A brand strategy is an integral part of your business. A well-defined strategy will help you develop a brand that distinguishes your business from your competition. It will determine the way your customers and peers view you, your service and your product. It will also shape the key decisions you make for your business. Developing your brand strategy is an important and on-going commitment throughout the life of your business. You need to have a firm grasp of the concepts and processes that go into the development of a well-defined brand.
The strength of your brand is determined by your reputation, in relation to your visibility.
There are three main phases of a solid brand development strategy:
- The First is ensuring that your brand is in line with the core principles and objectives of your entire business.
- The second is developing the practical tools needed to implement and materialize those visions.
- The third is the on-going maintenance and strengthening of the brand you have crafted.Here are (several) tangible steps you can take to build a killer brand strategy.
Phase 1: ENSURE THAT YOUR BRAND IS IN LINE WITH THE CORE PRINCIPLES AND OBJECTIVES OF YOUR ENTIRE BUSINESS
Define Your Brand
Before you dive into the intricacies of developing your brand, you first have to decide what that brand is. The essential core questions you need to ask yourself are: who do you want to be? And who do you want your customers to see you as?
Define Your Target Market
Determining, developing, and an in-depth understanding of your target market(s) is obviously essential at the inception phase of any business. You need to know who your market is, what their needs are and what they are looking for a brand for you to develop the ideal brand strategy that will get the response you are looking for. This will require intensive, an ongoing, market research as well as trial and error until your brand develop a rapport with your market.
Decide On Your Messaging Strategies
Your business may even have more than one target group, each in their own demographic, and with their own set of needs. While you may have to tailor your messaging and marketing angles to appeal to the various target groups, it is important that your branding remains consistent throughout.The aim of your messaging strategy is to ensure that your audience knows that you are still the same brand, with the same objectives, simply catering to different needs.
Phase2: DEVELOPING THE PRACTICAL TOOLS NEEDED TO IMPLEMENT AND MATERIALIZE YOUR BRAND VISION
Develop Powerful Content
Content marketing has become an invaluable tool for business. In fact, over 400 million people view over 22 billion blog pages every month. A blog which offers readers valuable, useful content will not only help to keep them coming back to your website and it will establish your brand as a thought leader in your field. It also serves as SEO Content to help your rankings and increase visibility. As we stated, a strong brand stems from simultaneously enhancing your reputation your visibility. Offering great content does both!
Design a Killer website
In a time when the internet forms a part of every part of our lives, no business nowadays can afford to be without a comprehensive business website. This forms the prominent and ideal place for you to introduce your business and brand to your prospective clients, who come to your site looking for solutions that you can offer. It is the platform to offer information about your products and services and to express the ideals of your brand. You cannot afford to waste the brand development opportunity that your website offers you. For a strong brand, your website should include:
- An About Page, with an overview of your company and preferably the biography and vision of the founders/owners
- Contact Information
- Product/Service Information
- A Blog, offering useful and engaging content as well as company news(especially events that enforce your brand)
- Video- offering information, news, overviews of your company
- Visual design elements, including Images-that, enhance your brand
Phase 3: MAINTAIN AND STRENGTHEN YOUR BRAND
Stay On Top Of Things-And Constantly Improve
Even with the best brand development strategy and intentions, these will never materialize without their consistent and conscientious implementation. You need to track the progress of your plans and results of your branding strategy.You may have to deal with good old-fashioned trial and error along the way. That is how brands grow and strengthen- by paying attention to what works and what does not.
If you commit to these key steps in brand strategy, you will soon have an unstoppable brand!
Conclusion
If you approach your brand as an integral part of your business with a well defined strategy that gets implemented, reviewed, refined and implemented again your business will reap the rewards. That's because your customers will have a clear idea about what your business or service is about. They will understand why they should be using your business as apposed to your competition and if your strategy is right they will be awarded for the experience of choosing your service. The result - they will keep coming back for more.