The Road To Success Starts With Brand Strategy
Why you need a well-thought-out brand strategy from the start to set your business up for success.
I know how important it is to have a roadmap. As a brand strategy and marketing consultant, I help businesses find, define, and establish their brand voice and frame how they want to be perceived in the eyes of their audience.
Too often though, I see brand strategy is not viewed as a top priority for founders and business owners, and understandably so since it's easy to think product/service and marketing are.
In reality, having a brand strategy well defined from the start is very important for companies of any size.
This is not a strategy! You may call it a virtual strategy…
When it comes to brand strategy, it’s not enough to have a few bullets down on paper or somewhere lost in an email or slack communication.
Slapping together a couple of ideas and some semblance of a positioning on a whiteboard is not a strategy either. It’s a virtual strategy. Even though it’s a start, it won’t get you far, and most importantly, it won’t be useful to anyone working in the business.
Everyone involved in your business needs a clear understanding of your strategy, including why you’ve chosen that strategy.
Because when your people grasp your strategy, they can run with it, which maximizes your success in realizing your goal. And that is what a well-thought-out brand strategy provides when it is communicated clearly and consistently throughout the organization.
So what is a proper brand strategy and what does it involve?
What is a proper brand strategy?
It can mean various things for different people but in general, a proper brand strategy covers:
What your brand stands for,
What promises your brand makes to those who buy you and believe in you,
What story, personality, and beliefs your brand conveys through its marketing and communication,
What experience would you like people to have when they encounter your brand.
As you can see, these are mainly intangible things. So you must be wondering how to track the effectiveness of a brand strategy? How to measure how successful you are at telling your story or communicating your brand personality? How to measure if you’ve successfully represented what your brand believes in? These are legitimate questions.
The one metric to watch for a successful brand, and therefore its strategy is brand sentiment. It may not be easy to measure and quantify but that’s not impossible, so don’t dismiss the qualitative work involved in brand strategy.
Some see brand work and branding as fluffy, touchy-feely, mushy, spiritual, emotional, BS stuff. You name it. But that’s a superficial way to describe it. Branding is critical to the success of your brand, and therefore to the success of your business. It also fuels your company’s culture.
Why you should start with brand strategy, especially for startups and small businesses?
Many startups and small businesses struggle to grow because they skip ahead and focus on the wrong things instead of starting with the most important ingredient for sustainable growth, which is brand strategy.
Instead of laying down the strategic foundation for a brand, most entrepreneurs start with tangible things like naming, logo, website, articles, and social media content—just because it’s fun—even if they are willing to do it all over again.
You’ve probably heard that saying before from Jack Bergman: “There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over.”
If you’re failing at growing your business, your marketing probably isn’t working because you don’t have a strategy as a foundation to market your business idea and build a brand.
Here’s a simple truth: you can’t market anything effectively until you understand the context, know who you serve, and can articulate clearly who you are, why you exist, and what you’re trying to achieve.
By defining the strategic foundation for your brand, you’ll be able to tell a compelling story and make the right decisions in all the aspects of your business. You’ll have a guide that if you follow will keep you on track instead of spinning your wheels without a plan.
The more cohesive your brand strategy is, the easier it will be to judge the quality of your marketing efforts and to succeed in the execution of that strategy. Most importantly, it will help your teams and employees see your vision and how it will come to fruition.
A comprehensive brand strategy includes the elements that answer why, how, what, and who to dominate your market. You must then develop a detailed marketing plan to execute that strategy. But first thing first, you need to answer the essential question: why do you exist in the first place?
I wrote an article on the Power of Brand Purpose Done Right which demonstrates the value of starting with answering first and foremost that question.
Today, I want to touch on the importance of laying down a strong foundation for your brand to stand on before you begin to work on marketing. I hope I convinced you by now that defining your brand is the way to go about building your business. Let’s look at what exactly you should answer in a brand strategy document.
