A brand strategy is a document that sets goals, expectations, promises, and positioning in the market. It’s required to keep everyone in the company on the same page and direction towards a common goal. This document is to spark a discussion and finalise the strategy that would help our brand become a well-oiled machine.
Branding our product from time to time differentiates us from our competitors. It’s the key to turn prospective consumers into loyal customers. A brand is built with our product or communication. Our brand identity is the complete image of our brand in the marketplace, including an implied promise to our customers that company will consistently meet their expectations every time they interact with us. Brands evoke emotions, delight them, and should make them feel familiar and reliable on us.
Defining our brand identity and implementing a well-thought-out brand strategy is one of the most important business objectives of company at present.
Our strong brand should:
- create greater customer loyalty
- make customers less sensitive to competitive pricing
- increase trial of new products
- increase support from trade partners
- provide focus to marketing efforts
- allow us to attract the resources we need such as talent
- be instrumental in developing strategic partnerships
- act as a powerful tool for guiding internal decision making.
Building a strong brand is about having a clear understanding of what our brand stands for, and then making sure everyone understands it too. It is as simple as that.
The building or re-energising our brand starts with answering some key questions about the company, products and business. Need your help for similar objectives:
- Who are company’s customers?
- What kind of customers does the company want to build or attract?
- Who are company’s competitors?
- What is our competitors’ brand position online and offline?
- What problem do our company and products solve? Is anyone dependent on us?
- What is our market value proposition? Is it distinctive? Is it relevant to our target audience (online & offline)? In what way, it is relevant.
- When people think about our company or products, what are the feelings and associations triggered or any particular feeling company and their product should evoke? Are they unique? Can we “own” them?
- What are the functional benefits that we deliver to our customers?
- What are the emotional benefits that only we deliver to our customers?
- What kind of brand personality do we want to create for our company? For which we want to be known among the audience?
- Can we think of producing low-cost products for college going students? Especially for e-commerce business and slowly establish brand awareness among youth?
Question 9 & 10 are critical if we want to build a valuable brand. Because Emotional connects with the brand is a much stronger way to differentiate our brand in the market. How does someone feel when they buy or use your brand? The personality of company can set us apart from our competitors.
When we get the answers to these questions, we will have the basic building blocks of our brand strategy. Though it seems like a lot of work, the benefits of defining our brand identity will be more than worth it. Developing our brand strategy is much more than a marketing tactic. It’s a fundamental part of a good business. Addressing it precisely can turn it into a powerful management and execution tool to help us develop stronger customer relationship, create effective, cost-efficient marketing campaigns and a more unified organization.