Explore what is a brand, and what is NOT
The term “brand” is often confused with business or an office. Each of these terminologies is different. When you describe the physical and professional aspects as “office” or “business”, you represent the emotional aspects of them as “brand”. A brand is all about conveying the right emotion to your people. It is the promise you make to your audience based on what you can deliver. You let them know what change you aspire to bring the society and what your focus is on. If you are part of a big brand, then you need to work on establishing your digital connection, since startups are nailing it nowadays with their eye-to-eye strategies. It is always vital to move forward with the right skill set and team when you set forth to build a successful brand strategy.
The Significance of Brand Strategy
How to develop a brand strategy? Strong brands are not a matter of luck. Yes, you get to see brands instantly becoming popular. But how many brands do sustain? That’s the question you need to drool over.
Every brand would be having a long-term strategy with guidance on how your company is operating. You get to understand your company’s requirements and how they are serving your client. Why is it vital to have a rock-like brand strategy for your B2B business? In fact, the brand strategy you apply for your B2C business is not going to match well for your B2B business. The initiatives taken by your brand have to prove successful. To ensure that this happens, it is of utmost importance to build the best brand strategy for your team. At the end of the day, it is not the hare that wins. It is the tortoise that is going to win the race. Hence your brand strategy has to be in such a way that you lead the market, rather than playing a sidekick role. Hence you need to include more powerful brand strategies in your current business album. Hence your Brand Strategy is going to change the way you play the game.
Harvard Business Review notes that you need to build more concrete brand benefits for your B2B companies. You can follow these three ways:
- This would shadow the economical means by which you are going to address all your customer-related concerns when it comes to a specific scale.
- You are going to get rid of your ad hoc marketing efforts which are going to result in dull messages.
- B2B marketers would get an opportunity to increase margins. They can build a loyal customer base and protect themselves from the competitive atmosphere.
Branding strategy- Let’s open the Pandora box now!
Let’s assume that you are going on a date. You do not want to be that another guy or a girl who seems just ordinary. You want to stand out of the crowd with a bunch of flowers. You have to appear trendy, smart, and intelligent. Nobody wants to come out as a sloppy, boring kind of person. Every person is unique in their attitude, style, and thoughts. What suits me well would not suit you. We make decisions and choose stuff based on our individuality. The same formula would apply well to branding. As the adage goes, every drop counts. Spanning from the logo you design to the content in your presentation, it is going to leave an everlasting impact.
Why do “you” need a brand strategy?
Alex was a business owner, a smarty-pant with a sound knowledge of technology. He had a well-packed team with a dashing product. Everything was going well until one day, the world was digitized. 
The website, which was considered a luxury, found a casual place. His competitors started overpowering the industry with their digital marketing strategies. Alex and his team felt lost in the crowd. They had to do something to sustain their business during those testing times. Their product was selling well owing to its quality and flexibility. Yet, their popularity level was not up-to-the-par. Alex approached a brand strategy consultant. They advised him to hire a team of a content writer, graphic designer, digital marketing analyst, and SEO executive. But why? Alex asked. “We are in the age of the internet. Your target audience is no longer sticking to the word of mouth religiously. Once they get to know your brand name, they pick up their mobile phone and do thorough research on you. It’s time to redefine your brand to match up with the millennials of 2020”. That’s just a glimpse of what brand strategy involves. It is an ocean. You cannot bottle the importance of brand strategy up within a few lines.
For instance, times are changing rapidly. Technology is evolving at a marathon rate. You should always be a step forward to beat the rat race. You should communicate with your clients regularly via social networks. One negative review can turn your brand image upside down. It is always a priority for every brand to put its client base first and then start doing the work.
Startups or MNCs, everybody should have their own brand strategy. Uniqueness is the only key to success currently. From your content marketing to product strategy, every gem adds up to the crown of brand strategy. How to develop your brand strategy? That’s the basic question you need to ask your brand consultant.
Brand strategy has done well
We need not look back any further. There are brands near us that have donned their role well when it comes to brand strategy. Let’s have a gist about a few of them:
Headspace:
Do you want to wake up the inner Buddha within you? This mindfulness and meditation app can do that favor for you. Founded by Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk, this app fits into the digital era without paving any way for mental barricades. If you take a look at their logo, you would notice that it is a simple orange circle. That shows their belief in simplicity. Not just them, over 85% of the top brands’ designs leverage only mono or two color tones in their logos. (Source: DesignCrowd)
Adobe:
When we speak about branding, we cannot deny the dominance Adobe holds tightly. They have played a magnanimous role in shaping the brand prowess of several businesses. Adobe contributes to its growth as an individual brand to digitalization. Adobe has two logos- the red tag logo is to represent the brand and the standard logo is to represent the third parties. Apart from that, Adobe offers individual logos for each product with a tow character representation. Each logo represents the periodic table elements. Their brand promise is “Adobe enables people and organizations to create enabling experiences. They would define their brand personality as “exceptional, involved, genuine and innovative.” Adobe has always enthralled its users with its hawk-eye brand strategy and approaches.
