5 Steps For Creating Your Brand Strategy

Branding is one of the most important elements of a company. Think about the biggest company in terms of popularity, like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Uber, and many more. Branding made a huge difference for them in their journey to organizational growth.

Boosting your brand identity as a business is not a walk in the park. You need to strictly follow important steps before you can get it right. Let’s see some 5 essential steps for creating a formidable brand strategy.

#1. Evaluate who you really are 

Discovering the purpose behind your brand is the first step to be taken if you really want to build a formidable brand strategy. One effective way to go about this evaluation process is by asking yourself questions that provide the key to your brand identity. These questions include

• Why does your business/company exist?
• What singles you out from the rest?
• What solutions exactly are you providing?
• Why should people trust your approach to the problem?

Once you are able to answer these questions confidently and comfortably, you will be on the path to giving your brand an identity. Thereby, creating a framework for your brand.

#2. Create brand awareness 

How does the target audience get to know of what your brand is all about when you don’t do anything to create awareness? The key ingredient for creating brand awareness is the identification of your target audience.

It is one thing for you to have detailed and well-structured information as to what your business stands for. It is another thing entirely to channel this information to the right audience.

How you create brand awareness is very important. It’s vital that you tailor the message in a way that it will resonate with the lifestyle of your target audience. That is the only way to make a lasting impression that will make someone want to be your customer.

Another important thing to do while you are creating brand awareness is to be specific about your target audience. If you are aiming your branding for B2B, there is definitely an opportunity to be more specific. For example, you could decide to target people who have been in business for ten years and above. Or better still, you could decide to target SMEs only.  That way, you stand a better chance of being successful.

To do this effectively, you need to understand the concept of the brand buyer persona. In essence, it is all about understanding the personality of your brand buyer. This involves getting details such as age, location, occupation, gender, and other important data.

Deeper insight into buyer brand persona requires that you should get details pertaining to the goals, motivations, desires, influencers, etc. of the buyer.

#3. Identify your core values 

The business world is ever-evolving. No matter what industry you find yourself, the mode of practice now is different from what was obtainable some ten years ago. While all these changes are happening, there should be an anchor that holds a firm grip on your identity.

What are your core values? That’s what gives your brand a distinctive voice. It could be accountability, professionalism, punctuality. The more conscious effort you put towards identifying and maintaining it, the better the relationship your brand has with your clients.

#4. Create a message 

This is very important! You should be able to put everything your brand is about in just one sentence of a few words. This is your brand mission statement. It’s the reason you get up every day to do what you do.

The message you create should have a deep connection to the needs of your target audience and it should be based on the core values you have identified. In essence, rather than making your brand message about what your product can do or what service you offer, make it about why it’s important to your customer.

If you are able to make all these connections perfectly and maintain them, you are on your way to building a brand that will stand the test of time.

#5. Promote yourself 

You need to see the aggressive promotion of your brand as the distribution of finished goods to as many people you can possibly reach within the target audience. There are so many tools that can help you reach your target audience with your branding process.

A good tool is the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is such a great tool for the digital aspect of your branding process. You can also grow your brand through the use of automated promotional text messages. Don’t ignore the offline aspect of the promotion either. Most importantly, consistency is needed in the promotion stage of creating your branding strategy.

Conclusion 

There are several people doing what you do. What differentiates you is your brand strategy. Therefore, pay attention to it, and make sure your brand identity speaks not only to what you stand for, but also what your customers will feel proud to support.