According to a recent study, businesses with a consistent brand strategy can see up to 33% more revenue than those who don’t!

Here’s the thing: branding can make or break your success. But it’s not always easy to know where to start when developing a brand, especially if you don’t have much experience.

Luckily, we’re here to help. This article will go over the seven key elements of brand strategy and how you can use them to position your brand effectively. By the end, you’ll have all the tools you need to create a brand that will resonate with your target audience.

Keep reading to learn more about brand strategy and how you can use it to position your small business brand for success.

What Is Brand Strategy?

A brand is how your customers perceive you and it includes everything from your logo and tagline to your customer service.

Brand strategy is the plan you put in place to ensure you can clearly define what makes your brand the go-to choice for your ideal customer and how you communicate this message. This is the foundation of defining your position in a competitive market place.

A brand strategy is a plan for how you will build and manage your brand. It includes the goals you want to achieve, the tactics you will use to reach those goals, and the message you want to communicate.

Your brand strategy serves to inform all of your business decisions – from your company culture, overall brand experience, service offerings, hiring practices, and marketing. It isn’t only a logo or colour scheme. It’s the heart and soul of your business.

Creating a brand strategy can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. You can start by asking yourself some simple questions, such as:

• Who is my target audience?
• What problem are we solving?
• What makes my brand unique?
• What do I want my brand to be known for?

Once you have answers to these questions, you can begin to develop your brand strategy.

Why Is Brand Strategy Important?

Spending time on your brand strategy will help you define how you can position your brand as the go-to choice for your ideal customer. Branding is process of influencing buyer perception. Understanding who you are, what you offer, who for and how you will deliver on your purpose will help engage and connect with your audience in a targeted way.

Here are other reasons why brand strategy is important.

Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage sets your brand apart from others in the market. It’s what makes you unique and helps you attract and keep customers. A few ways you can differentiate your brand include – having a unique selling proposition, being the first in your industry, being the only in your nice, and having a brand personality.

For example, if you’re a small business that sells eco-friendly products, a competitive advantage could be that you have full control and visibility on a sustainable & eco-friendly local-based supply chain which would attract younger more informed customers and give you the ability to produce new innovative products faster than competitors with the planet in mind.

Build Brand Equity

A brand strategy helps you build brand equity, which is the value of your brand. It’s based on customer awareness, brand reputation, and brand loyalty.

A strong brand means you have been effective at building recognition, staying top of mind, and trust. Brand equity is built over time. A brand strategy helps you provide a consistent and cohesive brand experience that helps create a positive perception of your brand. Strong brand equity means a company has successfully differentiated itself from its competition.

Reputation

Your brand’s reputation determines what customers think of your brand. A strong brand strategy creates a roadmap to building a cohesive and consistent experience across all touch points which creates knowability, like-ability, and trust. A consistent positive experience will give your customers a reason to talk about you.

Customer Loyalty

Brand loyalty is when customers prefer your brand over others in the market. It’s driven by customer satisfaction and brand value. When customers are loyal to your brand, they’re more likely to continue using your products or services, repurchase, and recommend you to their friends and family. A brand strategy helps you clearly articulate exactly what problem you are uniquely positioned to solve for your ideal customer. Successfully delivering on your brand promise means you are meeting customer expectations and have their trust.

Seven Elements of Brand Strategy

Developing a brand strategy can seem like a daunting task, but it’s vital for the success of your business. Whether you’re starting from scratch or revamping your brand, these seven elements of brand strategy will help you create a brand that’s both successful and distinctive.

1. Purpose & Vision

Every brand has a purpose and vision, whether explicit or implicit. Your brand’s purpose is why it exists outside of making money, while your vision reflects an aspiration for what the brand will become. Together, they create a roadmap for your business.

Branding is about building a relationship with consumers. Knowing why you exist as a brand and what your building towards engages people to connect with and relate to you which helps influence the perception of your brand and makes it memorable.

Purpose

Your brand purpose is why you do what you do. It’s your mission statement. It should be something that drives everything you do as a business.

Why are you in business? What drives you to do what you do? Answering these questions will help clarify your brand’s purpose.

A well-defined purpose also helps you attract the right talent, filter new offerings, identify what content to create, partner with the right brands, and differentiate your brand.

Vision

Your brand vision is your long-term plan for where you want to take your brand. It should be aspirational and inspiring, something that gets you excited about the future of your business.

