What is brand strategy?

What’s this fancy brand strategy thing you talk about?

What do the world’s most powerful brands all have in common?

Disney, Toyota, Samsung, Netflix, Google, Mercedes-Benz and Coca-Cola all have clearly defined and effective brand strategies, dedicated resources and drive to emotionally engage their audiences and win over the hearts and minds of their target markets.  They know exactly what it takes to create unique brand experiences.

To ensure their brands have an impact, they know exactly ‘who’ their brand is, ‘why’ they exist and what ‘values’ they need to live and express at every touchpoint in their business. They also clearly understand what motivates their customers and what it takes to meet their needs.

They’ve successfully embedded their brands into their culture of their companies and when they communicate with their audience, whether its via social media or an advertising campaign, they do so in a creative and consistent manner.

The good news is you don’t need to be a global brand to have a brand strategy. In fact, every business, even small business, benefit from understanding their brand framework and how to express themselves in a way that motivates and excites their audience.  

Here you’ll find the basics on brand strategy and how it can benefit your business.

So, what is the definition of brand strategy?

Your brand strategy defines what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey. Brand strategy is the thinking on how you articulate your point of difference and how you want to be perceived in market.

We like to think of brand strategy as the invisible thread, behind the scenes, that structures what impression you want to make and how you want to be seen. What qualities do you want to be known for? What personality do you want to exude? What values drive your business? How are you meeting the needs of your customers and what’s your brand promise?

Whilst your brand identity, the logo, slogan, fonts and colour palette, create an impression of your brand, the brand strategy is the non-visual components of your brand that are developed to emotionally engage your audience. If you have a polished looking brand without strategic thinking behind it, you are at risk of not achieving your brand goals and coming across different to your intent. It’s the brand strategy that gives you a roadmap of what qualities and attributes you want to be known for.

Having a brand strategy enables you to be consistent in how you are perceived across all your marketing touchpoints and channels, including your social media channels, your website, traditional advertising, digital marketing campaigns, brochures and stationary, creating a lasting impression that stands out from your competition.

Further, it should have the ability to enhance your customer experience, provide a cutting-edge competitive advantage and boost your financial performance by maximising your company’s profitability.

Devising an effective brand strategy is not easy to develop if you do it on your own as it usually requires an external brand consultant with no pre-conceived ideas and a fresh outlook to create a strategy that takes your brand places.

We, at Plump Marketing, develop a brand strategy that also includes identifying what the emotional needs are of your target audience segments and how your business meets these needs with key proof points (what you actually deliver for your customers that is true).      

A well-crafted brand strategy should be able to define how you position your brand against your competitors, identifying your strengths, distinctly set out your brand persona (personality traits), brand tone of voice, your brand values, what your brand archetype is and lastly what your brand promise is.

What is the importance of brand strategy in marketing?

Brand strategy is a crucial ingredient of effective marketing and helps differentiate the products or services being offered by a company from its rivals. Along with the brand identity (logo, brand colours, and fonts) and customer experience, a clearly defined brand strategy helps captivate target consumers by keeping them emotionally engaged.

Creating a well-differentiated and memorable image for your brand is a prerequisite to running a successful marketing-oriented business in today's highly competitive world.

What makes an effective brand strategy?

Your brand is a part of the day-to-day running of your business. So, it makes sense to think that a brand strategy should also address how you conduct your day-to-day business. Things like your business culture, the behaviour of your staff, and the experience your customers have when they interact with your brand all contribute to your brand image. Hence, they should be focal points of your brand strategy.

Further, it should have the ability to enhance your customer experience, provide a cutting-edge competitive advantage and boost your financial performance by maximizing your company's profitability. Devising an effective brand strategy is not easy to develop if you do it on your own. It usually requires an external brand consultant with no pre-conceived ideas and a fresh outlook to create a strategy that takes your brand places.

We, at Plump Marketing, develop a brand strategy that also includes identifying what the emotional needs are of your target audience segments and how your business meets these needs with key proof points (what you deliver for your customers that is true). Without this, your strategy may not be aligned to what your customers need and lack cut-through.

We firmly believe that a well-crafted brand strategy should be able to define your brand's competitive strengths against its rivals, distinctly set out the brand's persona along with its values, and understand what motivates your target audience.    

Here are the important elements that should be clearly defined in an effective brand strategy: 

1.      Brand Purpose 

Brand purpose refers to a company's reason for existence beyond profit maximisation. It incorporates what you do, for whom and why.

2.      Brand Story 

A brand story is a humanising narrative that helps the business strike an emotional bond with its audience. It is used to bring warmth to a brand and emotionally connect with their customers and prospects to make a positive impression and motivate them to take action.

3.      Brand Personality (Persona)

The brand personality is a reflection of how you want to be perceived by your audience as if you were a person. This is a critical component of a brand strategy because it enables you to be different to your competitors and really be creative with how you want to be seen. Do you want to be perceived as fun, clever, intuitive, warm or outgoing? These are just some of the personality traits you could choose. Ideally you would have up to 5 traits as part of your brand strategy. Your brand’s persona and tone of voice are important elements of attracting the right customer to your business.

