What is a brand strategy, and why do I need one?
Brand strategy is an often misunderstood term - it sounds overwhelming, hefty - perhaps a little unnecessary when you could just go straight to a graphic designer to get a swish identity and be done with it — right?
I like to think of brand strategy as the rocket fuel for your marketing. It’s the foundations for your business and how to define what you stand for in your - marketing, culture, service and products.
It has a ripple effect, and it impacts EVERYTHING you do. It’s not a waffle behind the ‘meaning’ of your logo. It’s defining who you are as a business, how you want to influence the future of your industry and what you want your customers to associate with your business.
Oh crickey, that sounds expensive
A lot of work goes into creating a brand strategy. It involves:
Research: getting an in-depth understanding of your business, culture, customers and competitors. The state of the industry out there and the behavioural and psychological trends of your audiences.
Workshops: to understand why you exist, your motivations behind your business and the impact that you want to make for your customers.
Personality work: defining your business as an identity. How do you want people to feel when they come across your brand? How can your identity help shape that emotive response?
Whittling all that down into something concise and useful: A waffley powerpoint isn’t helpful to anyone - you need a one pager and a tone of voice guide. Something practical that you can give to a team member, designer, writer or customer service representative and they understand how to sound like your business.
So what’s with all the brand jargon?
Often when you hear about brand strategy, it’s full of words like: proposition, USP, values, story, mission, vision, architecture, archetypes or purpose.
Some people approach brand strategy as literally providing an answer to all of these and then handing it over in an overwhelming and unhelpful document.
If you don’t understand what these components are - or how to make them useful, then it’s pointless. You need your teams to understand your brand and how to channel it into their work - a long, boring presentation won’t do that.
The ones that I always include are:
1. Purpose.
It’s vital to understand the reason your business exists, and what you want to achieve with it. It encompasses brand story, values and mission in one for me.
People are drawn to brands that show that they share the same cares and worries as their audiences (often called values).
So, if you set up your business to make an important change to the industry - it’s important to define that messaging and get it out to the world.
2. Positioning.
What is your space in your market?
How do you price your services, and who you are pitching them for?
Where are your audiences currently, and where do you need to be?
How do you compare to your competitors, or others int he industry that you might not see as direct competitors, but your customers might be weighing you up against them..
All of these questions are addressed as part of your positioning - a great activity to understand where you need to be in the market in terms of price, audiences and service.
3. Principles.
I always define brand principles - a short list of three or four points that directs your brand on how it portrays itself to support its purpose.
Essentially, I use them as behavioural principles in enacting your brand purpose and personality.
They are handy to pop into a customer service guide, training for new starters, or a brief for a contractor.
4. Brand voice
Once we understand your purpose, we focus on how to deliver it. This starts to pave the way for your brand personality. I’m not a designer, so the visual identity work gets passed to a brand designer at this stage - but I take on your words.
I work with you to define your brand voice and create an easy to follow guide for your team and any freelancers you may work with.
How do you speak to your audiences? What makes you sound like YOU? What traits come through your writing, and how can you tweak your voice to reflect the appropriate tone for each channel or piece of content?
5. Brand messaging
Sitting alongside your voice - the HOW you talk, we then have your messaging. What are you saying to your audiences to drive change?
We create content pillars and key messages - including streamlines or boiler plate content to help you communicate your priorities, services and values to your customers.
How often should I revist my brand strategy?
Your brand strategy needs to be revisited regularly to ensure that it’s still relevant and doing the job that it needs to. Revisiting and tweaking your brand strategy doesn’t mean rebranding. It means reassessing your messaging, your positioning, and your purpose to ensure it’s all relevant, working appropriately and doesn’t need updating.
Do you do a brand strategy directly before doing a rebrand?
Not necessarily. Sometimes if anything a rebrand can be detrimental as people get distracted by the exciting new identity and don’t digest the WHY. It’s often better to do the strategy, embed that and get it into your culture and service - then follow it up with the rebrand.
It also then means that the rebrand shouldn’t alienate your audiences, because your messaging and tone stays the same so you still feel familiar.
If you’re looking to speak to someone about your brand strategy, voice or messaging - we can have a quick natter to see if it’s relevant to you.