What are your long-term business goals? What do you want to be known for? How do you want to impact your industry? How do you want to impact your market?

2. Values

Your brand values are the foundation of your brand strategy. They guide everything you do as a business, from the products you sell to how you interact with customers.

What are your philosophies? What do you believe in? What are important causes you want to get behind? What does your brand stand for? Brand values serve as the compass that guides your brand story, actions, behaviours, and decision-making process.

When you have defined your values as a brand, you invite your audience to engage and build a connection that can lead to brand loyalty.

3. Target Audience

Strong brands know who they serve, their interests, their beliefs, their needs and wants, and their pain points. This requires research and analysis. Once you understand your target audience, you’ll know where and how to engage them.

There are a few essential methods you can use to determine your target audience:

• Conduct market research: surveys, interviews, focus groups, and market analysis.
• Create audience personas: Who are they? What do they look like? What do they need? What are their interests? What do they believe in?
• Look at your competition: look for gaps, what are they doing really well, what are their key messaging, where are they marketing, and are there opportunities for you to innovate and be better.

4. Innovation

A brand strategy is only as good as the value you provide. Why should people pay attention to your brand? How are you better and different? Are you relevant and timely? What problems are you solving.

In this competitive market, it is no longer ok to be the “same but different”. Successful brands have figured out how to provide immense value to their audience through innovation.

How do you find a gap to fill?

Hire a Consultant

Comprehensive market & trends analysis are provided through various agencies. The benefit of hiring out your research ensures you are getting timely and details insights that can help you penetrate in a competitive market. These agencies specialize in and focus on providing data-driven reports on local, national, and global consumer behaviour, technologies, and other key market indicators. If you are looking to dominate, this could be a great step for you.

Do Your Own Research

If you’d rather do your own market research, there are a few powerful resources that you can use. Google Trends is a great way to see what people are searching for online. You can also use social media to see what people are talking about in your industry.

Competitor Analysis

Narrow in on top 5 competitors. Start by looking at their website, social media, reviews, and marketing materials.

There are a few things to focus on when looking at your competition. One is to focus on their Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What are they selling? What is their target audience? Where are they operating? What are the pain points they are solving for their target audience? How do they sound? What do they look like? What would be considered their intellectual property?

Answering these questions may lead to a gap you can fill. Think expertise, access, and technology.

5. Brand Personality

Your brand personality is how your target audience perceives your brand. It’s based on your brand voice, your visual identity, and how you interact with your customers. Leveraging brand personality can help attract and retain customers and create a brand that people will remember and love.

Visual Identity

Your visual identity is how your brand looks and feels. It includes your logo, colour palette, brand fonts, and other design elements like icons, graphics, and animations.

Your visual identity should be consistent across your brand touch points, from your website to social media accounts. Your visual identity stems from your brand strategy and the aim is to be develop a visual representation of your business to build recognition and distinctiveness.

Brand Voice

Your brand voice is your brand’s style of communicating and directed to your target audience. It encompasses words, key phrases, and language to use in communicating the brand strategy and is part of the overall brand experience.

Your brand voice should be consistent across your brand touch points, from your website to social media accounts. By developing a strong brand voice, you will give another touchpoint for your audience to know, like, and trust you.

6. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the ability of your target audience to recognize and remember your brand. Here are a few ways to get your brand in front of your target market.

Website SEO

Make sure you optimize your website for search engines. That means using relevant keywords, creating engaging content, and improving your website’s design and user experience.

Use keyword-rich titles and descriptions, and include links to your social media accounts. The world of SEO is in-depth and constantly changing, so you might want to hire someone to manage this for you every month.

Advertising

You can reach a large number of people with your message through advertising. Online ad campaigns can send ads straight to people in your target market!

Public Relations

Positive PR can help you reach a larger audience and build credibility for your brand. You can generate positive media coverage for your business through public relations. Pitch your story to reporters and bloggers to get media coverage.

Content Marketing

By creating helpful, informative, and entertaining content, you can attract new customers and build brand loyalty. Content marketing is a long-term strategy, but it’s one of the most effective ways to reach your target market. And it helps with your website SEO.

Brand Recall

A consistent brand message across your marketing helps people recognize and remember your brand. Your logo and color palette should be simple, memorable, and recognizable. Use the same brand message and tone of voice across all your brand touchpoints, from your website to social media.

