The term Brand Strategy, refers to a plan, purposely formulated to identify and project what your brand represents, to the larger audience. This strategizing process allows you to determine how to position yourself among the competition, and develop the most organic way to reach your audience.
It is also an umbrella term that involves a lot of creative and technical elements from your content, design etc., to the loading speed of your site. A branding strategy effectively guides you on the way to brand recognition.
Creating a brand strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, in this article we break it down for you, into 8 simple steps that help you understand who you are and how to take it to your audience.
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Reflect on who you are
There are billions of companies out there, thousands of whom are offering almost the same services or products that you are. Why did you even choose to enter this industry? What do you hope to achieve? The answer to this question serves as your brand purpose. The values you set for yourself and the firm in general, determine how you want to achieve your goals.
When options were less, customers chose brands for what they had to offer. But now that options are endless, customers are choosing brands based on why they do it and how they do it. Nowadays customers are more aware of social and environmental impact and tend to choose sustainable brands that are closely associated with a social cause.
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Get to know your audience
Unless you know who you are serving, you cannot identify whether what you are serving them is right. You can win them over if you truly understand their needs, wants, affordability, and other such factors. From that you can subtly frame your brand to reflect their idea of the ideal choice.
Invest in customer data analysis. Sift through your web analytics and find which products they go for, what kind of buying pattern they follow, which age group from which location avails your services the most, etc… This gives you valuable insight on how to market your brand, whether to focus on the products or on the impact they create on the customers.
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Find your niche
The next step is to figure out what makes you stand out from the competition. Why should a potential customer choose you, against other competitors who sell the same products and services?
Take paper and pen or open up a sheet, and start noting down your Unique Selling Points or USPs as they are more commonly known. After you are done making the list, check if you have definitive proof for each statement. Say, you put yourself down as an affordable alternative to a mainstream product, back the statement with competitive pricing study. Use the technique called Perceptual Mapping, where you scale yourself against competitors for attributes like cost, quality, sourcing, quantity, etc. This helps you identify the most viable niche that you can market your brand on.
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Write down your story
Now you know what to tell the audience, the next step is to decide how to tell it. This is where you can get the help of a professional digital marketing firm. A genuinely effective brand narrative will
- Grab the attention of the targeted consumers,
- Engage with them on an emotional level
- Promote further interaction with the brand
- Guide them to CTAs and prompt them to take action.
Add an emotional touch to all your communication. Let the story be consistent, and relatable to the consumers. The story must foster a positive impact, usually cultural, on the audience. Change the tone of the story to adapt to each target group and culture. It is also important to make sure you know everything about what you are narrating. You must have first hand knowledge of the effect your products and services have on an individual.
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Define your identity
Next comes the brand identity. A Logo is a classic example of brand identity. Try to imagine your brand as a person and give them a distinct personality. What kind of clothes would they wear, what would be their go to drink, what kind of music would they prefer, etc. Now shape your brand identity around this personality.
Maintain the tone and theme across all languages. Some cultural exceptions can be made. For example the omnipresent Golden arches of McDonalds are replaced by Soft blue arches in Arizona, because the Gold yellow was deemed to clash with the landscape. Despite having a distinct identity, be ready to make some exceptions to keep from hurting consumer sentiment.
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Design your brand theme
Start working on the brand theme with your design team. Some of the visual elements that need to be designed to complete the brand strategy are:
- Logo
- Website
- Typography
- Image, video and graphic gallery
- Social media accounts
- Printed media like brochures, letterheads etc
This brand theme must be relatable to the targeted consumers. It must also reflect on the deep social impact our brand will create. Say you create sustainable wooden furniture, green and brown themes with a serious tone would work well. Cool toned photography, jute packaging for the products, a social cause that supports the craftsmen, would perfectly complement the brand.
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Take your time
Brand Strategy is an intimate creative process. There is no point in rushing it. Just as an artist spends weeks lovingly painting the perfect portrait, you need to invest a lot of time into the brand strategy. You cannot afford to hurry and deliver a half baked brand image that you will have to revise later on. A great brand strategy should remain relevant for a long period of time. The purpose must be made clear from the very first. Don’t expect immediate results. Let the brand image steep slowly into the audience. But even the best version of the brand strategy will need to be reevaluated to suit the changing trends or unexpected disruptions.
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Include your team
This exercise to create your brand strategy need not be a lonely venture. Include your team, family and friends. More the people, more the input that you can work with. At each stage of the brand strategy, brainstorm with the whole group. The best part is, with the social media accounts, you can include potential customers as part of this thinktank. Gather info, revisit, edit, regroup at each stage. Push the boundaries and encourage them that no idea is a bad idea. Get a wide range of perspectives, even those that are not aligned to yours. This gives you a broader idea of how you want your brand to be seen by the outside world.
Put yourself through these 8 steps to create a successful brand strategy. Right about the 4th step you are going to need the help of Digital Marketing experts. Open Designs is a full service Digital Marketing firm, and the best SEO company in Chennai. Their innovative SEO strategies will complement your brand strategy in spreading brand awareness the farthest and the fastest. Get in touch with them at www.opendesignsin.com.
