of creating the desired perception of it.

Brand creation strategy includes generating a name, slogan, logo, and other design nuances (such as specific symbols and color palette) that can differentiate the company from competitors.

Why Branding Your Business in the Network Is So Important

Both in network and traditional business, the rule applies - customers come to the brand. Attracting new buyers and distributors is the main goal of branding.

A popular brand gathers a loyal audience - people who are accustomed to, attached to the company, buy its product, and recommend it to others. A committed consumer will choose the product of a company he likes, even if there are alternatives on the market. By popularizing their brand, companies:

1. Increase their recognizability;

2. Attract the attention of potential business partners;

3. Establish product sales.

Gerald Zaltman (Harvard University professor, author of the book "How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market") claims that each of us holds the names of 1-3 major brands in our minds and in 95% of cases, we decide in their favor. This happens entirely subconsciously. Only in 5% of cases, consumers are guided by other factors and pay attention to products that are new to them.

Also, a popular brand is easier to monetize. As your business grows, you can afford to adjust the company's pricing policy and recoup the costs of promotion.

What's more important: the company's brand or the recognition of its founder

Lately, more and more MLM project founders are working not only on developing the company's brand but also on increasing personal recognition.

In simpler terms, a personal brand is what others think of you. By developing a personal brand, a person creates a strong connection between themselves and the business. We wrote about how to develop a business by increasing your recognition in the article Creating a structure around your own name

By developing a personal brand, you become a thought leader and strengthen the trust of your audience. It's great if the founder of an MLM startup is already well-known in the professional community and has a certain amount of loyal followers observing his life. This creates an opportunity to immediately bring in the first partners from among your subscribers and start building the structure of your company from yourself.

However, without a developed company brand, it is very difficult to scale your business and "play the long game" solely on your own name. Network marketing operates in such a way that each individual distributor organically promotes the brand of the company he is a partner of.

How to attract attention to a new brand

The first and most effective way to attract attention is to launch an advertising campaign. The algorithms for displaying ads online work in such a way that you target the display of the ad to the segment of the target audience you need. Such advertising can be set up on search engines, contextual advertising, banners, and social networks.

Treat branding like a first date. Trying to make an impression on a partner, everyone chooses a successful combination of clothes and may change outfits several times. Then, it is important to remain friendly, observe manners, not interrupt, and say appropriate things. So, the advertising banner of your project is as important as the shirt you decide to wear to the meeting.

Imagine your business as dynamic as possible, because the main goal of advertising is to be memorable. To captivate the audience, you can implement something unconventional or even provocative. Continuously test different ideas and choose the most successful ones for further promotion. Definitely, before launching the advertisement:

- make sure you offer a product of impeccable quality. Network marketing is built on recommendations, and no one wants to recommend a bad product;

- review your pricing policy. Under any circumstances, the product must be affordable. Exceptions are only made in the luxury segment of the product;

- optimize logistics. The faster the company serves and delivers goods to the consumer, the better;

- optimize the functionality of your website. When landing on the page, a person should intuitively understand how to place an order or contact you;

- provide tools for feedback. Be more accessible, provide the possibility of communication with potential trading partners in messengers and social networks.

We have not mentioned all the nuances, but these are the most obvious things that are important for creating a good impression of the company.

Stages of creating a brand for a new company

1. Go back to the roots. Return to the beginning of your journey and describe what you went through before starting your business. Perhaps your hometown or meeting one of the leaders in the network industry influenced you.

2. Create a slogan. Choose a phrase that will be the voice of the brand. Make a list of words that you associate with yourself and the new project (for example, "quality," "honesty," "money," "people," "family") and highlight three key words that will comprehensively describe the atmosphere and spirit of the company.

Using the example of a CBD dog treatment startup, its founder came up with the words "loyal," "warm," and "confident." Confidence was shown in the need to focus on the end result that the product would bring; warmth - in conveying a warm home atmosphere; loyalty - in the global effort to achieve loyalty between the customer and the company, the company and the dogs, the dogs and their owners.

3. Choose a company name. The name should be easy to write, read, and memorable. In the startup development process, you may revise the range, enter new markets, etc. Imagine if Jeff Bezos had named his business "BooksOnline" instead of "Amazon."

Also, you will need to choose a domain for the website under the brand name. To check availability, it is easiest to use Google - enter a search query with the potential company name and if the ".com" domain is already taken, consider another company name.

4. Describe the company's mission. This will influence your internal culture and future marketing strategy. The product, slogan, and project values should be directly related to the mission.

For example, Facebook's mission is "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together," while Google's is "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

5. Define the brand's color palette. At this stage, you are laying the foundations for the future design of the website and company's pages.

One of the interesting and not so obvious ways to choose colors is to create a brand mood board. By collecting about 50 different images that you associate with the project in one folder, you will orient yourself in the future identity of the startup. 

6. Develop the company's logo. The logo should be associated with the brand's key slogan, match the brand's color palette, be simple, appropriate, unique, and memorable. We recommend involving an experienced designer in logo generation. 

As a result, test your logo for memorability - let a person look at it for 5 seconds, and then ask them to draw on paper what they remembered. If the logo passes the test with 5-10 people - move on.

7. Choose fonts. They should be functional, depending on the goals and context. At a minimum, the design of headings and paragraphs should differ. When looking for the right font, start from the emotion the brand should convey: if it's friendliness - consider round and easy-to-read fonts; if it's confidence - condensed ones.

8. Create a brand book. With the color palette, font, and understanding of how the brand should look, put them together in a unified identity. A brand book will be a guide to your company's style. Website, business cards, merchandise, product packaging, social media page designs, marketing plan presentations - absolutely everything should match a single style.

9. Be consistent. Develop a promotion plan for the next 6-9-12 months. Create a content strategy, arrange professional product photography, implement chatbots, etc. While working on your brand, analyze feedback and adjust page design and promotion strategies as needed. To make your brand stick in consumers' minds:

- Maintain activity on social media profiles;

- Monitor brand mentions, track reviews and comments;

- Promptly address negative feedback.

In some cases, when the concept is not achieving the desired effect or has become outdated, rebranding is necessary. For a business, it is crucial to be flexible, adapt to industry trends, while maintaining its individuality. Regularly review the company's brand book, improve and update the design of the website, product, merchandise, etc. Over time, the brand will mature, acquire new characteristics, improve, or even change beyond recognition.

Branding is hundreds of small tasks aimed at increasing the company's recognition.Thinking that a brand is just pomp and expensive image advertising is a big mistake.