The Elements that Shape an Exquisite Brand Strategy
Elements of a brand strategy:
You need to control what you offer to your customers if you need a successful brand strategy. It should evolve as per your industry standards. You need to keep these six key elements of a brand strategy into consideration:
Target Audience: The Sovereign Ruler of Brand Success
Your target audience is the person who would be paying for your product or service. The B2C market would consist of an individual person or a group of people who are going to buy the product. In B2B, you have another business as your client, not an individual or a group. The process of purchase is going to be extremely complex in B2B at times. You need to note not just which companies are going to buy from you. You should also note which companies would make the right decisions. It could be the department manager, purchasing manager, or executive team. Your product value would determine the trust level of your target audience.
Etching the Brand Promise:
The brand promise serves as the compelling message that you impart to your target audience. It encapsulates the essence of what they can anticipate when they choose to acquire your product. By effectively communicating your brand promise, you establish trust, foster loyalty, and forge lasting connections with your customers.
Look after the brand perception:
You should look after the brand perception and what your brand imposes. Your current customers are going to perceive your brand as per your choices. One of the best ways is to survey what your customers are going to think about your brand. Would your target customers like your product? It is very important to understand how your audience perceives your brand. Do they find it convincing? Do you sound too compelling? You need to find those out.
The Sacred Values that Shape Your Brand:
You can offer a clear definition of the decision-making strategy for your company with your brand values. Your brand would possess these core values for a long time. You need to stick to it and move on along with it. That is going to set the pace for your business. When you are going to define the brand value, it should reflect directly on your actions. If you belong to the leather industry, your brand value should be on the focus of quality. If it is in the food industry, then you should focus on improving the number of dishes you serve. If you are into interior designing, your brand strategy would involve increasing your creative power.
Set your Brand Voice and Tone:
How does your brand “speak?” What is its personality? Do you get it buttoned down and might prefer a more serious or playful and funny tone? All these answers would depend on your audience and hence you should speak to them. The quintessential part you need to remember is that your brand is an emotion. A successful brand strategy would involve building the voice and tone of your business with a personal touch.
Brand positioning:
This can be used to define what position your brand is going to hold in the market. You can define whom you would like to compete with, what benefits you are going to produce, and what promise you are going to offer to your customer. It would inform you about the position of the brand in the market along with brand equity, logos, persona, voice, and much more. With your effective brand strategy, you can position your brand in the best place in the minds of your customer. This is going to help you redefine your brand value.
Tips to enhance your brand strategy:
Are you wondering how to develop a brand strategy? We are there for you to support you through your endeavors. Make sure to follow these tips if you want to develop a successful brand strategy:
Consider the picture of your entire business strategy:
Your growth factor is going to get smoother when you involve a stronger, well-organized brand strategy. Would you like to grow in an organic manner? Your overall business strategy of yours would give a different context to your brand development strategy. If you have a clear goal on where you want your firm to stay, the purpose of your brand would be to take you over there.
Identify who is your target audience and client:
You CANNOT generalize your target client. Not everybody can become your target audience. There is research by Hinge marketing proving that you focus on high-profit firms and high growth value when you clearly define your target clients. When you narrow down your focus, you are going to accelerate your growth. When your target audience is diverse, your marketing efforts would be more diluted. To know if you have chosen the right set of target clients, you need to focus on the next step.
Research your target client group:
“Research is about engaging in a conversation with a brand.” -Matthew Rhodes
With research comes more responsibility, knowledge, and power. You get to position yourself as a top-notch player in the industry when you can understand what your audience needs through your research.
When you are set to research, you need to analyze where to begin, where to halt and how to proceed further. Your research has to happen in a client-focussed manner. This would make sure that you are going in the right track of achieving your goals and accomplishing your targets on time. There are various factors proving that companies focusing on systematic research would grow at a faster pace with more profit rate. Companies doing research on a frequent basis would still grow faster than those companies. With research, you would be able to get an idea on the priorities and perspective of your target clients, how you can anticipate what they need and put forth your words in a resonating language. This would also give you a clear picture of how you view the strength of your firm and your current brand value. You can lower the market risk unimaginably.
