Did you know that your brand has only 7 seconds to make a lasting first impression? How do you successfully pass this test? The solution lies in a brand strategy!
So, let’s first precisely define the concept of a brand:
It is more than just a logo, a name, or a website; it is all that and more. It encompasses tangible and intangible elements that contribute to shaping your company’s reputation and the various ways the audience perceives you.
In this guide, we discuss what a brand strategy is, share elements of a successful brand, and present 6 of the best brand development strategies for 2024.
What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy is an essential part of a successful marketing plan, involving the creation of a unique and cohesive identity for your company, and building trust and loyalty with your target audience by delivering a consistent message across all channels.
A brand building strategy should aim for two main objectives: achieving competitiveness and customer loyalty. Your brand should become unforgettable in the eyes of the consumer, ensuring that they consistently choose you over all competitors.
The Importance of Brand Development
Brand development is the process of creating and enhancing the brand that represents your services or products. It is divided into 3 main strategies:
Brand Strategy Development
Just as an architect draws up an architectural plan before starting to construct a building, you need a brand building strategy for your company or project. Brand development helps you distinguish yourself from your competitors and build loyalty with your customers.
Brand Identity Development
It includes all the tools you need to convey your brand, such as designing the logo, creating a slogan, and establishing the website.
Brand Marketing
This involves focusing on selecting the appropriate marketing channels for your goals and audience, such as social media platforms, email newsletters, and blog marketing. It also includes allocating the marketing budget according to your objectives and priorities.
Elements of Brand Strategy
A strong brand strategy needs to incorporate essential elements, which are:
1. Objectives and Goals:
This element answers the question: ‘Why does your brand exist?’ That is, how well does your brand’s core mission align with the needs and aspirations of a specific customer segment? And how will your brand communicate that?
2. Brand Values:
“According to Adobe, 77% of customers prefer buying from a brand that shares their values and supports their causes.”
What are your brand values? Do they align with the values of your customers? Rewrite your mission statement to serve as a constant reminder for both you and your customers of your brand’s values. Ensure consistent support and communication of these values in your marketing content.
3. Brand Voice and Tone:
The brand voice is its overall personality, and it should be consistent while considering contextual differences simultaneously. For example, you may write a post with an informal or humorous tone across most social media platforms, but the tone of LinkedIn posts should be more formal.
Ensure to consistently update the brand guide and information related to the brand voice to keep your team aligned and maintain a unified vision when creating marketing content and communicating with customers.
4. Visual Identity:
For a cohesive visual identity, all visual elements of the brand should be harmonious. Ensure that your brand name is readable and distinctive, and that the colors and graphics you use reflect your purpose and values, resonating with your audience.
5. Brand Story:
Your brand story should convey what sets it apart from other brands. Storytelling is a powerful way to capture the audience’s attention and remain in their memory.
When crafting your brand story, consider your brand’s experience and values; how customers perceive your brand. Utilize narrative storytelling to share success stories of customers with your brand, fostering an emotional connection and differentiating your brand from competitors.
Brand Building Strategies
Brand building strategies involve creating fundamental elements, such as visual elements and brand personality, defining the company’s mission statement, and finding ways to build a loyal customer base.
1. Identifying the Target Audience:
Over 80% of consumers today prefer to purchase from a brand they trust. This makes the first step in creating a successful brand researching customers and their preferences, and finding ways to fulfill them through the services or products you offer.
Identifying the target audience is the other side of understanding audience preferences, as nearly 60% of consumers believe that companies need to understand and meet their needs better. Therefore, it is essential to identify your target audience to gain a deep understanding of them.
You cannot reach your ideal customer until you understand their needs, long-term goals, and pain points. Successful brands, both locally and globally, are those that invest significant time and resources to pinpoint the needs and desires of their ideal customers, and prioritize targeting for each marketing campaign.
One simple way to precisely identify your audience is to create a buyer persona, a hypothetical model of the ideal customer to whom you want to sell your services or products. It includes essential elements such as age, location, income, along with more detailed information like consumer habits and the issues they support.
2. Building a Market Reputation:
If you want to stand out in a crowded market, or even introduce a first-of-its-kind service in a new market, you need to build a unique market reputation and incorporate it into your brand’s marketing strategy.
You can start by understanding the perspective of the target market for your product or service, and crafting a statement that defines your brand’s position and what sets it apart in just one sentence.
Conduct research on your main and secondary competitors, and analyze their weaknesses to find gaps that you can leverage as strengths for yourself (such as website, pricing, or competitive brand tone…)
3. Developing an Attractive Visual Identity:
A strong visual identity reflects the brand’s values and includes three essential elements: the logo, colors, and fonts.
All of these elements should be specified and included in a dedicated visual identity guideline to help the design team work cohesively across all communication channels, such as the website, social media posts, and other types of marketing content.
4. Developing Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is suitable for all brands today, regardless of the products or services they offer, and regardless of the target audience. Digital content marketing performs all the tasks of traditional marketing and more, through engaging and educational creative content.
The strength of a brand relies on its reputation and appearance, and therefore, sharing regular or promotional content alone will not yield significant results. Content marketing enhances your visibility, builds your reputation, and strengthens your connection with the target audience.
5. Developing the Website:
Does your company have a website? Today, the website is one of the most crucial tools you can use for brand development. It’s the place where your audience turns to learn about what you do, how you do it, and who your customers are.
Your potential customers are likely to choose your company based on your website alone, but they may do the opposite if your website fails to convey the right message!
Furthermore, the website serves as an attraction factor for potential customers through the valuable content it provides. You can leverage it to improve the search engine optimization (SEO) results for your site and attract more potential customers.
read more: 4 Essential SEO Services Every Business Needs
6. Regularly Analyzing and Developing the Strategy
There is no fixed brand strategy; it is an ongoing process that requires continuous adaptation and refinement over time. Conduct an analysis every few months to gauge your audience’s response to your messages, visual identity, and content. Identify what worked, replace what didn’t with new approaches, and test them again until you find the most effective ones.
Keep an eye on your competitors and analyze their position regularly to develop a strong and distinctive brand that stands out among your competitors in the market.
To ensure that your brand building strategies are effective and successful, set goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you establish benchmarks that measure the success of your efforts.
Last but not least, building and developing a brand is by no means an easy task, but the results achieved by successful strategies are well worth the effort. All the renowned brands that have become part of our daily lives are a testament to that.
Be present wherever your target audience needs you and achieve the best results with the comprehensive solutions of UFUQ Media and Digital Services. Explore our diverse and inclusive services, and reach out to us for any inquiries!