4.      Tone Of Voice

The tone of voice of your brand determines how you speak to your target audience. Understanding your ideal customer helps you define a clear tone of voice that’s aligned to your audience. For example, if you were a law firm you would not have a witty and light-hearted personality because it’s not in line with how you would want to be perceived. Using a consistent brand of voice in your advertising, social media and marketing communications is important.

5.      Brand Associations and Values

An effective brand strategy should clearly define your brand's values to project your brand image to your audience. In addition, it should define what the key brand qualities and attributes are that you want to be known for. When you have clearly defined values and promote these within your organisation and develop your culture around them, they shine through creating a positive customer experience, encouraging strong word of mouth.

6.      Brand Positioning Against Competitors 

An assessment of the external business environment is crucial for devising a brand strategy. It allows companies to analyse their strengths and unique attributes that create their point of difference compared to their competitors. This can help companies base their brand strategy around their core competencies that are not similar to their competitors and therefore differentiated.

7.      Brand Promise

Brand promise, as the name suggests, refers to what your brand promises its customers. It can be in the form of a brand slogan or tagline or a couple of sentences where you describe what attributes your brand offers in a compelling brand statement. It is typically a combination of what you aim to deliver to your customers and what makes you different from your competitors.

What Are the Benefits of Developing a Brand Strategy?

1.      Helps Describe What Your Strengths Are

A brand strategy is an effective means of identifying your company's strengths that gives it an edge against your rivals in your industry. It does so by highlighting areas of competitive advantage that a company possesses and then using these to develop a series of key messages that can be used across all your marketing channels and touchpoints to attract new customers.

It is important to note that the strengths that are derived and developed need to align with your target market's needs; otherwise, they are not worthwhile promoting. Your unique strengths need to be something that your target customers are seeking.

2.      Creates an Emotional Bond With Consumers and Humanises Your Brand

A brand strategy helps your brand create an emotional bond with your audience, an imperative requirement for brands wanting to succeed and cut through in today’s highly competitive and digital marketplace. This is because consumers buy on emotion; they use their hearts, not their heads, when purchasing. They will buy on emotion and rationalise their purchase with facts.

It is, therefore, vital that you engage with them emotionally. By knowing what your brand stands for, what you look like if you were a person, who you communicate to, and what your unique strengths are put you on the right path to success.

A brand strategy that engages your audience emotionally humanises your brand when implemented with effective story-telling, marketing strategies and campaigns.

Telling your brand story creates a level of authenticity and transparency that consumers crave.

By knowing what your brand stands for, what qualities you want to be remembered for, what your brand personality is and what you promise your target audience, you have a specific brand roadmap that, once bought to life via engaging communications, will aid in customer acquisition, retention and sales conversion.

3.      Drive Strong Brand Recall

When you understand your brand position in the market and your competitive advantage, and you effectively communicate this via compelling brand storytelling, your audience remembers who you are and when they are in need of your product or service, they consider you first.

Often brands undertake a re-brand where they want to reposition their brand because their brand associations and perceptions in the market are outdated and not in line with where they are taking their business. Often, the marketplace has changed, and they need to signal a change to the market that they have adjusted to drive sales and growth.

One such example can be taken from Old Spice, which repositioned its brand to appeal to a younger female target audience to reignite sales and shift its perception as a product for old men. This rebrand was carefully orchestrated after valuable insights were provided from market research that showed that women were more likely to shop for grooming products for the men in their household. The witty, short and catchy advertisement quickly secured the new target market’s attention, the brand was recalled very strongly and the sales for the brand increased exponentially.

4.      Improves Brand Loyalty

Having a defined brand strategy in place also increases brand loyalty amongst your customer base, encouraging them to keep coming back to buy more of your product or service. Increased customer retention and reduced churn means less money is needed to advertise and acquire new customers. When you have a loyal customer base, it may also mean you can charge more for your products or service. 

Apple sets the best example of brand loyalty, with millions of its customers having vowed to never switch from an iPhone to a cell phone of an alternative brand. This has positively impacted all the products launched by Apple. Brand loyalty also leads to brand advocacy and helps businesses expand their customer base with the help of word-of-mouth and user-generated content. 

5.      Improves Employee Engagement, Retention and Talent Attraction

A brand strategy benefits the external audience and helps keep employees satisfied and engaged. Employee brand engagement is vital in driving strong employee retention and attracting talent, especially when the talent pool is limited. It also lowers employee turnover and improves productivity.  

This can be achieved by developing a brand strategy that is reflective of a company culture that resembles yours. An effective brand strategy is inclusive of employees from across the organisation. involving employees from a cross-section of the business, from the frontline to the exec, in the brand workshop and planning stage of the strategy development ensure you don’t have a skewed vision produced following the workshop. 

