- 02.03.23
- |
- Branding
What does a brand strategy include?
-
Article by
Amie Whale
Behind every great brand with purpose, meaning and direction, there are seven brand strategy elements. Let’s explore.
Aspirational brands can create inspirational business stories. But no modern and successful company was born without a strong brand strategy.
Discover a definition for your brand strategy, why it matters and the seven key elements to ensure your brand identity stands strong with style and substance in the market.
Learn the 7 elements and understand why having a brand strategy will separate you from the competition.
What is a brand strategy?
An accurate brand strategy definition encompasses a long-term plan for a business to achieve its branding goals. Essential to the branding process, a brand strategy includes reaching your target consumer and defining how your brand is distinguishable from your competitors.
A brand strategy takes multiple elements that combine to result in an overall branding strategy.
The elements of a brand strategy go far beyond a logo, website or branded colour scheme. It contains numerous factors requiring a long-term vision built on quality application and consistency.
Why have a brand strategy?
Your brand strategy aims to generate awareness and develop a distinctive identity distinguishable from other businesses. All long-term elements of a brand strategy should combine to produce a consistent message, image and overall personality for your company.
Think of your brand like a walking, talking, human business. To gain trust, admiration and authentication, you must present yourself consistently while remaining attractive and showing a style specific to you. Trust is vital for your business and branding, with 46% of consumers happy to pay more for trusted brands.
Gaining this presence in marketing and advertising relies on delivering all the elements of a brand strategy. And by establishing an effective brand strategy, you also enable any new employee who joins your team to work within clear guidelines and essentially sing from the same song sheet as your business.
Ideally, your brand identity will be so established that they know the vital elements of your brand strategy before they even walk through the door. All thanks to implementing an effective brand strategy.
What does a brand strategy include?
Now we understand the definitions and importance. Here are the seven crucial elements of a brand strategy for your business to adopt.
And there’s only one place to start. Your triumvirate of purpose, vision, and values:
We all need a purpose in life. Something to get us out of bed and channel our passions and aspirations. The same goes for your brand. And no, before thinking you’re only in the business to make money and pay the bills, I’m afraid we’re going to need a little more than that for your brand purpose.
As author and thought leader Simon Sinek famously said, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”
So, think of the purpose as to why your brand exists in the first place. This “why?” represents the foundation of your cause and the essential purpose of why your consumer should believe in your business over your competitors.
The purpose also provides a deeper connection between your brand and consumer on a more human and emotional level that can become a powerful marketing message when delivered with simplicity and conviction.
While the purpose represents the essence of your brand, the vision signifies a future you’re working towards. What do you wish to achieve as a business? What is the destination of your brand? What does the future look like?
These ideas built upon the foundations of your purpose help guide you in the right direction. Such visions of the future can resonate with your consumer, whether that’s communicating sustainability goals or a desire to be the most creative in your industry.
Big brand dreams can go a long way to inspire consumers, clients and employees while keeping your brand on track. Or as they, “on brand”.
Your brand values will help cultivate the perception of the business in the marketplace. Values help build a culture and keep things consistent. They nurture the roots of your company and should influence every decision, message, and action internally and externally.
Aligning your values with your consumer can prove hugely positive and influential for your business. Especially when reading 71% of consumers buy from companies with shared values.
Society has grown more values-driven, with the Millennial and Gen Z generations gearing towards values-based companies. This movement includes purchase decisions and where they would like to work as professionals.
Establishing your target audience is an obvious point. But we can’t build a strong brand strategy without it. We recommend using the data and analytics at your disposal when monitoring your website performance and marketing platforms to access the types of people engaging in your brand.
Understanding your audience is crucial so you can speak their language and solve their problems.
Building buyer personas with different stages of the buying journey in mind will help give you the most success when trying to guide your target audience awareness further along the conversion and loyalty chain.
Scanning the horizon of your industry will enable you to find gaps to seize on. Plus, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the competition will enrich your decision-making and inform your evaluation of the market.
Now, it’s time to generate the essential awareness for your brand to claim its rightful place in your industry through various marketing initiatives.
Whether it’s posting organic social media content, scheduling PPC advertisements or publishing SEO blogs, combining each form across your platforms is the application required to get target consumer eyes on your brand.
Finally, it’s almost time to get your voice out there. However, the voice we want to hear must always speak uniquely to you and remain consistent.
With brand personality developed in the initial trio of purpose, visions and values, your brand tone of voice (TOV) should speak on that behalf in the language your target consumer will not only understand but that will inspire them into action.
TOV also becomes a big part of your brand guidelines for any future copywriters or content creators looking to join your company.
How to develop a brand strategy
Developing your brand strategy will require applying these essential elements. There are no shortcuts here. The key is to create consistency and maintain quality.
For example, while applying the necessary actions to justify your brand purpose, vision, and values, can you represent them in a single, simple slogan or tagline?
And while doing the necessary market research, can you also find avenues of collaboration with other businesses to help elevate your brand presence?
The critical part of developing a successful brand strategy is applying all the elements simultaneously. Each aspect works in tandem to construct a distinctive brand identity for your business. It is memorable to your consumer for all the right reasons.
Connect with a leading brand strategy expert in the West Midlands
At eighty3 creative, we provide digital marketing and branding packages for numerous companies in Birmingham, the West Midlands and beyond.
Our dynamic range of brand strategy services means we can build your brand strategy from the ground up, covering every angle with specialists in the marketing and branding field.
For more information about we can help you build an unbeatable branding strategy, get in touch today.
Marketing Checklist Download
Score your marketing activity & plan for 2023
Plus, sign up to our newsletter to keep us up-to-date