How to build a startup brand from 0 to 1? (Attached with product case review)

Many brands have survived the most difficult times and received additional capital injections. We will not talk about the process they went through, but what we want to talk about today is how brands entered the market from 0 to 1.

The product case is derived from the experience of Kuai Ma Finance, a vertical media in the blockchain field. The experience of starting from just an idea, outputting the idea into a product, and then entering the market is very valuable. Share it with friends who are in the branding business, and further consolidate your own understanding of the product.

The product is cut like this: (Figure 1)

(Figure 1: Kuaima Finance’s initial planning before entering the market and brand building)

Kuaima Finance products are positioned as vertical products in the blockchain field. Since its inception, we have worked with team partners to develop Kuaima Finance products. Now the vertical media are developing well. Most of the media I have come into contact with are developing well, and gradually forming an industry, and the business system is also beginning to get on the right track.

Many brands have survived the most difficult times and received additional capital injections. We will not talk about the process they went through in between, but what we want to talk about today is how brands entered the market from 0 to 1.

How to build a startup brand from 0 to 1

After the product concepts of the product website are designed, we determine an in-depth vertical field to enter, with precise positioning and a clear industry, and thus quickly find the user group we want.

The user group includes the entire blockchain industry, including project parties, exchanges, investors, etc. These people are all potential users of Kuaima Finance.

Back to the content of Figure 1:

• The first step is to open up channels ;
• The second step is offline activities ;
• The third step is business cooperation.

This is the most basic work to enter an industry, and it is also the way a startup brand can choose to enter the market at the beginning.

If the product is small, it will be difficult to gain priority in negotiations, so it is important to pave the way for the brand first. It is important to know how much public awareness a product can bring to them and how many people will see the content of your product.

For example: When operating a product, pay attention to the following two points:

1. The real number of active users behind the product

How many people have seen Kuaima Finance’s products and been truly influenced by them? What kind of value has Kuaima Finance output and what benefits has it brought to users?

The benefits that vertical media can bring to users include:

• By reading interviews with industry pioneers, you can learn about industry trends and how others are doing it.
• Solve your own needs by reading different professional information channels.
• To meet the needs of advertisers and determine whether it is possible to gain public awareness through the publication of a single article.

The product really has people using it, a real number of active users, and it actually helps people solve problems. It is not just a data report shown to investors . Vanity data will destroy the brand image of a startup brand, focusing too much on appearance rather than facts.

There was a product I promoted last year. Its media data was very good, but its ability to bring sales through article readings was not as good as that with lower reading volume. It was easy to tell the truth and falsehood and whether there were truly active users at a glance.

Therefore, real users need to be found and attracted through continuous online and offline activities. Perhaps you can attract a certain number of users through an online article to use your product, or through offline promotion.

Of course, users are attracted because there must be something they want. Whether users can be retained for a long time depends on whether the content output by the product is powerful.

2. Determine the industry and find users closely related to the industry

When exploring and opening up channels online, you will encounter many problems, such as: the industry positioning is accurate, but where can you obtain accurate users in the community?

First of all, the currently popular blockchain communities are WeChat communities and Telegram communities. Due to limited energy, the strategy I chose is to enter the WeChat community to acquire the users of Blockchain Finance. After determining the upstream and downstream list of the industry, we will start promoting Kuaima Finance products to different social circles in a rhythmic and progressive manner.

In the community, you don’t have to think about whether you should post advertisements. Some communities are well run and do not allow advertising. However, as long as you enter with the Kuaima Finance logo, it is also a kind of invisible advertisement.

During the process of opening up channels, there is one thing I realized afterwards. When launching a product, there is no systematic sorting. The practice of acquiring users just for the sake of acquiring users is contrary to the execution of the strategy.

After entering the community and finding the corresponding users on a large scale, you should immediately choose to use a small industry number to re-position the crowd and community theme group. Through such a theme group, you can acquire users more accurately and manage users more effectively.

So based on this point, I will do this when I create and operate the next product:

• Industry list: Make a list of the upstream and downstream industries you are entering, and quickly and clearly acquire the desired product users through precise online and offline positioning to establish brand awareness.
• Plan ahead: Before promoting , clearly list the profit points of your products and the services you can provide, so that others can know what kind of services they can get by using your products and what needs they can solve.
• The goal is clear: why do you want to do this and what kind of feedback you can get after completing this task. Not knowing why you are doing something will make things less effective, while an unclear goal is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
• Timely review: Once a task is completed, it is completed. If the review is not done in a timely manner, the same mistake will be made again next time.

3. Operate the ecosystem well

After entering the community and getting to know people in the blockchain industry, I started to discuss cooperation one-on-one and try to combine the products of both parties. I have a lot of experience in talking about the convenience of cooperation: in addition to entering different communities online to open up market channels, I also use regular offline activities to bring real users to participate in activities and conduct offline sharing. But every time, the activity only lasted for the first or second period and then there was no follow-up.

Because behind every product in every industry in which every enterprise is located, there is its own ecosystem and a common ecosystem, each of which is linked and conducts business activities. Behind the product, there are different groups of people and overlapping groups of people. How to find your own seed users depends entirely on continuous product polishing to provide users with better services. Whether the product's user experience is good or not is extremely important. Whether it can allow users to get what they want is extremely important.

So how should we operate activities in the operating ecosystem?

• Clarify the basic information of the event: When doing each offline event, you should clarify the expected scale of each event, the effect you want to achieve, and what value the participating users will gain through this event. An important point for the success of an event is whether the initiators and participants of the event get what they want.
• Prepare the plan in advance: If you want to hold a high-quality event, an early plan is an indispensable weapon. From the goal and theme of the event to what the organizer can get and what the user can get, it should be clearly defined, and then gradually disassembled, released through the corresponding channels, and informed to the users. Another part is to get targeted invitations from friends. As the saying goes: Don't fight a battle without preparation. Allow ample time for event preparation to increase the quality of the event.
• Focus on value output: Part of the event’s crowd comes from external channels. In addition to specifically invited users, more seats are reserved to be on the safe side. Offline activities are a good soft power that can link users with products. If used well, the effect will be doubled. If used poorly, it will damage the brand image. For start-up brand building, the quality of each event is the lifeblood of the event and is closely related to the brand of a product.
• Learn to summarize: When an activity is completed, you cannot just think about it being completed. You need to get feedback from users afterwards. A product that does not touch users or solve their problems is a time bomb. Therefore, Kuaima Finance's product positioning is very accurate, delivering the latest industry trends and values, linking the upstream and downstream of the blockchain industry, and assisting various columns to provide different solutions for different needs.

The combination of online communities and offline activities opened up the brand's initial market, and at the same time, supplemented by offline business expansion, through various means such as activities, one-on-one visits and visits, we re-connected with the upstream and downstream in the industry, introduced the products to users again, let users know and truly understand the products, and further enhance the product's popularity.

But it is far from enough. This is just the beginning. After the brand enters the market, subsequent business expansion also plays an important role.

Let me talk about business development. Background investigation before business development is essential. Every time we talk about cooperation, it is very important to know what kind of cooperation can be achieved and what kind of results can be brought to the company and products. Failure to promote product business expansion has wasted time and energy.

Above, I have shown the content of Figure 1:

• The first step is to open up channels
• Step 2: Offline Activities
• Step 3: Business Cooperation

Bring your startup brand to market and make your product stand out through these steps.

Author: Li Caihong, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Li Caihong