Aiming at a strong token? You should probably start with a strong brand.

When you create a token at MintMe, making it as strong and stable as possible should be one of the goals you have. To achieve this, branding plays a very important role. It will give a unique personality and set a place in the market to attract the right followers. But it usually happens that due to having limited resources, you can’t hire the services of professional marketers or branding agencies. Because of this many startups make common mistakes like not defining clear brand guidelines, losing the opportunity to give potential users a strong first impression.

Your brand is much more than a nice design and a catchy slogan. Your brand is who you are, what you stand for, and what your followers can expect from your project. And your token should be closely linked to it, a strong brand will translate into a strong token. Of course, your logo, and slogan play a role, as do the images you use, the name of your token, the messages you deliver, the way you interact with your followers and customers, and every single thing you do. But building a strong brand takes more than that, these steps can help you achieve what you need:

Set your purpose

We’re not talking about the intrinsic purpose of any business to make money, we have to look a little further. Think about the reason why you started your project and why you want to keep it alive. What makes you get up in the morning and start working? What do you want to achieve?

Do you have mission and vision statements? Give them a look and it will help you to identify or remember your purpose. Don’t you have them yet? This is the best possible time to write them. In short, your mission statement should define what you do and your vision statement should give an idea of your short to midterm goals.

Determine why is your project distinctive

Why should users follow your content and buy your token instead of your competitors? Is there anything exclusive you can offer? Are there any abstract qualities or features of your product or services you can mention? Your brand should be positioned in your followers’ minds so that they think differently about it than the way they think about others with similar projects.

Analise what others are doing, and it will help you differentiate yourself from them. You’re going after the same customers, so take note of which tactics work and which fail, and use this knowledge to improve your strategy.

Define your personality

A brand should be looked at as a person with a distinctive personality. Describe this person and then bring these attributes to everything related to your project, be it a service or something you create. When you write your mission and vision statements, you’re making promises. When you define your brand personality, you’re taking action to fulfill those promises.

Everything in your project should reflect its personality. Colors, designs, images, name of your token, messages, and even the way you talk to your followers. If you find any aspect that doesn’t support it, just change it for the benefit of the brand.

Discover your target consumer

Have you noticed how commercials change according to the television program you’re watching? The reason it happens is marketing professionals are targeting consumers for different products according to the programs they watch. A target consumer is the specific group of people who are the focus of a product’s advertisements.

In order to discover your target consumer, you can start by finding out the answer to these questions: What do your followers want from the product you’re offering? Are you solving any problems for them? What do they need from you? List the features and benefits of your product. Features are attributes like color, material, or any other external characteristic. While benefits are the end result of what it can accomplish for your followers. Once you have a list of the benefits, determine which of them are emotional. Then identify the one you’d like your customers to think about when they think of your project. That’s what your overall brand should represent to them.

Be consistent

You can easily recognize a strong brand because it’s consistent with everything it does. Everything in its design and its products is aligned with its core. You might want to consider a style guide to achieve this kind of result. You also have to make sure everything you do, post, or release is in concordance with your brand. But even when consistency is a must to strengthen your brand, you must also be flexible enough to keep your project fresh and relevant. This doesn’t mean you will change the essence. But at some point, you must be open to creative campaigns and adjust or change tactics that didn’t produce a good result. You should also consider new ideas that can help you be a step ahead of your competition, or at least will help you show why you’re different.

Once you have worked on these steps, you can consider you have a strong foundation, and it’s time to start thinking about consolidating and growing. Conduct regular surveys to find out if your followers have an impression of your brand consistent with who you are. Then just keep improving weaknesses, focus on your strengths, and before you know it you'll have both the brand and the token people will be talking about.