Brand Strategy

Your brand is more than your logo, name or slogan — it’s the entire experience your prospects and customers have with your company, product or service. Your brand strategy defines what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey. And while it includes your logo, color palette and slogan, those are only creative elements that convey your brand. Instead, your brand lives in every day-to-day interaction you have with your market:

• The images you convey
• The messages you deliver on your website, proposals and campaigns
• The way your employees interact with customers
• A customer’s opinion of you versus your competition

Your brand’s strategy should be based on company goals. Successful branding also creates “brand equity” – the amount of money that customers are willing to pay just because it’s your brand. In addition to generating revenue, brand equity makes your company itself more valuable over the long term.

You must remain committed to know your audience inside and out in order to create and sustain the ultimate customer experience. Always be accountable to their needs and take responsibility to keep the momentum of the relationship moving forward. Implement the below mentioned brand strategies, and you will build a power brand for the 21st century consumer.

Brand Strategy Key Concepts & Steps

Reinvent Your Strategy as per Consumer Needs

Stop doing what everyone else is doing and be creative about how your brand engages with consumers. Stand out of the crowd. People like surprises and want variety. Don’t be too predictable. Mix it up. Don’t grow complacent. Stretch your thinking. Every brand is vulnerable. Don’t take your audience for granted. So if your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change them and take the opportunity to engage your audience in fresh innovative ways. Sky is the limit for your imagination. Remember that consumers are re-evaluating their needs and reinventing themselves more often than you might think. This is why it’s so important to give your brand a refresh every year (not every 3-5 years). Instead of being reactive to your audience needs, be on the front end and help guide them as they reinvent themselves. If you do not manage your consumer engagement strategy, someone else will do it better.

Evolve a Relatable Brand Identity

A brand identity is most influential when it evolves and its value proposition strengthens in alignment with the changing lifestyle demands of its audience. Keep things simple. People don’t have the time to figure out what your brand is trying to solve. Consumers want brands to be deliberate with their identity – straightforward while at the same time with progressive-thinking. Too often brands complicate their unique value proposition (UVP) to get attention. In their efforts to reinvent and renew, they complicate things that frustrate their consumers and shareholders. In an effort to reposition the brand, they lose their strategic focus and their identity along the way.

Your Brand Should be a Lifestyle Platform of Inspiration and Hope

Brands influence lifestyle and one’s state of mind. List the features and benefits of your product/service. A feature is an attribute – a color, a configuration; a benefit is what that feature does for the consumer. Determine which benefits are most important to your audience. You should remember that stimulating a new or existing consumer relationship requires the ability to educate, communicate and inspire your audience about the totality of your brand – what it represents and what it stands for. If your brand is not a lifestyle platform that inspires people and communicates hope, the impact and influence of your brand message will quickly begin to wane. Today’s consumer expects more from your brand – not only the message it communicates – but how it is delivered. That is why content marketing is so important and must be flawlessly executed to be effective.

Consumers want your brand’s value proposition to come to life and impact their lifestyle with messaging that is educational and applicable. Find a way to connect to your customers on a deeper level. Do you give them peace of mind? Make them feel like part of the family? Do you make life easier? A holistic approach to branding that gives people hope will accelerate your ability to earn consumer trust and loyalty and create more transparent dialogue and feedback to keep your brand in continuous innovation mode.

Continuous Innovation with Impeccable Timing and Execution

There is no doubt that innovation forms the very base of successful branding strategy, yet, many companies still fall short (or are too late) in their efforts. It’s no longer just about introducing new products, line extensions and/or technological advances to strengthen your UVP. Today’s marketplace demands immaculate timing and flawless execution with each new strategy you implement. Consumers want to know that you are ready when they are. That means your timing must be in perfect sync with your audience demands. Don’t launch a new product, service or packaging/logo strategy if your brand’s audience isn’t ready and/or you are not prepared to execute the requirements for sustainable success – all the way through to the end. Short-cuts are slow death in a marketplace where consumers expect brands to over-deliver before they actually commit to purchase. Once you have established your reputation for excellence, your innovation efforts become a public relations strategy that pre-sells your consumers well before any new product event.

Promote the Genuine Spirit of Giving

The successful brands are the one which “share the harvest” of their success with their audience and others (whether they have purchased their product/service or not). The spirit of giving must be a central part of every brand’s DNA. Such Brands sustain the best momentum. Unfortunately, many brands forget to “give-back” to those who supported their growth. Irrespective to your profit margins or market gain, make it a point to show your respect and gratitude to the people and communities your brand is serving. Fully deploy your corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. Take the time to interact in ways that go well beyond the obvious like provide sponsorships, be consistent with your community outreach efforts, actively participate and support charitable events and organizations. Brands today have a much deeper responsibility to society and the more your brand touches the needs of the world and helps to make it a better place, the more abundant you will find the opportunities before you.

Be Consumer-Centric to Leave a Legacy

According to Wikipedia, brand legacy begins from a point of origin (core idea) and considers historic message layering to derive a current perception as it pertains to the target audience. A core idea is a word or thought that encompasses all facets of the brand. For example, IBM’s core idea is computers, while Cadbury is chocolate.

Think about how will your audience remember you as to how do your brand impacted their business or lifestyle? The most successful brands are aware of their responsibility that they have to their audience and they never fall victim to an identity crisis. They are focused on what matters most to their consumer and strive to make their experience better. You'll come to know that you are building a solid brand legacy when your customer loyalty is so strong that they are not fazed by your competition.

When your core idea becomes synonymous with your brand, expectations rise and so do your strategic responsibilities. This is when you must begin to allow your customers to play a more hands-on role in your brand’s evolution. This is when you begin to witness the convergence of your brand’s growing community (intimate followers) with the advancement of commerce (growth in the business). Allow your customers to play a more significant role. Align your brand’s identity closer to their own.