If you own a business, then chances are someone has told you to build a brand strategy. But why is brand strategy so important? Click here to learn more.
Did you know that purpose-driven companies outperform the stock market by hundreds of percentage points? Defining your company’s mission and values may seem like feel-good fluff, but it can actually translate to significant financial returns.
And this is just one piece of building an effective brand strategy for your business. In today’s age of informed and ethically-engaged consumers, it’s more important than ever for you to know who your company is and what it stands for because it sets you apart to stand out against competition.
But how specifically does your brand strategy impact your bottom line? Does the potential benefit of investing in this type of work really outweigh the up-front costs? Keep reading to learn a few of the ways that intentional, impactful company branding can benefit you, your employees, and your customers.
Creates Alignment in Your Company
Building a brand is about so much more than your logo, fonts, and colours. It’s about who you are, the value you serve for your ideal audience, how you will deliver on this promise.
What does your company value, both in products and in people? What specific benefits do your products and services provide to your customers? How are they distinct from the benefits provided by your competition? What is your company mission? What kind of future is the company working towards? And how will all of this be communicated and managed?
If you can’t answer these questions, neither can your employees – let alone your customers. If your customers can’t answer these questions, they’ll take their business somewhere else.
Defining your brand strategy requires you to be specific and intentional. It is your guiding light around which to align all your strategic decisions, messaging, and company culture.
This foundation will influence how you build your ads and write your sales copy, of course. But they also apply to your website design, partnerships, office norms and culture, and how your company engages with your consumers as a whole.
With a comprehensive brand strategy, your brand experience will build trust with your customers with consistency. They see the alignment in your messaging and values throughout your company. This leads them to trust that your brand is being honest, open, and transparent with them.
This trust, in combination with a great product, leads to building brand love.
Helps You Find Your Target Audience
In defining your brand strategy, you can identify the pain points that your services target for your customers. This helps you to find out exactly to who you need to be communicating your message and how.
After all, you don’t need to get your brand seen by everyone. You only need to get your brand seen by the people who want your product or service, whether or not they know it yet. What does your ideal audience believe in? What are their interests?What are their values?
According to Ipsos, 70% of consumers want to buy from brands whose values align with their own. Defining your brand’s values and communicating them will actively attracting customers whose values align with your own and therefore influence consideration and purchase.
Your brand strategy will help identify your customers.
Builds Brand Recognition
Cohesive branding makes it easier for consumers to recognize and remember you. After all, consumers need to see the same message several times before they begin to remember it.
It’s not worth your time to build several messages and graphics that potential customers see once and immediately forget. Instead, your brand strategy will help you define how you show up across various touch points. These are known as visual brand assets. Success branding means you have successfully influenced a positive perception in the consumers mind. Staying top of mind, means consumers will more likely consider your brand over others.
Fosters Customer Loyalty
All companies have competitors. Your company is no different. There are likely several (if not many) competitors that offer similar services to you at a competitive rate.
Brand strategy is how you differentiate yourself from the competition.
As important as the quality of product or service that you provide is how your brand makes your customers feel. By knowing your target audience and how you can serve them you can use brand personality, language, and curate content to craft a specific experience that will attract your ideal audience. Your brand strategy helps you build this relationship. Customers who have a positive experience with your brand will favour your brand over your competition.
Once customers start to build this kind of relationship with you, they’re more likely to keep coming back to you.
Strengthens Your Employee Community
Developing a strong brand benefits your employees as well as your consumers.
The research shows that when employees are confident with their employer and are highly satisfied at work, they are highly engaged as well. Highly engaged employees are more happy and productive than their unengaged counterparts. A huge part of employee satisfaction is the degree to which they feel their work is coherent.
Coherent work is work that is meaningful, clear, and attainable. Your brand strategy—defined and communicated—addresses the first two components.
For instance, by communicating your brand’s values with your employees, you help them find the meaning within the work they’re doing. You’ll attract talent who believe in your company’s mission. These kinds of employees are more likely to stay with your company long-term.
Brand strategy also provides clarity around why the company’s priorities and goals are what they are, and how your employees’ work contributes to the work of the whole.
Start Working on Your Brand Strategy Today
As you can see, allocating time and resources to developing a strong brand strategy has benefits for you as a business, your consumers, and your employees. You’ll differentiate yourself from your competition with not only strategy but with clarity and confidence.
While the benefits of brand strategy are now clear, the way to create one may not be. That’s where we come in. With our focus on holistic brand marketing, we’ll help you refine your branding strategy so you have a strong framework to grow your brand.
Ready to get serious about growing your brand? Book a clarity call with us today.
Brandhouse is a creative brand marketing agency specializing in brand strategy, brand identity, and brand marketing. We position ourselves as the chief brand marketing officers for service-based start-ups who are passionate about innovation and building memorable mission-driven brands. Our services are designed with founders and start-ups in mind. On-demand holistic brand marketing services that can support brand building at various stages of growth – brand awareness, brand consideration, and brand preference.
