Consider the most valuable assets of a company. What are its premises? Sure. Of course, stock. Employees? Certainly. But there’s another one that’s equally valuable but intangible – its brand. A strong brand does not emerge from thin air. It’s also not something that happens by chance. It must be constructed, but it is something that will perform a lot of heavy lifting in terms of customer loyalty, business growth, and, eventually, the bottom line. So, how exactly do you go about achieving that? We’ll look at the basic parts of brand strategy and some successful instances of when it’s done well here.
Your brand is the promise that your firm makes to customers about what they will receive and how they will feel after using your product or service. Simply said, it is everything a client thinks about when they hear your company’s name.
A clear brand strategy helps you to identify your brand, understand why it connects with customers, and keep your message and marketing current. It ensures that your brand is functioning for your company and, if not, may correct it. An effective brand strategy will generate and maintain loyalty while giving you a competitive advantage.
Understanding your audience
This is a critical initial step in developing an effective brand strategy. Knowing who your clients are helps you to guarantee that your values are aligned with theirs and to produce appropriate messages that will generate an emotional connection with them, even if you’re selling B2B. This process will be guided by market and consumer research. Because the industry and your clients’ expectations are always changing, the aspects of your brand strategy will require flexibility as well as future proofing.
The brand promise encompasses everything the client may expect from dealing with your company or product. It may boil down to “what you do and for whom.” Take, for example, Airbnb, whose marketing promise is to provide travelers with a sense of “community” and “belonging” while they are abroad. However, a promise is nothing unless it is followed through on every occasion. Failure to deliver on brand promise, whether via an unreliable product or poor service, is the surest way to erode client loyalty.
Communicating a strong set of values effectively may have a significant impact on how people view your brand. But what exactly are values in this context? They are the guiding principles that influence all of the brand’s actions, basically the purpose that businesses set out to achieve, whether that is to be world-class specialists or a trusted, safe pair of hands. However, as always, the old adage “show, don’t tell” applies. Storytelling is an extremely powerful way of showing your brand’s values – just look at Microsoft’s Story Labs or Salesforce’s Success Stories. They’re all about stuff like using technology to better the planet or boosting small companies. The feeling that clients are a part of something that is changing society for the better is a powerful motivator of loyalty.
Again, this will be determined by who your target clientele are. If your organization is well-established, with an older clientele and a reputation for trustworthiness, the “voice” you utilize in your marketing will most likely not be light and wacky. It will be both serious and soothing. Regardless of your company’s personality, your brand language and identity must be completely consistent.
However, much as body language accounts for 55% of face-to-face communication, words only make up a portion of your brand’s voice. The tone of voice you employ to express your promise and ideals should be mirrored in all aspects of your company’s branding, from logos to typography to color palettes.
As a result, you must ensure that you do it correctly, and one method to do so is to hire a branding expert.
Positioning is the action done at the conclusion of the entire brand strategy. You know who your customers are and what they think of your company. The company understands who it is, what it does, what it stands for, and how to express these things. It is also aware of what its rivals are saying and doing. The next phase is to use both marketing and client experience so that its brand either establishes itself in the marketplace (and in the minds of its customers), maintains its current position, or improves on it.
Sales growth and brand awareness among clients will be the KPIs you’ll be looking at to establish if your brand strategy has been actually effective or not.