Branding and Marketing Strategy, from the ground up
In 2018, my Strength Coach husband, Jeremy, approached me with an idea to start a business out of our garage.
”Raymer Strength” was born.
Immediately after filing the paperwork with the state of Indiana, I began developing the brand tone, visuals, and marketing strategy.
Brand Tone and Message Hierarchy
Developing the brand values
After running through a brand deck exercise, we identified the tone and values:
Relationship-oriented
Related words: customer oriented, professional, blue collarWelcoming
Related words: authentic, accessible, flexible, approachable, blue collar, trusted, drivenDetail-oriented
Related: creative, comprehensive, innovative, technologicalExperienced
Related: the thought leader, proactive, elite, regional
Visualizing the Brand Values
Raymer Strength needed to exude blue collar grit, experience, and professionalism
Raymer Strength’s brand values and message goals, at the core, are the same values my stakeholder has carried his whole life. He is the brand, and the most important face the customer interacts with.
Logo
Born, raised, and now operating a business out of Indiana, it made sense to create a regional stamp to the brand. The star marks where we operate, the bent barbell implies strength, and the 2017 references when our personal garage gym was first established. Little did we know it would be our business.
#SHHH stands for “Stay Humble Hustle Hard,” a phrase that is our athlete’s training mantra.
Color Palette
Pulling from Jeremy’s personal history in olympic-level competitive Taekwondo sparring, I anchored the brand in sparring reds and blues, grounding the brightness in dark concrete for grit and realism.
Typography
Bitter Regular and Bold’s clean serif communicates clarity and trust. Mystique, used for emphasis or art, adds that blue collar grit.
Crafting a Marketing Strategy
Generating new leads
In addition to word of mouth clients, Raymer Strength needed a fully fledged social media strategy to bring in brand new leads.
Together with hyper-targeted paid ads and carefully crafted organic reach on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, my marketing strategy brought in an additional 20% the business’s paid clients in the first year.
Building the website and producing media
It was important that prospective clients understood exactly the experience they would have when they joined. In addition to the “raw” footage posted daily on social media, I produced a few higher-end videos for our website and paid ads.