Standing out in a competitive market and winning customers starts with a strong brand. Your brand is perhaps your biggest asset; therefore, you should invest the time and resources to develop a powerful brand strategy. Creating a brand that survives in a noisy market is not an easy job; however, with the right approach and resources you can build a strong brand. To help you out, this article covers strategies for developing a brand that will get and keep people’s attention.
What is a Brand?
A brand is an image, personality, and voice behind a business that differentiates it from other businesses in the market. It gives a distinctive identity to businesses, helping customers recognize them better. For instance, a customer identify Nike products just by looking at its iconic logo rather than the company’s name.
What is Brand Strategy?
A brand strategy is a holistic approach to how a business communicates its values and promises to the customers. It revolves around all the intangible elements including logo design, company name, brand voice, and other features that drive brand awareness and equity over time. In short, a brand strategy is a company’s strategic plan that guides them to achieve their business goals.
How to Build a Brand Strategy?
A successful brand strategy should incorporate everything from storytelling, to values, to appearance, and mission. Let us look at some of the effective ways to create a strong brand strategy to ensure long-term success for your company.
Set Your Business Goals and Values
Defining your business values and goals is the first step to creating a holistic brand strategy. You must define your mission, vision, and corporate values to define your brand strategy. Setting clear business goals is critical to creating a strong brand strategy because when you know what you want to achieve as a company, your brand strategy helps you accomplish your goals. Ask yourself important questions such as where you want to see your company in the next years or how you want your customers to perceive you as a business.
Identifying your business goals will help you understand your company’s bigger purpose and vision. Clear business goals will guide your brand strategy and in return, your branding will take your business to new heights. Consider both short and long-term goals and keep your values at the front and center to develop a strong brand strategy that will help you accomplish the goals. When your branding strategy is in line with your business strategy, you can achieve sustainable success.
Create a Unique Visual Identity
There are already thousands of businesses in the market providing similar products/services as your company. That is why creating a unique visual identity is important so that your customers can recognize you easily. Invest considerable time and resources to develop an authentic visual image for your brand. A well-designed logo from an affordable graphic designer can help you stand out in the competitive market. Remember visual identity is more than your logo design; it includes your brand colors, typographies, and fonts your company uses, so choose them cautiously.
People form first impressions in seconds, therefore, having an attractive and meaningful visual identity is fundamental for your brand. A relevant and recognizable logo design will help you convey your core business messages quickly and effectively. Similarly, using relevant brand colors, images, and other visual elements will help you communicate better with your audience. Research shows that more than 60 percent of the world’s population is visual learners; therefore, leverage your visual identity to deliver brand messages.
Get to Know Your Audience
Understanding your target audience is critical to creating an effective brand strategy that will serve your business purpose. Research your market to know your potential customers, their pain points, needs, and preferences. Conducting market research will also help you understand the marketing and branding strategies that appeal to your target audience. By knowing the effective techniques you will be well equipped to build your brand around your potential customers.
Conducting market research does not need to be lengthy and complicated. If you have existing customers, look at their demographics and experience statistics to understand them better. This type of customer analysis will not only help you understand your audience but also enables you to identify your strength and weak areas. So, conduct market research and use customer insights to create a powerful brand strategy that will get and keep your target audiences’ attention.
Craft an exceptional customer experience
If you want to become a successful brand, have a customer-centric approach in everything you do. Prioritize your customers before anything and provide them with exceptional experience at every touchpoint. Providing a fantastic product is essential for success, however, you should also deliver exceptional customer service each time your customer interacts with your brand. From your logo design to your website and blogs, you should deliver exceptional experience consistently.
An excellent customer service can provide you an edge over other competitors. No matter if your competitors are providing similar goods at lower prices, you can still level the playing field by improving your customer service. In addition, satisfied customers can promote your business through word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. Nowadays, people base their purchasing decisions on online reviews and customer feedback, so make sure your customers spread positive words about your company.
Create Useful Content Relevant to Your Brand
A holistic brand strategy must incorporate everything including content strategy to accomplish shared goals and support the company’s purpose. Branding is all about establishing yourself as a recognizable business, and content marketing can help you do that without breaking the bank. Make sure to write on relevant topics, keep your audience in mind, and choose suitable mediums to share your content. You can either create a blog for your company or share posts on your company’s social media handles.
Modern customers want more value for their money and prefer brands that show effort. If you want to meet the heightened expectations of your customers and instill trust, go beyond the minimum. Provide more value to your customers by creating relevant and useful content consistently. You can leverage AI to create content consistently and engage your audience.
Be Accessible to Your Customers
Accessibility promotes brand image and reputation; therefore, make sure that you are approachable to your customers and prospects. Demonstrate a clear commitment to accessibility by understanding and meeting your client’s needs. You can do so by providing multiple channels of communication and using easy and inclusive language across platforms. By ensuring accessibility, you will help your audience interact with your company and obtain help and answers on equal terms irrespective of their gender, race, or age.
Get Involved With Your Community
If you want to increase brand awareness, establish a positive reputation, and grow your business efficiently, get involved with your community. Community involvement allows you to establish meaningful connections with your local community and give back to your society. It also enables you to reward those customers who intentionally support local businesses. When you involve yourself with the local community, you become more visible to the audience and create a positive and generous brand image.
Most customers consciously choose local businesses while others find them attractive due to relevance. Make sure you focus on both audience types and take every possible step to get involved with your community. You can build and grow community connections by offering free services or discount packages. Sponsoring local events and charities is also an effective way to develop your relationship with the local community. Remember to reward loyal customers and encourage feedback to create business improvement opportunities.
Continuously Evaluate and Adapt
You cannot create a plan today and expect it to perform 100 percent after years. Everything changes over time including your audience’s needs and preferences. To stay relevant, you need to continuously evaluate your branding strategy and adapt to the new market environment. Analyze your performance and make necessary adjustments to meet your audience’s needs consistently.
Start by assessing your marketing collaterals to ensure that they serve your business purpose. Look at your logo design and see if it is still as effective as it has been before. The big companies you see today such as Nike and Coca-Cola have also refined their visual identity over the years to stay relevant. So, do not hesitate if there is a need to tweak your logo design or change brand colors or typology. Hire an affordable logo design service to refresh your brand logo without compromising on your brand authenticity. Making adjustments at the right time can help you stay competitive.
Final Thoughts
To thrive in the competitive market and meet evolving customer expectations, you need to create a powerful brand strategy. Since a strong brand does not happen overnight, be patient and get ready to spend the required time and resources to develop a holistic brand strategy that will help you accomplish your business goals.
