Brand Strategy – The Second Most Important Asset

Why is brand strategy important?

What is the difference between a brand strategy and a brand?

This crucial wrong understanding of what a brand is, costs companies a fortune because marketing actions are built upon this mistake. Unknowingly the entire purpose of building a brand spirals out of control, and becomes ineffective.

Marty Neumeier, author of the book “The Brand Gab”, describes it best! “A brand is a gut feeling within each customer. It is what they say it is, not the other way around.”

It is important to understand that a brand is not what the company says it is, but what the customer says it is. For this reason, you cannot design a brand.

Yes, you read that correct! Your most valuable business asset is out of your direct control. However, you can take action to influence how your customers perceive you through consistency on every touch point, and with the help of a brand strategy.

Just the mention of Coca-Cola, Starbucks, or Apple immediately triggers a personal association or emotion. One of the challenges that businesses must overcome is to build such emotions in customers.

How do you know what actions to take, and how do you even know what type of brand you want or need to attract your dream customer? Is appearing youthful and friendly the right way, or is it better to look mature and corporate? What if you want to be perceived as innovative, but your customers are not risk takers?

Questions upon questions. This is where brand strategy brings clarity.

BRAND STRATEGY

The brand strategy is the foundation of any company. It systematically develops a long-term plan for controlling the perception in the customer’s eyes. This foundation is essential and impacts all aspects of a company.

Or in other words, brand strategy is a plan to actively influence how people perceive your company. It clarifies what your company stands for, what you are trying to achieve, and provides guidance on how your business acts and interacts with customers. This is the correct and only way to achieve your long-term business goals. It helps you figure out what to do, and what not to do.

As David Ogilvy, who is known as the father of advertising, once said:

“Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is brand image.”—David Ogilvy, author of “Confessions of an Advertising Man”

The solid foundation, where everything is build upon it, guiding all actions of every department.

Without a brand strategy, you have no way to judge whether your brand is moving in the right direction, or not.

BENEFITS OF BRAND STRATEGY

1. Articulation and communication of your values

Simon Sinek, author of “Find your Why” accurately said: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

 If you want to attract loyal customers, you need to figure out what your brand stands for, and how to communicate that to consumers. This might seem unimportant, however it is essential for building a solid customer foundation.

2. Helps to identify weaknesses in your brand experience

If the experiences that your customers have with your company are not consistent, you will struggle to build trust and customer loyalty. In the words of Marty Neumeier, author of “The Brand Gap”: “Customers trust your brand when their experiences consistently meet or beat their expectations.”

3. Filtering out ill-advised ideas that will damage your brand-building efforts

The most common mistakes I see companies fall for: the shiny-object syndrome, competitor comparison, fear among employees.

Shiny-object syndrome:

Getting side-tracked by new business ideas or projects, just because they feel new and exciting at the moment, instead of focusing on the big picture that ultimately meet business goals and growth.

Competitor comparison:

The sudden pressure that rises, as soon as competitors launch a new campaign, feature, or product. This urge for tailing causes, irrational actions, loss of resources or worse, and is damaging the brand.

Fear among employees:

CEOs and managers do not like this fact, but oftentimes employees do not speak up against bad ideas, out of fear it will impact their career.

4. Creation of accountability

Being committed to a clear brand strategy, forces everyone to stay within the guidelines.

This brings focus on essential projects and helps to stay on track. If you should fall off the tracks, it will help you refocus faster.

5. Laser focus in your marketing efforts

Narrowing and clarifying the scope of your marketing projects will ensure a smoother and more effective execution. You will know exactly who to target and how to craft messages of value to them. Instead of losing thousands of dollars on campaigns that do not have any impact.

6. Increase of the valuation of your company

CEOs of startups will be thrilled to hear about this! When in the process of raising capital, a clear brand strategy shows potential investors, that you carefully thought through how to grow your second most important asset. This increases a company’s value.

7. Helps copywriters and designers produce better work

What should your logo look like? What tone of voice should your sales copy have? Which color palette should we use?

Without a brand strategy to strengthen design and copywriting decisions, everything becomes subjective, and set up for failure. Almost every time major decisions about logo design, color palettes, and sales copy are being made based on personal taste. Even family member’s opinions come into play and enter the meeting. In the end, decision makers usually have the final say.

With a clear brand strategy, you can assess the effectiveness of the design and piece of copy by how well it reflects the given strategic direction.

8. Alignment, motivation, and engagement of employees

Every department in a company must move in the same direction. If one falls out of line, the goal to build a strong brand gets derailed very quickly. A great part of a brand strategy is to determine guidelines, so that everyone is acting and behaving in the same manner by buying into the vision and values of the company. Engaged employees are more productive, serve customers better, and therefore, are generating more profit.

Brand Strategy Building Blocks

A solid brand strategy has four main building blocks: core, target, personality, and identity. Each block contains numerous individual elements. Following is a short overview of each purpose:

I. Brand Core

The Brand Core is the driving force, and the reason why your company exists! Clarifying the inner motivation will rally employees and customers behind your cause.

Your core is heavily influenced by the mission and cause that the company founder laid out.

As are their beliefs, which unlikely never change.

II. Brand Target

The Brand Target represents your target audience. The one group that is most relevant for you,

and you want to know everything about. The more you learn about them, the better you can target and communicate with them.

The biggest mistake we see are companies who try to be everything for everyone – If you are trying to target everyone, you are selling to no one. Your target audience should be laser focused.

For the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s, the ideal customer, according to its founder Joe Coulombe, is “an unemployed Ph.D. student … with an acquired taste and not part of the mass TV culture, and maybe a wine drinker”. There are most likely not many unemployed Ph.D. students, but for Trader Joe’s this target group represents a very real and large segment of the market. In essence, their focus is on well-educated and cost-conscious people who want quality at an affordable price.

III. Brand Personality

The Brand Personality stands for the character of your brand. The experience customers will have with you, that will subconsciously attract them, because it connects to their hearts.

To mention a few:

• IKEA positioned themselves as affordable, contemporary furniture manufacturer.
• Ralph Lauren is positioned as premium fashion label.
• Abercrombie & Fitch is a young and modern fashion label with good looking people.

IV. Brand Identity

The Brand Identity is the visual representation of you – in every aspect. It defines your appearance wherever you interact with your customers.

A strong and recognizable brand can help a business be more successful. That is why creating an effective brand identity is so important.

This means that a brand identity cannot be done without the previous coherent strategic parts.

Who should have a brand strategy?

Everyone who wants to excel their business.

This is especially interesting for startups, small and mid-sized companies. There is a big advantage for them, because many have not caught on yet, and do not understand the value of their most important asset, next to their product or service. Developing a brand strategy in early stages of a startup can help avoid wasting time and costly mistakes down the line.

Established companies who have reached a marketing plateau can revitalize their business. Companies that have outgrown their old brand, or are merging have to deal with rebranding.

Do you have a Brand Strategy?