Repetition is another effective method of increasing recall. By repeating your brand message, people are more likely to remember it.

7. Brand Experience

The customer experience is how your brand makes people feel. It’s the emotional connection that people have with your brand. A great customer experience builds brand loyalty and attracts new customers.

Brand Promise

The brand promise is the core of your brand. It’s what you stand for and what customers can expect from you. Choose a brand promise relevant to your target audience and that you can realistically deliver on.

Make sure your brand delivers on its promise. If it doesn’t, customers will be disappointed and may not come back.

Build Connection

Create a brand that people can connect with, and make it easy for customers to buy from you. Your brand should be relatable, trustworthy, and likable. Ensure that your website is easy to use, your products are easy to find, and your checkout process is smooth and straightforward.

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is when your target audience continues to buy from you even when other options are available. You want your target audience to prefer your brand over your competition.

Excellent Customer Service

Excellent customer service improves the customer experience and builds brand loyalty. Your customers should feel valued and appreciated.

Rewards Program

A rewards program is another excellent way to increase brand loyalty. It shows your customers that you appreciate their business and encourages them to continue buying from you.

High-Quality Products

If your marketing claims that you have high-quality products, then invest in high-quality products. Your customers will be able to tell if your products are cheaply made, and it will reflect poorly on your brand.

Putting It All Together

Now that you understand the different brand components and how they fit together, you need to combine them into a cohesive plan.

There are a few different ways to develop a brand strategy. You can do it yourself, hire a branding agency, or work with a consultant.

The important thing is to take the time to develop a brand strategy that will set you up for success. Here are some options that you can consider going forward:

Do It Yourself

If you’re on a tight budget, you can do it yourself with the help of branding experts. We don’t recommend this option if you’re brand new to branding. You’ll need graphic design, SEO, and marketing experience.

Work with a Consultant

If you’re not ready to commit to an agency, you can work with a brand consultant. A brand consultant can provide expert branding tips and guidance on brand strategy.

Hire an Agency

Brand agencies have the expertise to help you develop a successful brand. We recommend hiring an agency if you want a professional, cohesive brand strategy.

A branding agency can help you develop your brand strategy, create a brand identity, and execute your marketing plan. This is the most accessible approach to your branding and marketing.

Hire Individual Contractors

You can find brand strategists, brand identity designers, and brand marketing experts on freelance websites. Once you’ve defined your brand strategy, you can give them specific tasks to execute. Calculate your budget and review portfolios before hiring anyone.

Resources for Building a Brand on a Budget

If you’re on a tight budget and you’d like to do some of this yourself, some helpful resources may be invaluable to you. We don’t recommend trying to do everything on your own. But if you’re determined to do it, these resources can help:

Graphic Design

Usually, you need a graphic designer to create logos, banners, signage, and other images. But if you’re in a pinch, check out Canva. It’s a free online graphic design tool that anyone can use. You can use it to create flyers, social media images, and even a logo.

SEO

If you want people to find your brand online, you need to do some SEO (search engine optimization). You can learn SEO basics with this free online course from MOZ. SEO is a complex topic, so we recommend hiring an expert if you can afford it.

Website Design and Development

Again, we recommend hiring a professional. But if you’re set on doing it yourself, there are some options. We suggest trying Squarespace or Wix if you’ve never built a website before. They both offer free and paid plans at reasonable monthly prices.

You can build a website with Squarespace even if you have no website-building experience. Squarespace is very user-friendly. Many business owners choose Squarespace because it offers a free trial period and beautiful, modern templates.

Wix is another popular option for small business owners. It’s similar to Squarespace in terms of features and price. Business owners love using Wix because it has a broader range of integrations with other platforms.

Building a website from scratch is a lot of work, so we only recommend this if you’re prepared to put in the time.

Marketing

Once you have your brand strategy in place, you need to execute your marketing plan. This can include online marketing, social media marketing, and traditional marketing. Check out Hootsuite’s social media marketing guide if you’re unsure where to start.

Now You Have a Foundation For Your Marketing Strategy

There you have it! These are the seven elements of brand strategy. Now you know how to develop a brand strategy and position your brand for success.

Remember, a successful brand strategy requires research, planning, and execution.

If you need help getting started, get a custom quote from Brandhouse. We’ll help you develop a brand strategy that sets you apart from your competition and grows your business.