It was an unusually early morning (yep, even before sunrise) for Connecty’s Creative Director, Nicholas Yoon. It was the 17th of March and he was getting ready to jet off to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur to share his knowledge with fellow entrepreneurs in Solarvest Holdings Bhd.
They were entrepreneurs who had won the Innovation Lab 2021 by Solarvest seed funding round and were going through business coaching sessions with the leading solar energy solutions partner in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Kudos for such a great initiative!
Nick was there to share “How Branding Can Improve Your Revenue – Especially For B2B Companies”. As these talented individuals scale their business to greater heights, it’s critical that they truly understand what a brand really means.
A brand is not just a logo, it’s not just fancy slogans or designs, and it’s definitely not just products or services. A brand is more like a reputation, a promise, and a sense of belonging.
To quote Marty Neumeier – author of the Brand Gap:
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation. It exists in the hearts and minds of individuals.
Nick also explained to the attendees the different areas that they should be focusing on if they are tight on budget as a start-up. Fundamental things that start-up founders can carve time out to do it themselves. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it needs to be iterated until it accurately expresses the company and its purpose.
He stressed on Strategy, Story, Mission and Voice first. This allows companies to focus on why they matter and align their brand with their corporate strategy.
Then start-ups can move on to hire freelancers or DIY their logo, identity, website and marketing collateral. As they mature and have more resources to spare, they can expand into other areas such as social media, advertisements, content, and many more.
As the workshop progresses, Nick shared a past project as a case study with the attendees. The example allowed the attendees to visualise how they can apply their newfound knowledge into their business with practical examples and tips.
We closed the session with questions from the attendees where Nick addressed specific questions from the seed fund winners.
Want Nick to speak at your event? Let us know by clicking on the Chat Widget on the bottom right corner.
If you’re wondering what the Innovation Lab 2021 program by Solarvest is all about, check out their website, or read more about it here in our blog.
