CONTENT Marketing Ideas
An Effective Brand Strategy Helps You Grow Your Business
November 18, 2019|Brand Strategy, Digital Marketing
There is a big difference between having a brand and having a compelling story that connects with your current and potential customers and communicates who you are as an organization. Many brands either don't fit the work and identity they represent or have become so unfocused that they no longer communicate any clear message.
Organizations need more than brands. They need branding strategies.
What is Brand Strategy?
A branding strategy is an effort to pull together every last aspect of a brand around a set of clear, specific, and long-term goals. In other words, what is the purpose of the brand, and how will the brand's elements work together toward that goal? What are all the elements of a brand? Well, of course, this covers the obvious components such as products, logos, websites, names, colors, and other written, printed, spoken, and digital aspects of a business. But it goes deeper as well. A brand is also about the many intangible aspects of a business, especially those that impact how customers experience the company and how it makes them feel.
What Defines a Branding Strategy?
Great brands are often hard to pin down. From the outside, it can be challenging to comprehend that "secret sauce" that makes some brands so powerful. However, it is not magic. Great brands are driven by strategies that share some specific components.
Consider these aspects as you develop a strategy around your brand, and you will increase the impact of your brand and bring your organization's identity into clearer focus:
- Purpose. Most brands can be identified by a brand promise. But there is always something behind that promise, the "why?" It is no secret most businesses exist to make money. Still, great brands also have a deeper driving purpose for their existence. What is your organization's reason for being? Start there, and the rest of the process will quickly come into focus.
- Consistency. It is challenging to create a clear impression on consumers when your brand is not communicating a clear and consistent message. With a continually increasing number of media channels, there are more ways than ever for a brand to speak directly to people. However, this also increases the chances of fragmentation. Would someone who follows your brand on SnapChat even recognize that you are the same organization that they experience when they visit your website? What about when they speak to one of your customer service representatives or show up at one of your locations? For a brand strategy to be effective, it must create a consistent experience for consumers no matter where they interact with you.
- Emotion. Many organizations fail to think of their products, services, and identities through an emotional lens. But remember that nearly all consumer transactions have some aspect of emotion attached such as pride, a sense of belonging, a desire for meaning, or a need for connection. Otherwise, companies would simply list the benefits and pricing of their offerings and trust customers to make the best economic decision. These emotional aspects of purchasing decisions will always be present. It is simply a matter of whether your organization identifies the emotions at play and consider them in building a branding strategy.
There are other elements of a well-developed branding strategy and numerous pieces to a fully developed brand. Beginning with the core pillars of purpose, consistency, and emotion will offer a solid foundation for the rest of your strategy and brand.
At RG2 we can help you design and execute your brand strategy, not only in English, but in multiple languages.