6 Tips For Creating A Powerful Branding Strategy
Your brand is beyond your business logo, name, or slogan. It relates to the whole experience that your potential and existing customers have with your organization, product, or service.
And your brand strategy is a long-term plan to meet a series of long-term goals so that you can ultimately bring your brand to life in the mind of your audience and establish a unique and positive image for your business. When creating a brand strategy, there are several aspects to take into consideration.
Here are six steps you can follow to develop a powerful branding strategy:
1. Identify Your Potential Differentiators
What is your Unique Selling Proposition? If nothing popped up in your mind right now, it means you have yet to plan and implement an effective branding strategy.
The first step in building a brand identity is to point out the traits that differentiate your services from your competitors. For that, you need to conduct proper research to know how your competitors define their brand as well as how they ‘don’t’ define their brand. Then making a list of your potential differentiators becomes much easier. However, you need to ensure that the identified characteristics are not just unique but also solution-oriented and offer what your customers are truly looking for so that they can derive value from it.
2. Brand consistency is a must!
Making the brand easily recognizable across different marketing channels and touchpoints is what every business aims for. But this is impossible if there is no brand consistency. A brand requires consistent messaging so that consumers get to know it on a more personal level and thus, develops the trust factor.
When we speak of brand consistency, we should keep in mind that our marketing messages are ALWAYS in line with our core brand values, brand promise, and brand identity elements such as the logo and colors. This plays a great role in delivering a unified experience to both existing customers and prospects and allows them to feel emotionally connected with the brand.
3. Display Positivity in Your Brand Strategy
“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results,” Willie Nelson. The same applies in the world of business.
While there are so much negativity and critics in the world, especially online, let your brand make a difference among your target audience. Positive marketing allows you to uphold your corporate social responsibility and communicate your brand ethics and at the same time, makes your consumers feel connected with you on an emotional level and promote loyalty. For example, during the times of Covid-19, you can use your social media channels to educate your target audience about social distancing and proper hygiene and let them know that you care for them.
4. Have an “About Us” Page
While social media channels allow you to display your company bio, it is pivotal to note that there isn’t much space to let your brand strategy shine through. However, there’s always a better way to do it. You can create an “Our Story,” or “About Us” page on your website where you can tell your audience what makes your business unique through a friendly and authentic brand voice. It is important to use rich language, avoid too many buzzwords and display your information in a way that people can easily understand what you do and what is the purpose behind it.
Remember, every business has a story to tell. Let yours establish credibility and build trust among your audience. Before making a purchase, a potential customer will want to know who is behind the curtain. So having an “About Us” page is obviously not an opportunity to miss.
5. Use Strong Name and Logo for a Strong Brand Identity
Whether your company is small or large, it requires a strong brand identity to thrive in the competitive business environment. Having a catchy business name and custom logo design is necessary as they have a powerful impact on your customers’ feelings and memories. And don’t forget, this is what makes them your most valuable assets.
People easily recognize logos like Coca-Cola, BMW, and Starbucks because of their shape, color, and even the way they are presented to the audience. So what type of emotions do you want to evoke among your target audience using your brand elements?
6. Understand Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is vital as it provides a direction for your marketing and prevents wastage of resources on reaching the wrong audience. This must be done even before you create your brand, otherwise, there might be a great mismatch between your brand message and your customer needs which will ultimately lead to brand failure.
In the end, it’s all about your core brand values resonating with your target customers’ needs and expectations. When people think about your brand, they should feel like “Yes, this is what I’m truly searching for!”
