What is a brand strategy?
A brand strategy defines who your company is and what it is all about to potential clients or customers. The process may seem intimidating, but breaking it down into steps – and working with experts helps to demystify the process. Some people need branding as much as businesses. Those wondering how to develop a personal brand can follow this guide as well.
Getting started with your brand strategy
Start the branding development process by determining the target audience. Research your chosen demographics. Find out their needs and wants. You may have several different target markets, which will require a unified branding strategy with different campaigns to reach each one. Additionally, research the market for your industry in general. Learn what brands similar to yours are doing, and make sure your branding sets you apart from the crowd.
Next, create your positioning and messaging. Construct a positioning statement that illustrates the true spirit of your brand. You might need to use different messaging tactics to address different target demographics and client funnels. For example, the language you use to connect with millennials should be different from what you would use to speak to baby boomers, but both can come from the same overall brand.
At this point, you will create some of the most important assets for your brand – your logo, and tagline. If your rebrand includes a company name change, that should also occur at this point. Choose your color schemes, make a style guide, and create any other brand-defining assets that will guide your teams on how to proceed with the new brand. Don’t forget that internal company culture and corporate policy is also part of your brand. Employees can be your greatest asset as brand ambassadors with a positive company culture that keeps them happy.
Finally, using all the information from the above steps, create your marketing strategy. This includes everything from your website, social media accounts, ad-buys, content strategy, e-mail marketing plan, SEO, and any other marketing tactics. Your new strategy should be present in anything that gets in front of the eyes of potential clients and customers. Don’t forget, your internal communications and company culture are also part of the brand.
The process doesn’t end there. A great branding agency will work with you to constantly review analytics and find areas for improvement, tweaking the brand along the way. Branding is more like a cycle than a process with a beginning and an end.
Great branding strategies turn your company into a thought leader for your industry and does more than just build awareness about your business. It actually creates the possibility for authentic relationships with clients and real partnerships with companies whose brands are aligned with yours.
A step-by-step breakdown
- Define – Figure out your target audience, your company’s purpose, and the values that will guide you along the way.
- Develop – Create a brand statement and marketing strategy based on your brand’s definition from Step 1.
- Implement – Design marketing and content plan, that express the ideas you developed in Step 2.
- Evaluate – Branding doesn’t stop. After implementing your marketing plan with your brand’s values, evaluate everything and identify areas for improvement. Make sure your marketing materials are achieving your goals.
- Renew – Once you’ve identified areas for improvement in your strategy, develop new ideas to make each aspect of your brand plan amazing!
Need some help with your brand? Contact us to help!
A brand strategy example
XYZ Enterprises has been around for 50 years but they have never changed their brand strategy. The new CEO decides it is time for a change. She wants the company to connect with a younger audience, but doesn’t want to alienate its current clients, who are generally in the baby boomer category. The company hires a branding agency to help them with this new change.
Together, the company executives and the branding team perform discovery sessions to learn about the new brand vision. They perform research on the target demographics and other competitors to come up with ideas for what might work. The agency helps XYZ Enterprises create a new brand statement that aligns with its new goals.
From there, the agency creates a new website and digital marketing plan that encompasses the new brand idea. Once it is implemented, the agency will monitor key performance indicators to find areas of improvement for optimum sales and conversions.
Conclusion
Following the above steps is a great start, but if you really want to give your business a clear and concise brand, hire the brand experts at Bosio Digital.
