Before jumping straight in, make sure you’ve had a read of our other branding blogs.
A focused brand strategy is what you need to build a memorable brand. It outlines the key elements that make your brand unique, what your mission and goals are, and how you’ll deliver them.
To create a strong brand strategy, you need to take into account all areas of your market, niche and offer. And let’s not forget about analysing your customers and competitors. When it comes to crafting your strategy, the more data you have, the better.
What elements make up a brand strategy?
Brand objective
We’re talking about your vision, mission, and purpose. Why does your company exist and what impact do you plan for it to have?
Target audience
Do you know and truly understand who your audience is? If not, you need to find out their needs, passions and pain points. Understanding them is essential for your success – so don’t skip this part.
Brand positioning
Carving out your slice of the market. What does it take for you to be a big deal in your audience’s life, and what strategies will you implement to get there?
Brand identity
This is what people see when they interact with your brand It includes your visual identity and tone of voice.
Marketing strategy
Think about how you will communicate the value of your brand. What tactics will you use to build and nurture relationships?
How to Develop a Brand Strategy
You can develop your strategy in 3 phases:
Plan it
Research your market, niche, and your competitors to create a foundation for a solid plan. What is the message you want to get across?
Build it
Create your brand identity, including your logo, colour palette, visuals and messaging. Launch your website, social channels, and other media. You’ll use these in the next step.
Execute it
This is where you’ll launch your brand and fully implement the messaging plan and use the marketing channels you built.
Let’s break this down even further into steps you can action
1. Research
This process gives you important insights into:
- Who your audience is and how to narrow that down
- How to price your product or services based on their value and what your competition is doing
- The strengths and weaknesses of your main competitors
- How to create messages and strategies that your target audience responds to
Social media is your best friend here. Once you know who your target customers are and where they are hanging out, head to that platform and join relevant groups. This is where you’ll be able to identify their pain points and how they like to be approached.
2. Brand Identity
Create the following things to build a stand-out brand identity. Check out our guide on how to do this here.
- Company name
- Logo and slogan
- Colour palette
- Fonts
- Photos and graphics
- Voice and tone
- Storytelling
- A beautiful website
Then, once you’re happy everything reflects your brand perfectly, capture it all in brand guidelines. We’ve made this simple for you here.
3. Marketing Plan
There are many key differences between branding and marketing with the main being, marketing is what attracts customers, and branding is what builds loyalty.
But marketing is an important part of your brand strategy, it determines how you’re going to get your message across, where and when. When building your marketing plan you also need to consider how you’ll keep your sales funnel full. This is especially important if you are an eCommerce business.
Some tactics we suggest using:
- Social media marketing
- Content marketing
- Email marketing
- Networking
- SEO and SEM
- Paid search and paid social media marketing
4. Build Trust
People trust brands that are reliable and consistent.
The purpose of brand strategy is to help you achieve this. By carving out a distinct personality for your company – you are more likely to stick to it on every communication channel. Consistency is key (link to article) to a brands success.
So, before making any big marketing or purchasing decisions, consider whether it is in line with your branding strategy. Does it fit in with the narrative and story you are trying to tell? If the answer is no, then leave that idea on the shelf.
Not only is maintaining consistency across your branding and messaging, as is keeping promises to your audience. So, if you offer free UK delivery, you cannot then start charging for shipping costs.
Breaking trust is the fastest way to lose customers and end up with a PR nightmare.
5. Track, evaluate and evolve
Brands that measure their performance have room to Brown and improve. It’s a sure-fire way of making the most intelligent and informed decisions in line with your strategy.
So, once you’re efforts are up and running, log in to your Google Analytics, Facebook for Business, Twitter Analytics and other platform accounts to see how your campaigns are performing.
If you don’t already have one, set up a Google Analytics account as a starting point. The data within this platform is one of the best ways to conduct the level of research that step 1 requires.
Conclusion
Creating a brand strategy will provide the support and direction that a successful business needs. With the right personality and tactics, you can create a strong and appealing brand whilst futureproofing your business.
If you don’t currently have a brand strategy in place, how do you know if you’re communicating to your customers effectively?
We can help you to conquer this challenge. So why not send us a message? Our specialists are experts at creating brand strategies that win more customers.