Brand guidelines - it is a document that is used to help build, identify and and grow value of your brand. There are three steps to the guideline process: Identify, Define, and Build.
Step 1 - Identify
First you need to figure out who your brand is for and what people will pay to buy your brand. This is also referred to as your niche market. If you are doing the guide for product branding, consider this while deciding on your name, tagline, colors, and other aspects of your brand. This is critical as you cannot build your brand without knowing who you are for.
Step 2 - Define
After you have decided on your niche market, you need to figure out what they want and what you can offer them that will fulfill their needs. This is also referred to as the need statement, which is a question such as "What we need that we can't get from our existing customers?" You will need to use this statement to construct your offering and what you should offer and what you should avoid.
Step 3 - Build
Once you know what your brand is for, and what they will pay to have, you can construct your offering and your brand. This is also referred to as the product specification, which is a list of the different products that your brand is for. It is also constructed as a question such as "What do we need that we can offer by offering (name of product) and avoiding (name of product)?" This is important because it focuses your offering on what your brand is for. It will help you to organize your offering and make it easy for people to identify it.
There are also options to combine the third step, build, with the second step, define.
Consider combining the third step, build, with the second step, define, in order to provide details on what you are for. For instance, "We offer (brand) for (niche market)."If you are doing the guide for product branding, then the build step could also be referred to as the theme clause, which is a clause that ties together all the elements of your offering. For instance, "We build (brand) for (brand's niche market)."Once you have decided on your three step formula, you will need to figure out how to make it work. Make sure your offering is appealing to your niche market, it will help people to know what your brand is about.
