By Martha Porter Fiszer
Whether you’re launching a breakthrough new company, product or service in the health or nutrition space, a well-defined Brand Platform is essential for a successful go-to-market plan. The Brand Platform guides how your brand is portrayed to the outside world and throughout your internal teams. Without it, you’re constantly reinventing the wheel. With it, you have a clear, repeatable story that attracts customers, investors, and partners.
A solid brand platform provides
Clarity of vision and mission: Articulates your purpose and guides strategic decisions throughout the company.
Differentiation: Establishes what sets you apart in a competitive market and helps customers understand why they should choose you.
Consistency: Ensures your messaging, design, and customer experiences are cohesive and, over time, build credibility and trust.
Efficient growth: Guides marketing, partnerships, and innovation, making it easier to scale while staying true to core values.
Customer connection: Attracts and retains the right audiences who resonate with your approach to meeting their needs. And the key word here is EMPATHY.
What are the elements of a B2B Brand Platform?
Our B2B Brand Platform is designed specifically for startups and scale-ups — typically smaller teams with important budget parameters and a need for speed. By focusing on the core features below, you can get your brand up and running without getting bogged down or overthinking. Over time, you can refine and expand, but these basics ensure you’re communicating clearly and consistently from the start.
Purpose, vision and mission
This is your “why.” Why does your brand exist, and what difference are you trying to make? What future world are you striving for and how are you going to make it happen?
Target audience
Know who you’re talking to. Not in generalities but via a prioritized list of all of the stakeholders who make or influence the purchase decision; what they are trying to achieve and how you can help them get there.
Core message/promise
This is what you want people to remember about you in one sentence. It’s the main promise or feeling your brand offers, such as: “Care that feels like family.”
Visual identity
These are the elements people see that represent your brand. They include:
Logo: The symbol or design that stands for your brand.
Colors: A carefully curated color palette that conveys a specific tone or mood.
Typography: The font styles you use consistently across all platforms
Voice and tone
This is how your brand sounds when communicating – the words you choose and the attitude you project. Are you friendly and casual, or formal and professional?
Value proposition
This is the actual problem your product or service solves that makes it so beneficial to your customers they can’t live without you!
What are the steps to create a stand-out platform?
We have a proven process that we’ve applied to many startups and scale-ups in med tech, biotech, healthcare services, food science and more. After a business plan is in place, we do a deep dive into the company, the market and stakeholder mindsets. This can be a robust as in-depth market research or as casual as desktop research and one-one-one interviews with employees and industry friendlies.
Next, we go to work on completing a series of worksheets and deliverables that communicate the elements listed above. These are typically done in collaboration with your team, then refined and shared with you as a full platform document.
These core elements include:
Core message worksheet that helps articulate a unique core message or promise to your customers
Brand positioning framework that guides the formation of a competitive market position
Brand architecture which maps out Target Audience, Brand Promise, Support for the Promise, Vision and Mission
Value proposition(s) to help focus the practical, functional benefits of your product(s) and align them with the overall Brand Promise
Message maps for versioning language for individual audiences
Audience personas that provide insights, attitudes and behaviors of key audiences
Summary
In our experience, many startups are so focused on developing their product, and getting it to market, that they overlook the need for a strategic brand foundation. We understand the challenges of launching something revolutionary – including the urgency to build a pipeline. But by taking a moment to craft a strategic B2B Brand Platform as your marketing foundation, you are setting your company, division or organization up for short- and long-term market success.
Catch more thoughts on what goes into a solid B2B Brand Platform by watching our video Beyond the Logo: What Really Makes a Strong Brand Platform. Or shoot me a note and I’ll send you our Brand Platform Worksheets with more tips for standing out in the market. martha@health-mavens.com