Spend more time on brand positioning:
You can now determine the position of your brand within the boundaries of your professional services marketplace (otherwise known as market positioning). How different is your firm from other firms? The positioning statement would be 3-5 lines in length. It would give you a clear idea of your brand position. It must have a confounding effect on reality. You just need to deliver what you have already promised. Your brand is going to be the best in the industry when you are involving brand positioning.
Develop the message strategy:
The next level of your messaging strategy would be to translate the brand positioning into different messages for your different target audiences. The target audience would include your potential clients, employees, influencers, referral sources along with potential partners with whom you might have more business opportunities. The core brand positioning should be the same for every audience. Each and every audience might have a different interest. Each audience would emphasize the most important points that you need to focus on. Your messaging strategy should be the common point to address all this stuff. This would let your brand stay relevant to all your target audiences.
Develop the name, tagline, and logo:
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou. Creativity is a power you unleash on your brand to attract your audience. Your name, tagline, and logo should have a creative instinct in themselves.
This would make sure that your brand remains memorable in the eyes of your users and audience. Many companies such as Apple, Dell, and Hersheys have got the best out of this strategy. It’s time for you to leverage this special boon of creativity in your naming, logo, and tagline creation pursuits. In the case of naming the brand, the name change would be a rare occurrence with many firms. When you are a new firm, when you are going through merging and are burdened with a particular name that is not going to suit your position, you might need a name change. Even when you are not going to change the name of your firm, then a new tagline and logo would support your brand positioning aspects well. You should remember that the name, tagline or logo does not define your brand. Those are merely the ways of communication and symbolization of your brand. You need to live it if you want to make it into reality.
Forging a Commanding Content Marketing Strategy:
In the digital age, it would not be really appropriate if you are going to employ traditional marketing practices solely. You need to start implementing content marketing strategies to improve the business reputation, increase brand awareness and achieve much more results. Content marketing is going to increase your business value dramatically if you know how to put them into action perfectly. If you want to build a proper content marketing strategy, you need to focus on clearly defining what your product or service is all about. Your content can be in the form of videos, infographics, blogs, whitepapers, E-Books, or anything else. It is equally important to give importance to the quality aspects of your content.
Captivating Digital Grandeur:
Your website would act as your vital brand development tool. It is where your audience would turn to understand what you do, who your clients are, and how you are going to do it.
Your prospective clients are not going to choose your business firm only depending on your website. But if the website is too slow with a lot of glitches or the content is irrelevant, then they would more likely leave the page. Your website is going to be your home place for your important content. That is going to have a huge impact on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Your website should educate, engage and entertain your audience. It should be a memorable journey for your prospects when they are going to visit your website. Remember, your website is going to stand as a testimonial to your brand prowess. Hence make sure to groom it well. With a better website, you would be able to rank your website in Google. If your website is not as per the industry standards, then it is going to increase the bounce rate which is going to have a negative impact on your brand.
Build your marketing toolkit:
Next, you need to build out your marketing toolkit’s remainder. This is going to involve a single-page “sales sheet” which would describe all your key markets and core service offerings. You might hold a short “pitch deck” overviewing the firm with the key offerings along with an e-brochure regarding the firm. Apart from these, there are rarely any printed media. The marketing toolkit you are going to build would consist of videos, case studies, overviews, key service offerings, and introductory videos. These videos would also be important for your successful brand strategy if your team can get it done perfectly.
How to develop a brand strategy? Time to Implement, adjust and track:
Putting across your thoughts would no longer suffice if you cannot put your brand strategy process into action. The best Branding agency in India would aid you. You are going to be surprised at the turn of events if you can start taking action. You get to develop a solid brand strategy when you start it with great intentions. It is only then that reality would enter the playground. When people get busy with their daily routine, they tend to forget the brand development tasks. This is the reason why you need to track your activities and work systematically. We recommend our folks to track the implementation and results in a better manner. Were you able to implement the strategy as per your plans? Were you able to get any new leads, employee applications along with partnering opportunities? When you can track the entire process, you would know if you were able to go on the right track.
Why Pattem Digital for your successful Brand strategy consulting?
Hope you got a gist of how to develop a brand strategy. Do you think you need expert support from the best Brand strategy consulting agency? If so, give a pat on your back! You have stumbled upon the right place. We, at Pattem Digital, solely focus on adding higher value to all our users through our products and services. We are here to let your brand reach the next level with our effective strategies and plans. We are a team of individuals but work as a single entity with a lot of passion for what we offer our clients. We would be there to let you reach great heights.
Let’s discuss more on these aspects. Contact us at business@pattemdigital.com!
