What is brand strategy?
A brand strategy is where you map out the space you own or want to own, the differences you have over your competitors, your value proposition as well as discuss pricing, packaging (not literally at this point, but yes figuratively) for your company and the products or services you provide. We recommend developing a brand strategies in marketing document that spells out how your brand is going to be refined or develop your brand and the way it’s packaged, and how this will help you achieve your bigger picture goals and objectives.
What goes into a successful brand strategy?
A. Desired Outcomes:
All brands should be about how you develop your brand to achieve your desired goals and objectives. Contrary to popular belief, brands are about business, not just fancy or cool logos or graphics, it’s about how you use those brand elements to help you achieve your desired outcomes. This is where you’re going to want to use analytics to track how your brand is helping you achieve these goals and objectives.
B. Clear Targets:
Having a clear direction as to who your target audiences are, what they look like and having them spelled out into target personas is a great place to start. This is a great area where you can utilize data analytics as a tool to help really understand your target prospects.
C. Clear and Concise Messaging Platform:
This is where you’ll want to hone your differentiators value points, and value proposition into a clear and concise messaging platform. This platform will typically have a handful of differentiators, as well as 4-8 value points where you clearly spell out the value of your company and brand to your marketplace. With those value points spelled out you can develop a value proposition that connects and compels your target audience to engage with your brand.
D. Cutting End Creative Ideas:
Developing a brand based on intelligence and data is great, but that has to be married with creative branding efforts that are going to really separate you, be unique and visually attention grabbing that will connect with your target audience. It also needs to project the type of brand and position you want to effectively attract the type of clients and partners you want for your services.
E. Kick-Ass Implementation:
Great brands don’t just happen, behind them is always a dedicated team that is committed to executing a rock solid brand and marketing implementation plan that starts within the company and expands out to your customers, target and partners. They ensure that all aspects of the plan from training, to brand development, marketing and sales efforts, customer service all know and understand just how important execution is to providing great brand experiences.
F. Defined Data Analytics:
I love setting up how we are going to track and measure effectiveness of our brand, marketing, sales and financial information to show just how our investments in these areas are performing and producing against such efforts. When setting up tracking it will help you significantly in tracking the different results and interactions regarding your brand, marketing, sales, customer services and brand experience in order to help you improve in these areas.
Key Elements Of A Branding Strategy
A. Landscape/Competitor Research:
The first thing that needs to be done is doing some competitive and market research to determine where you sit in your industry niche. Ask yourselves what are your differences, different features or functions, differences in pricing as well. Also look at everyone ‘s branding, positioning, messaging, social media, reviews, etc., to gain a solid look at what is happening in your niche.
B. Research Analysis:
Once you’ve got all the relevant information together, it’s time to do some analyzing of that data, looking at marketplace sediment, which will help you to determine where you stand currently and if you need to pivot or shift your brand positioning, messaging, or brand look and feel. You will also be looking at data to determine online performance, demand, competitive niches, search, adwords, phrases, etc. Using these metrics you’ll be able to quantify your tactics against specific strategies.
C. Competitive Positioning:
Another key component of your branding strategy should be how you separate yourself from the competition utilizing your key differences and turning them into a competitive position that is advantageous for your brand. This can be things like a better user experience or providing great brand value for the money, better technology or features or functions that enhance your brand’s position.
D. Messaging Platform:
The fundamentals to a good messaging and positioning platform is for it to be clear, concise and compelling based on your differences, value points and value proposition. Putting these into a brand story that will be the framework for messaging on your website, marketing and sales materials, advertising, social media, etc., this will be essential for
E. Creative Brief:
A creative brief is where you map out how you are going to apply the research and brand strategy and develop your brand crafting and creating beautiful design elements. You’ll spell out polishing off the consumable content and wrapping it with your logo, brand visual element to create a captivating website, ads and social media posts and engage and compel people to take action.
F. Brand Development:
With your brand strategy developed or refined on your positioning and messaging, it’s time to develop how this is going to be translated into what your brand is going to look like. It typically starts to develop or refine your brand’s logo, color palette, brand look and feel. Once you have the foundation of your brand look and feel developed, you will start to apply it to your other brand assets, like your website, sales and/or pitch deck, social media, marketing and sales materials, etc.
G. Brand Pitch Deck:
Having your brand strategy spelled out in a pitch deck can be a great way to communicate with your internal team on what your brand is, what it stands for and the different content and creative elements that go into it coming alive. You may want to consider utilizing a pitch deck experts to help you create this internal document as well as putting it into a pitch deck or capital raise deck to help you achieve your goals and objectives.
H. Brand Results Tracking:
You are going to want to make sure that all the tools are set up and in place in order for you to track valuable data to gain powerful insight to adjust your brand and brand strategy for maximum return on your brand and marketing investment. Utilizing the data analytics will help you make better decisions and dramatically improve your brand strategy.
Types Of Branding Strategies
Have is a list of brand strategies and how they may applicable to your company and brand:
A. Creative Brand Development:
This brand strategy focuses on the creative and visual and textual elements of your brand, things like your logo, brand elements, website, ads and social media posts.
B. Brand Positioning:
Another important brand strategy is how you competitively position your company and brand and separate yourselves from your competitors and marketplace. As well as how you are going to effectively communicate that position.
C. Brand Packaging:
How will you develop a brand packaging strategy that is going to appeal to your ideal target market, engage them as well as get them to take action with your company and brand. What is the marketing as actual product, service or technology packaging design going to look like to draw them in compel them, your data input will help considerably in developing the best packaging possible.
C. Brand Experience:
Another critically important aspect of your brand is the experience your customers and prospects will have with your brand. You need to map out and design what this experience is supposed to look like and what a great experience looks like.
D. Holistic Brand:
This is where you combine your brand look and feel with your sales and marketing, operations, financial goals, objectives and outcomes with the desired brand experience you want to give to your customers. It encompasses all aspects of your business in order to achieve your desired outcomes.
E. Brand strategies examples:
Here’s another old example, but really communicates well as to solving a business problem. Ford was commonly known for having quality problems with their cars and trucks, so they came up with an aspirational brand strategy for their internal teams to take pride in their craftsmanship and change the public perception of their products. The strategy worked, they produced better quality vehicles and changed the public perception regarding the cars and trucks and those results showed up on the bottom line.
F. How To Use A Brand Strategy To Grow Your Brand:
We like to look at the biggest need in order to develop a brand strategy, where that be just for growth, providing better brand experiences, better packaging, etc, start with the biggest or several big needs to build your strategy. Define what your trying to accomplish and then map out an integrated brand strategy of how you are going to achieve those goals and objectives. You may want to utilize a Rebranding agency to help speed up your brand strategy and get going on achieving.
G. The importance of strategic branding:
The Best brand strategies separate you from the competition and significantly help you setting you up for success in reaching your desired outcomes. These strategies also help you create a powerful brand that is unique, sharp, connects and compels! Your baseline data will help you developing the best brand strategy to help you win!
Conclusion:
Make sure you are developing a brand strategy that is going to help you crush your goals and objectives. Make you have set-up the type of data you are going to track, figure out how you’re going to analyze that input and gain insights that are going to help you develop, refine and build that brand strategy to launch you to success. You probably may want to seriously consider partnering with a branding agency for small business to help you look at your data to build your brand strategy to win!
