If you were asked to define who you are as a person, you’d probably find it a little tricky. It’s never easy to translate our underlying thoughts, feelings, values, and beliefs into words. So imagine having to do that for your business! It can be even more of a challenge to try to personify your organisation.
Yet that’s what building a brand is all about: putting a face to the business name.
The good news is that developing a good brand strategy can help.
Your roadmap to success
A brand strategy is a bit like a map where each location is a characteristic of your business. The aim of the strategy is to identify the most efficient route connecting all these characteristics, and to bring them all together to tell a single, powerful story. It’s your brand blueprint.
Of course, every brand strategy will be different. However, there are typically a few standard components making up every good blueprint. We recommend including elements such as…
- Brand purpose: Why do you do what you do, beyond driving revenue?
- Target audience: Who are you developing your products/services for?
- Competitors: What makes you different from others operating in your industry?
- Tone of voice: How do you talk to and communicate with your customers?
- Brand message: What do you want to say to your customers and potential leads?
When you’ve answered all of these questions, you’ll begin to identify common trends and patterns emerging that connect these different ‘locations’ together. This is how you build your brand story.
Utilising your brand strategy
A good brand strategy can become the key to maintaining consistency and staying true to who you are. No matter what task you’re working on – a new business website, a new logo, new design features, new products or services, new marketing materials, and so on – you have this ready-made guide to turn to. This guide provides a simple, single overview of who you are, and what you stand for. It can ensure you’re always moving forward in a way that aligns with your vision.
Strategies for seamless experiences
A common mistake that many small businesses make is trying to jump right into brand development, without creating a plan. They know what they’re about, they know how they want their customers to see them, and so they start building a brand based on these individual qualities.
You can probably see where this is going. The result of saying, ‘We’re a friendly company, we’re an informal company, we’re an innovative company’ and so on is a wobbly, disjointed brand built on a foundation of individual rocks. It takes one rock to shift and the whole thing comes crashing down.
A brand strategy is about connecting all these individual elements together, and understanding how they fit and align with one another. This creates a larger, stronger, more robust base on which to build. A solid brand can be rolled out across all your channels, delivering seamless experiences.
So… who is your business? What’s your brand identity? We’re here to help you find out.