6.      Contributes To Stronger Customer Experience

A strong brand strategy has many benefits, some that may not seem so obvious. An effective brand strategy isn't just about looking good externally. It is also about engaging employees and creating a vision for them to be a part of, which leads to a strong customer experience.

It helps to make sure that a company's different departments are working towards a unified goal regarding the brand's mission and its set objectives, making it possible for brands to ensure everyone is on the same page. 

A well-aligned team can help you make better decisions and communicate more seamlessly. For instance, when implemented and embraced by employees, a solid brand strategy will maximise returns on all marketing investment, increasing sales conversion.

7.      Pushes For Innovation

In today's unpredictable market environment, businesses must keep innovating to stay ahead of the competition and meet the changing demands of consumers. A brand strategy helps you achieve that by creating a solid culture embedded with a committed vision, which invigorates your team to be creative and devises compatible strategies to combat challenges.

As a result, the foundation of your business further consolidates and allows you to lead with confidence. It is also essential to keep in mind that your brand strategy helps your employees stay focused and prevents them from going off on a tangent.

8.      Ensures Growth

While there are no methods that guarantee success, a robust brand strategy significantly increases the odds of a company performing better than its rivals. Moreover, if a start-up brand shows promise in its initial stages, it is well poised to achieve sustained success in the long run.

A brand strategy ensures growth by encouraging companies to exploit their competitive advantages to their utmost potential. It first helps to identify the promise and then allows brands to fulfill that promise. It also improves employee engagement leading to a superior customer experience. All these combined improve sales conversion, customer acquisition, and retention, contributing to growth.

9.      Leaves a Lasting Impression

Since the barriers to entry have become very low, and anyone can develop and manage their brand with the emergence of social media, digital media consumption, and cost-effective marketing tools, the number of brands in the market is exponentially increasing.

This means that consumers are constantly being advertised to, and they have more choices than ever before. Naturally, this makes it challenging for businesses to capture the attention of their target audience. However, a good brand strategy that focuses on the motivations of buyers and what they value and how to engage them emotionally helps leave a strong impression on consumers, ensuring they won't forget your brand. 

What Are the Missed Opportunities in the Absence of a Brand Strategy?

Brands that do not have a well-crafted brand strategy will struggle to stand out and compete, being at risk of poor financial performance and lack of growth.  Here are a few things you miss out on if your brand does not have a brand strategy.

1.      Lack of Brand Differentiation

The world of digital marketing is growing at an exponential pace. As a result, there is a sea of similar products and services offered in the same industry segment that your business operates in.

Not having a clear-cut brand strategy fails to create an identity for your brand and effectively position your brand against competitors, significantly reducing your chances of standing out amongst the crowd. Vague and ambiguous brands also confuse consumers and struggle to attract and retain customers, limiting their ability to achieve their goals and dreams of a successful business.

2.      Inability to Maximise Your Potential

Without a brand strategy, companies cannot correctly identify their areas of competence and competitive advantage in the industry. Since strengths aren't identified, it makes it more challenging for the business's marketing department to eloquently convey the importance and uniqueness of the products or services being offered by your brand to its target audience. This also minimises the extent to which a brand can position itself among its rivals.

3.      No Heart-warming Story to Tell

To tell your audience a heart-warming tale of how the business caters to their needs, you first need to understand and identify the critical aspects of your story to be told. Without a distinct brand strategy and emotive brand story, businesses find it impossible to craft an articulate story to share with their audience and end up with advertisements that miss the mark and often leave their target audience feeling confused and unmotivated. 

4.      Inconsistency

Lack of a brand strategy leads to a lot of inconsistencies within the brand's operations and marketing. Since you won't know your brand's promise, purpose, tone or personality, communicating with consumers and your employees becomes harder . All social media, advertising, and marketing communications will be at risk of saying different things with your key strengths and position being lost.

5.      You Won’t Become Known for Anything

The absence of a strong brand strategy will make it harder for you to define brand attributes that you want to become known for. For example, do you want to be known for your quality, value, luxury, outstanding service, hand-made goods, etc.? Without knowing this, your marketing department doesn’t know what to say or how to position your brand in the marketplace and as a result become inconsistent with the key messages being communicated.  And if consumers don’t know what you’re good at, they will dismiss your brand and move to your nearest competitor.

6.      Lack of Brand Awareness

Even if you produce the best quality products and retail them at the most favourable prices, the absence of a brand strategy will make it challenging for your marketing team to develop effective communications and convey your expertise to your target audience. In addition, not having a solid brand strategy minimises your ability to engage your market and grow your business.

The Final Verdict

In conclusion, a brand strategy offers you a roadmap of where you want to take your brand and how you want to be seen and heard in market. It enables you to send a clear, consistent messages that’s unique and powerful.  

If you’d like to learn more about how Plump Marketing, a Perth based brand strategy consultant, can help you develop your brand, re-position or articulate your strengths, why not give Kate a call or email.