The ultimate guide to brand strategy
Your brand has seven seconds to make a first impression — that’s why it’s so important to have a brand strategy.
A brand strategy refers to your brand identity, which differentiates you from your competitors. It involves creating an image or brand message that resonates with customers, builds trust and loyalty, and drives brand recognition.
A successful brand strategy requires a deep understanding of your target market, careful consideration of your brand positioning, effective execution, as well as trending business ideas across all communication channels.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the importance of brand strategy, the key elements that make a successful brand, and how to create an effective brand strategy for your business in 2024.
Summary/Overview
What is brand strategy?
Branding strategy is an essential part of a successful marketing plan that involves creating a unique, unified identity for your company. It helps you build trust, loyalty, and recognition with your target audience by communicating a consistent message across all channels.
Researching the needs and desires of your target customers is the first step of crafting a good branding strategy.
Over 80% of consumers said they need to trust a brand to consider purchasing. We’ll explore how to identify your potential customers later in this article.
The brand strategy includes establishing key elements, such as visuals, brand personas, a positioning statement, messaging, and exploring ways to build a loyal customer base.
An effective brand strategy can help you stand out in a competitive market, establish long-term customer loyalty, and drive growth for your business.
The importance of strategic branding
Once you understand how a brand strategy works and why brand strategy is a crucial part of any long-term plan, it’s easy to see how it can help you. A good brand strategy will:
- Differentiate you from your competitors so you stand out in your market
- Build trust and foster loyalty in your brand by communicating your professionalism and reliability, leading to long-term organic relationships and word-of-mouth marketing
- Communicate the value of your product or service to your audience and customers, which helps you improve your pricing strategy
- Streamline your marketing efforts helping you expand and scale up more easily
All these benefits will help you stay agile in today’s shifting business landscape, making it easier to adapt to changing needs and content marketing standards.
The elements of a brand strategy
A strong brand strategy needs to include certain universal elements. When defining these, tailor the messaging of each one to the needs and preferences of your target audience or end customer.
Purpose
Consider how your brand’s core mission aligns with your customers’ needs and aspirations and communicate your brand’s purpose accordingly. Think about the different aspects of your brand, who you cater to, and what problem your brand aims to solve. Your message should answer the question: why does your brand exist?
Brand values
Think of ways that your brand aligns with your customers’ values. What’s important to them, and how do those things guide your brand’s behavior? Refer to your value proposition and consider creating a brand positioning statement to serve as a reminder to yourself and your customers of your brand values. Make sure to consistently uphold and communicate those values in your brand messaging.
Voice and tone
Your brand’s voice is its overall personality, style, and character, which needs to be consistent. Tone refers to the subtle variations and nuances in your brand’s messaging based on the context, such as marketing to different audiences, or writing an informative blog post with a serious tone versus a social media post using humor. Make sure to regularly update information about brand voice and tone in your brand guidelines to keep your content on brand across marketing channels.
Design and visual identity
Ensure consistent design across all brand visuals so everything looks cohesive. This helps you craft a visual identity, much like how your brand’s voice and tone infuse personality into your written content. Use brand colors, typography, and graphics that reflect your purpose and values and resonate with your audience. Make sure your brand name is recognizable and legible.
Brand story
Your brand’s story should express what makes it unlike any other. When crafting your brand story, consider your brand’s experience and brand equity — that is to say, how customers perceive your brand. Engage customers through storytelling to establish an emotional connection and differentiate your brand from your competitors. Establishing this narrative is a powerful way to capture your audience’s attention and make sure they remember you.
How to build a brand strategy
Now that we have a good idea of what brand strategy is, let’s take a closer look at the key elements that go into building your brand strategy.
1. Identify your target audience.
Nearly 60% of consumers think businesses need to understand and address their needs better, which is why it’s essential to identify your target audience. An effective brand takes the time to filter through and prioritize the needs and desires of their ideal customer base — you cannot successfully target your ideal customer until you understand their needs, long-term goals, and pain points.
Understanding your audience is a crucial part of a comprehensive brand strategy and lays the foundation for other aspects of brand development, like brand archetype — which helps you create memorable personas — as well as the core values that define how your brand communicates, and even the way you design visuals.
You should create each element of brand architecture with your customer in mind.
