5 min
Today’s market is full of businesses, organizations, and individuals working to leave their impact on the world. This means it’s now more important than ever to make sure your business is standing out from the crowd.
Don’t let your brand get lost in all the fuss. How?
The best way to do this is to develop a strong brand strategy that will help your business thrive. However, finding leading marketing strategies isn’t easy, it takes work.
A solid brand strategy does more than just pump out content to anyone who’s online, it creates unique content that fits with your audience and leaves them with useful information.
Good brand strategy displays your services and shows your vision to reach a wider audience.
There are a lot of ways to go about building a brand strategy, that’s why we have sourced the top 10 secrets to building a great brand strategy from the expert marketing team at DEKSIA…
1. Understand The Organization’s/Company’s Background
There are a lot of ways to sell your services to your target market, but the only way that truly works is to be sure you are communicating a clear message.
You have to be able to show the “Why” behind every service and decision. Why? Because it helps you create the specific message your audience needs to hear to move them to the next step.
In Simon Sinek’s groundbreaking Ted Talk, he stresses the importance behind the “Whys”.
It’s crucial that we ask ourselves questions like “Why does this organization exist?”, “Why should our customers care about what we have to offer?”, “Why are we here?”.
Without the “Whys”, you lose the most important part of understanding your whole organization, and your strategy won’t be on-target. For more of Sinek’s ideas, check out his Ted Talk.
2. Define Your Services/Benefits
You don’t need to have a huge list of products like P&G or Coca-Cola to become a household name. You may only have a few.
For example, the German brewing brand, AND UNION, has a small selection of beers meant to be simple, uncomplicated, and highly memorable.
Having only a few products and setting the bar high helps your customer learn to expect the best every time.
3. Examine Your Current Marketing Sales Strategy
You’ve done the heavy lifting. You successfully started and launched your business, but just because you’ve done it before doesn’t mean you’re finished.
Business changes daily. You have to adapt with marketing and strategy responses to keep boosting your sales.
Not having situational awareness in the business world can derail progress very quickly.
Great things to familiarize yourself with are keyword search ads, search engine optimization practices, and media platforms that will help your business thrive.
These will help your brand establish a visible presence on the web, and will help you connect consumers’ needs with your products and services.
Do some evaluation. Look at your marketing and sales strategy. Decide what’s working and what’s not, then change it so it works for your audience.
4. Define your goals for the brand strategy
Answering the “Whys” of your business means little if you have no plan for them.
At this point, you need to ask yourself “What is the purpose of this brand strategy?” and set up your SMART goals.
SMART goals help you and your business be successful. When setting your goals, they should be (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant & Time-bound).
Using this system will not only help you manage your goals, but will let you reap the benefits of your strategy.
5. Determine Your Brand Hierarchy
Generally speaking, there are four different approaches to establishing a brand hierarchy:
👉 Corporate Brand is Most Important: Product Brand is Subsidiary.
Household names like Nike have been successful with this approach. They chose to lead with the company name, with a few exceptions.
You can easily forget that they have subsidiary brands like Nike Gold, Nike Running Shoes, or Nike Swimwear. However, you probably remember that they all have the legendary and easily recognizable swoosh logo.
👉 Product Brand is Most Important: Company Name is Subsidiary.
Take Proctor and Gamble. The name alone carries weight. It is easily recognized by a Wall Street analyst, but not your common man.
Those who buy Tide, Swiffer, Gillette, Palmolive, Olay, et. al. show their loyalty to the product brands, not P&G itself.
👉 Primary Charismatic Product Brand With Secondary Product Brands:
The Coca-Cola Company is a great example of Primary Charismatic Product Brands with Secondary Product brands.
Coca-Cola itself has several versions of the soda (think Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and Cherry Coke). However, the company itself has broken its products into many different soft drinks and beverages like Sprite or Fanta.
👉 Blended Approach Where Company & Product Brand Have the Same Weight:
This approach is common in the car industry, where both the company name and product brand are easily recognizable.
Examples of this are the Honda Accord, Honda Odyssey, Porsche 911, Porsche Boxster, Ford F150, and Ford Taurus. This approach binds the product and company brand together.
Each product in the brand hierarchy adapts to meet the needs of each specific customer, expanding the company’s reach to a variety of consumers.
6. Build a Customer Framework
Data helps you document and measure success, but data itself doesn’t sell to your customer.
We know it seems obvious, but don’t forget to market your services to humans. Your business should strive to create high-quality products that meet the needs, beliefs, and feelings of your customers.
One of the best ways to market to your ideal customer is to start building a relationship with them right away. Your success depends on your customer’s success. Knowing your customer will help you create and promote your business.
7. Understand Your Brand’s Framework
Position your business as a leader and expert. Show you are a trusted authority figure that can bring your customer success.
Six traits create a magnetic character. Look at Marvel Studios and Marvel Entertainment and you’ll see that each billion-dollar character has these six traits:
- Superpower: What abilities or insights help you stand out?
- Shared Enemy: What are the common mistaken beliefs your brand stands against?
- Driving Force: What do you stand For, and Why?
- Origin: What is the origin story of your powers?
- Fatal Flaw: What makes you relatable to your audience?
- Distinctive Personality: How does your personality connect with your audience?
8. Define Your Brand’s Story
Each time a customer decides to engage with your business and buy your products or services, they did it because your story told them to.
They start in an ordinary world, but long to be a part of the extraordinary world with no problems and endless possibilities. They see your product that makes a promise to transform their current life into the one they desire.
9. Pick an Archetype
Opposite to the Brand’s story, Archetypes start with the basic human desires, values, and beliefs. These values, instincts, and emotions become what brings a brand to life.
Avoiding stereotypes, of course, the archetype needs to be investigated. The more this archetype is explored, the richer it will become, the deeper it will run, and the more complete it will be.
In the most complete study of branding and financial performance, Carol Pearson and a team from Y&R discovered that in 35 countries, 18,000 brands, and more than 20 years of quarterly customer surveys, brands whose customer perceptions fit into a clear archetype outperformed brands that didn’t, in a combined financial metric by 12x on average.
10. Audit Your Existing Assets to See What Doesn’t Match
You need to evaluate what makes your brand memorable. For example, visuals, names, and ad strategies should make sense and fit together.
These elements need to operate like a well-oiled machine to meet your goals for the growth of your brand.
Simple things like making sure that your logo works well with your brand, or that your typography is readable are important to its success. Even the color schemes you pick should all work together to create your brand image. Without them, you may fail to show your brand’s message.
That being said, your brand’s message and name should be relatable to your audience. So relatable that your customers know what to expect and keep coming back for more.
One way to promote these assets is through your digital media. It should all work together so your audience can understand your mission. Your customers should leave feeling like they can be successful with the use of your products.
The development of a brand strategy can seem overwhelming at times. Breaking it down into these 10 simple steps should help.
Use these to help you define the vision and goals for your brand, and keep consumers coming back for more.
Conclusion
Standing out from your competition and attracting your ideal customers doesn’t have to be stressful. And it won’t be if you follow these 10 easy steps.
Whether you choose to go solo or enlist the help of your team, it’s just as important (and easier!) to reach out to brand strategy professionals that do this every day.
Make sure to contact experts, such as DEKSIA, to help you develop a strong brand strategy that will empower you to reach your goals, meet and exceed ROI’s, and make your business stand out in the marketplace.