What does Brand Strategy involve? 

Creating a brand strategy can be a confusing process if you haven’t deeply explored the core reasons behind your business. Typically this process can have you grinding your teeth and slapping your keyboard in frustration. That’s where we come in! Your friendly neighbourhood brand strategists! Offering our top tips on brand strategy and what is involved in the development process of this tool you’ll utilise throughout your brands’ entire journey.

Firstly, you may be wondering what is a brand strategy? You’ll hear us talking about them ALL the time, in fact, the amount of times we type “brand strategy” on the daily, only reiterates its importance. You can find our previous blog that defines it here. While you’re at it, you can also find some information on why your business needs a brand strategy here.

What makes a good brand strategy?

Before we dive into what steps you should take when designing your brand strategy, let’s discuss what makes a brand strategy good in the first place. Because how can you make something great if you don’t understand why you’re creating it?

A brand strategy should define why your brand exists, your goals and objectives, what it offers and what makes it different from your competitors. This is easier said than done! To simplify the process, we’ve created a checklist below of the main things you should be thinking about deep-diving into:

• Knowledge of your target audience and their behaviours

• Strong differentiators and unique selling points

• An authentic brand identity that tells your story

• Consistency throughout all touchpoints

• A focus on your community

• Clear objectives

• Strong brand awareness and equity

• A valuable offering outside of your products or services

Steps to take when designing a brand strategy

Okay, it’s time to start developing your brand strategy. If you’ve done some deep consideration of the above this shouldn’t leave you pulling your hair out. Otherwise, if you’ve decided to bring in the big guns this is a taste of what a brand strategist would delve into.
Here are 7 steps to take when designing a brand strategy.

1. Get to know your brand on a deeper level.
   Ask yourself “Why was my brand created? What is its purpose? What does it represent?”

2. Hone in on your ideal customer – your tribe.
   Decide on your perfect customer and create communications tailored to them that consistently create positive interactions.

3. Finesse your business goals and objectives.
   These should be as specific as possible, they fuel the intentions of your marketing efforts and businesses purpose as a whole.

4. Conduct market and user research.
   You can’t be successful in entering a market you don’t understand. This is the stage where you should look for opportunities for your brand to help fix your target audiences problems or satisfy their needs.

5. Find your gap in the market.
   What do you offer that nobody else does? And how is it better?

6. Consider the reasons behind your branding and design.
   How do they reflect your brand and what it represents?

7. Create a brand identity
   This is more than your logo and is created through the use of consistent language and visual elements that represent your brand as a whole.

The above steps are important to take during your brand’s journey. They can distinguish you from your competitors, making you more recognisable to your customers while communicating clearly and consistently with your audience. On top of this, depending on your goals, a brand strategy can boost awareness, engagement, loyalty and customer retention. Setting brand direction and optimising growth. It might even mow your lawn if you ask nicely!

Now that you’re in the strategic mindset, take these steps and get developing! Having a well thought through brand strategy is itself a powerful factor that when utilised efficiently will have you standing out from the crowd. Alternatively, if this all feels like a bit much for you, let us handle it! Pepebucks has transformed brands of all types and sizes into well-oiled machines, deciphering their needs with the customer journey in mind. Contact us to arrange a chat about what we can do to help you!