Do some market research to uncover user personas, demographics, and insights into what motivates your customers. Knowing who you’re targeting will assist in tailoring your brand messaging and tone of voice to reach new customers better while engaging current ones.
Establishing a clear target audience is essential for creating an effective business strategy. For example, how can you decide on pricing if you don’t know your target customers’ average income or average price paid on similar products or services? How can you create a compelling digital marketing campaign if you don’t know the platforms or type of content your target audience prefers? Establishing a clear target audience is essential for creating an effective brand strategy that leads to a higher return on investment (ROI).
2. Establish a unique position in the market.
A recent study showed consumers would not care if 77% of 1800 brands disappeared. Ouch.
You don’t want your business to be part of that statistic. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, establish a unique market position and include it in your brand marketing strategy. This involves defining how your product or service is to be perceived by your target market compared to how they perceive that of your competitors.
Base your brand’s positioning statement on its distinct value. Capture your brand’s essence in just one sentence focused on this differentiation and what makes your brand stand out from the competition.
3. Craft a compelling message.
77% of customers said they prefer to buy from brands with the same values as them, meaning that creating a message that resonates with your target audience is paramount. Your messaging should be consistent across all touch points and demonstrate the core values for which you stand.
Your brand story should capture your brand personality and mission statement, offering customers an emotional connection to your product or service. It should also focus on how you can solve consumers’ problems and make their lives better, thereby creating a genuine connection with your target audience and driving loyalty in the long run.
4. Develop an engaging visual identity.
Creating a strong visual identity will expand your overall brand recognition. Your visual identity should reflect your positioning statement and include consistent elements that represent the themes of your brand, like your logo, and specific typography and color palettes chosen for your aesthetic.
You should put these elements in your style guide, so they’re used across all touch points, such as websites, social media profiles, and marketing materials.
Adobe Express is a great app for beginning the process of brand identity development. It allows you to easily make a logo and pick colors, fonts, and graphics that best reflect your brand’s unique message.
You can also use powerful design tools like templates and effects to make visuals that capture the essence of your brand.
5. Use technology to reach your audience.
Technology can drive leads and sales through various channels. You can use it to manage social media accounts, launch marketing campaigns, build websites, design graphics, level up your search engine optimization (SEO) for website visibility, engage with customers on mobile apps, create automated emails, and more.
Over 90% of marketers utilize social media for brand awareness, so using it to reach your target audience is essential. You can create content for specific platforms like Instagram or Twitter, use hashtags to increase engagement and visibility, or run targeted ads on social media, among many other useful tasks.
Digital marketing gives you valuable insights into who your audience is and what they prefer. You can use this data to get more leads, identify buying patterns and trends, understand consumer preferences, increase ROI, and craft better brand marketing strategies.
Keep up with customer preferences, emerging technology, and graphic design trends to stay ahead of the competition. When you blend a unique market position with an engaging message, powerful visuals, and technology, you can create a brand identity that sticks.
6. Analyze and refine your strategy regularly.
Brand strategy isn’t a one-and-done kind of thing. It’s a continuous process that requires ongoing tweaking and improvement over time.
Analyze your audience’s response to your messaging, visuals, and technology every few months to see what works and doesn’t. If something isn’t resonating with your target audience, try changing it or testing different approaches until you find success.
You should also regularly monitor how your competitors position themselves and adjust your strategy accordingly. Consistently studying the market can help you develop a strong, differentiated brand identity that stands out from the competition.
To ensure your branding efforts remain effective and successful, establish clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). You should research social media marketing strategies and engagement rates to set a benchmark for success.
Review your progress regularly to ensure you’re meeting those KPIs and adjust your strategy as needed. If you’re not meeting your goals, consider changing or updating strategies, such as revising messaging, enhancing visual elements, or exploring new technologies that provide a better customer experience.
Showcase your brand with automated tools
Branding strategies involve many moving parts, but coming up with one doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right tools, you can make unique visuals and turn them into brand assets to be used across a range of platforms, materials, and marketing channels.
For example, you might want to make a brand logo. Adobe Express allows you to save and easily add it to any social media graphics or marketing assets you make in the future without having to open any software.
Building a strong brand identity is even easier when you use design templates to use similar designs across different media. Adobe Express has plenty of attractive options to choose from, or you can make your own. Try Adobe Express today and see how easy it is to automate the design aspect of your branding strategy.
This post was updated on January 16, 2024.