What is brand strategy? You may be familiar with the concept, but what does it really mean in practice? How does it apply to your business?
A common mistake some businesses make is jumping into a marketing campaign without a clear, defined brand strategy. It is easy to get excited about launching a new product or service or starting a fresh marketing campaign. However, without a brand strategy to guide your efforts, your plans may fall flat.
As the top digital marketing agency in Burlington, CM2 Media helps many medium-sized businesses develop a cohesive brand strategy that helps them stand out as unique among competitors.
What is the process for developing a brand strategy? Let’s start with the basics.
What Is Brand Strategy?
A brand, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is “a public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted”. Strategy can be defined as actions taken to achieve the desired outcome.
So when we talk in terms of a brand strategy, we look at actions or a series of actions that are intended to achieve desired outcomes for your brand. HubSpot describes brand strategy as “a plan that encompasses specific, long-term goals that can be achieved with the evolution of a successful brand — the combined components of your company’s character that make it identifiable.”
A brand strategy can be hard to define, but overall, it encompasses:
- What your brand stands for
- The promises your brand makes to its customers
- The personality your brand conveys through its communications & marketing
And while it includes things like your:
- logo
- colour palettes
- website
- tagline
These are only the creative elements of your brand. How you define your brand goes well beyond these things. It can be defined by how your staff engage with your customers, the approach you take to your packaging and the kind of support you offer with your services.
Before you jump into designing your new logo and determining your colour palette, think about this: what is brand strategy without defined objectives? You will need to determine those as well. A comprehensive brand strategy will influence all aspects of how your customers interact with your business.
Developing A Brand Strategy: The Process In 5 Steps
Developing a solid, achievable brand strategy can be one of the more challenging steps in a company’s overall marketing plan. But it may be one of the most important steps, as it will have a bearing on multiple aspects of your business.
Without a solid brand strategy foundation, you are like a ship captain without a map.
When developing a brand strategy, consider these 5 tips:
1. Why Branding is Important
The first step is to acknowledge that you need a brand strategy. A well-defined brand could be what sets you apart from your competitors. It’s the set of tangible and intangible assets that help promote recognition among your consumers. It helps to create focus and clarity around the way you approach your marketing and helps you connect with your customers emotionally.
Having a brand strategy helps you stay consistent in all that you do.
2. Clearly Define Your Brand
By clearly defining what your brand is, you create the foundation upon which all other components are built. Your brand definition becomes the lens through which you can evaluate all other aspects of your business & marketing – from what your retail shop looks like to the colours used on your website.
3. Develop Your Brand Objectives
If a brand strategy is about a set of actions toward achieving long-term goals, your brand objectives are the goals that need to be achieved. These objectives can be determined by answering questions like:
- What is it that you want your brand to do for your company
- What do you want others to know about your business, your products, or your services?
4. Determine Your Target Audience
A target audience is a particular group of consumers, identified based on their likelihood to be interested in your product or service.
The key is knowing who your target market is. Marketing campaigns often fail when you do not exactly know who is most likely a potential customer or client. You can determine who your target audience is by asking questions like:
- How old are they?
- What is their income range?
- Where do they live?
- What other interests do they have?
- What’s important to them?
With the introduction of AI tools for online searching, you will also need to add insights into their AI use habits. It’s time to update your traditional customer personas.
Understanding your customers – your target audience – is crucial in ensuring you craft a brand, including key brand messages, that will be appealing to them.
5. Establish the Elements of your Brand Identity
While there are many facets to a brand, the visual elements are the ones that consumers will most often associate with it. These are the elements of your brand identity. They represent a set of characteristics that define the look and feel of a brand across channels.
They include your logo, your colour palette, your approach to images and photography, your slogan or tagline, and your use of typography. Be sure that these elements deliver on your objectives and achieve the effect you want to convey with your brand.
Need Help Developing A Brand Strategy For Your Business?
It’s difficult to overstate the potential benefits of having a solid, achievable brand strategy as part of your overall marketing efforts. However, it’s sometimes one of the hardest exercises when you are too close to your business. Clarity often comes from external sources, and this is why many businesses work with marketing agencies on brand strategy development.
If you’d like to learn more about what a brand strategy can do for your own marketing efforts, the team at CM2 Media can help. We love connecting with businesses to support them as they explore branding strategies that grow their business.
We provide strategic branding support to businesses in Burlington, Ontario, Oakville, Hamilton and surrounding areas.
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Contact us today to learn more about developing a strategy for your brand and how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals!