Are you in search of a winning brand strategy to improve your brand?
With the kind of competition that businesses are facing, it is difficult to stand out and build a unique brand identity. It is important to have a winning brand strategy and equally important to provide quality services.
In this blog post, we will discuss and outline what brand strategy is and some characteristics of a winning brand strategy.
What is brand strategy?
Let us start with the Brand. What is a brand?
A brand is a perception that someone holds about your business. Developing a winning brand strategy helps the business to identify and communicate to customers the values, image, and quality standards of its products or service. Many businesses struggle to build a strong brand strategy, but not all reach their goal.
Branding is an integral part of digital marketing and we have already mentioned the importance of branding and the process for strong brand building to have successful branding.
Brand strategy is always considered around creating a unique logo and nice tagline. It is not limited to these. It is actually a combination of all the things that you put together to stand out in the competition.
Brand strategy is a plan that helps to build a unique recognition of your brand and stand out ahead of the competition.
Elements of the brand strategy
Every successful branding strategy has many elements. Think of creating something that sets a pathway for all those who will look to improve their brand. Defining key elements will help you get clarity on building a strong brand strategy.
Let’s look at some of them
Brand purpose
Firstly, it is important to understand why are you in the business. Finding the purpose of your business and your being in the business is fundamental. Making money is the obvious reason behind every brand but besides that what you do as the brand creates a difference.
The brand with a crisp and clear purpose will definitely stand out and has a clear purpose.
A brand with a clear purpose generates more sales, grows faster, and achieves better ROI.
Brand vision
Brands vision is a key element for successful branding once you are clear with the purpose of your brand.
Clear vision can determine your goals for growth and also have a strong influence on your decision toward business. A motivating bold vision will help you in many ways. It plays a vital role in keeping you on track and on board.
Brand value
To understand how well your brand will be distinguished between thousands of people it is important to define core values. Brand values will help you in determining what your brand stands for, and helps in decision-making.
Target audience
What is the type of audience you wish to sell your product or service to?
Knowing this will help you generate more sales. Identifying their demographics, what exactly are they looking for, and their aspiration matters a lot.
Market analysis
Identify the gaps in the market to look at what will make us different from others. There is a number of players entering the field of your everyday. so, you can have an idea of the competition. Here comes the importance of market analysis. You can list down what efforts you need to put in and where you can improve in branding.
Awareness goals
Creating awareness in your target audience will make your brand more reachable. This will help you understand how your customers learn about your brand. Spend your marketing money wisely considering the cost.
Brand personality
Make a brand that relates to the audience and build a strong relationship. Building a brand personality will help you in connecting with your audience. Treat it like a persona and connect with like- a minded audience.
Brand voice
Every brand speaks in a different tone. An appropriate tone of voice for any brand is a great compliment. Bank speaks in a softer tone whereas catering brands speak in a friendly tone. So, decide your tone for your brand that gets you more audience and use it via all your communication channels to spread your message.
Brand tagline
A tagline defines your brand. Have a catchy tagline that conveys what your brand is. It should be easy to remember same time should be unique. For instance, LG brands have the tagline “Lifes Good”. This tag same like as the usage of its products will make your life good.
Combine all these elements of a winning brand strategy and make a strong brand.
Importance of strategic branding
Brand strategy has many advantages and you will study them in the following sections too.
- By the definition itself, we can get to know the advantage that strategic branding helps you get unique recognition in the market by creating an image of your business in the heads of the target audience.
- Building strategic branding helps everyone work clearly with no confusion.
- Helps in building a better company culture. A strong brand personality attracts professionals with the same ethos.
- Creates trust in your customers, and increases engagement.
Characteristics of a winning brand strategy
How can you find an audience in this huge market?
Well, Branding can do this for you.
Take any business product or service that will not get noticed on its own. No one other than branding can help you with this.
How is that going to happen?
Learning is one that never fails, learn from the bests and get characteristics that help you in making a successful branding of your business.
Yes, we are going to discuss them here in the next section.
1. Audience knowledge
Brands need to understand their target audience. Let me tell you, the best of the best brand does this with priority.
You are not in the field to entertain everyone. Learn your audience and only focus on them. If you don’t consider the core audience set and focus on a broad set of audiences it, is you who is at loss.
Understand their demographics, and interests and work on them to convey your message only to your target audience. Audience knowledge helps you to be on track as it provides direction for the reach of a marketing campaign.
2. Uniqueness
Is it possible to differentiate your self a fish in an ocean?
Bit difficult but not impossible.
The market is like an ocean of products similar to yours. Distinctness helps you stand out. Uniqueness is always a sign of winning a brand strategy. Have a special thing that differentiates you from the competition. Be it a speed delivery or free service choose something to attract your audience.
In terms of products, we can take the example of Apple company which is known globally for its unique aesthetics. Domino in terms of the service industry assures you that they deliver pizza in 30 minutes.
3. Consistency
Why will anyone rely on a company that doesn’t provide consistent quality in service or product?
Be consistent in your business. Why do you think franchises of Starbucks, CCD, and Domino are successful?
They maintain consistency. They do what they are doing for years.
You order in any corner of the world they try to maintain same tase everywhere.
Consistency depicts the strength of your purpose and is a good medium to show that you’re not diverted, you are focused.
4. Storytelling
Who doesn’t like stories?
We all do, right?
We like to hear stories in different ways, through books, movies, etc. Storytelling about a brand fills life with your brand. We have already mentioned above to treat your brand like a person with a personality.
Stories tell your audience, what you do, and how you do it. It also helps to build some confidence in your audience about your brand. In the journey of creating a winning brand strategy, always start with what you know about your target audience.
5. Competitiveness
Win forever is a book written by Seahawk Coach Pete Carroll, that says you need to thrive to improve. The market is vast and it’s not that easy to stand out. You need to thrive on competition to succeed. Team members need to work on creating and optimizing the brand to match the consumer’s expectations.
6. Authenticity
Whatever you promise, you should be able to do so, then you can achieve authenticity. If you fail to do what you promise, you will not be trusted in the future. As mentioned, the message you convey should be strong but should not look like you are forcing them, the audience can obviously feel it. This is a process that you have to do consistently. Every time you come out with a new service you have to be authentic.
Never compromise on authenticity in building a winning brand strategy, with time make it right and get appreciation.
7. Exposure
You can be recognized as a unique and successful brand through exposure. The bigger businesses have a larger budget allocated to branding and have more exposure. Television commercials, and magazines.
Don’t worry if you are a small brand, inter and social media have shortened the gap.
You can find good tools on the internet where you can establish your brand. In addition, social media platforms provide a platform to reach your audience.
You just have to learn how to utilize these.
8. Leadership
Influential leaders play a vital role in a winning brand strategy. For example, CEO or owner. To guide a team, you must have a head who also helps in coordinating and motivating the team members and getting the best out of them.
Conclusion
Successful brands follow the above characteristics. By the end of the discussion, all that matters and the struggle is to make the brand outstanding and satisfy the customer’s needs.
Now you know what can you do to have a successful brand, try to spend more time and put effort. And don’t forget to adopt the above-mentioned characters. Reach us to get the best brand strategy services.