How to create a brand strategy?
Many pieces need to be defined to develop a brand strategy. These pieces must work together to tell a believable and memorable story, your brand story.
Researching your market — understanding who your audience is, their pain points, how your offering can help ease these tensions, and what will grab these people emotionally — is a big part of crafting your brand strategy correctly.
Research & Analysis of the Context: to unearth strategic advantages and for your decisions to be based on actual research and facts instead of just what you think the market wants and needs.
Company: this is about you, your people, your offering, your story, your culture, and everything in between, to identify what makes you unique and attractive.
Category: this includes a competitive analysis which is extremely important to understand what specifically differentiates you from the direct competition, something you’ll want to focus on in your marketing.
Consumer: to identify who you serve, what personality they have, what’s their lifestyle, and what problems they are facing.
Culture: to resonate with your audience and stay relevant you must keep your finger on the pulse of culture on a global level all year around.
Once you’ve researched the market and developed a thorough analysis of the 4 x Cs, you’ll be able to identify the story you want to tell and the strategic advantages that should be your focus to win the market.
Now, you are ready to craft your brand book.
Brand book — The one document you need for your brand.
A brand book holds the defining elements of your brand in one place. It is the one tool you need to unite your team and partners and support them in 'living the brand'.
I recommend developing a brand book to help everyone have a shared vision.
To help you with that, I have created a brand book template that will guide you in the process of crafting a brand book, covering brand purpose, positioning, visual identity elements, key messages, Dos, and Don’ts.
Where to start with your brand strategy?
The best way to jump-start your brand strategy is to get your leadership team in a room and collectively answer the following key questions:
Why do we exist in the first place? Boil down your higher-order purpose to a single statement.
What transformation do we provide to people and the world? Define the idea, solution, and benefits.
How do we provide this transformation? Develop the experience people will enjoy the most.
What makes our brand different? Understand what makes you unique to highlight why people should choose you over the competition.
Who’s our brand for? Knowing exactly who you’re doing this for helps you understand what you need to communicate to connect with people emotionally.
Is our brand human? Understand how your brand fits into people’s lives.
How does our brand talk with them? This is the creative expression of your brand’s purpose, and it will give people their first impression of you.
How can we make the biggest impact? Know what marketing channels can work hard for you, based on where your audience is and how they prefer to communicate, consume content, and experience life.
What is our brand story? Storytelling is everything. Tell a compelling story that shows who you are and how you make people’s life and the world better, and why they should care.
How do we define long-term success? Set goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely), inspirational, and motivating; e.g. “We want to become the most loved (brand sentiment) and used (usage) delivery app in France by 2022.”
Answering these 10 questions will help you get to the heart of your story.
The benefits of having a well-thought-out brand strategy from the start.
Here is why you should invest in brand strategy:
It’s beneficial for you, your teams, and your customers because it provides focus. It helps ensure everyone is working towards the same goal.
It guides your business and marketing strategies. It answers why and how you’re doing business.
It helps you communicate and engage with clarity. The more consistent, the more likely you are to grow.
Most importantly, it simplifies all decision-making.
Why do most businesses fail miserably at brand strategy?
Brand strategy seems complicated, but it isn’t. At least for me. I’ve devised several global brand strategies and helped produce many brand books on behalf of clients of agencies.
Once you’ve nailed down the defining elements of your brand, you will have so much confidence and clarity in decision-making and guiding teams and partners that all the upfront work will be worth it. You owe it to yourself and your business to invest in your brand strategy.
Here are the main reasons we see why companies fail at brand strategy:
Lack of vision and purpose,
Poor execution of the brand strategy,
Lack of leadership to communicate the strategy consistently and effectively,
Not knowing who the customers are and need,
Not delivering a unified brand experience,
Lack of creativity and passion to bring the brand strategy to life,
No unity between branding, product, marketing, sales, and customer service.
A successfully devised and executed brand strategy delivers your vision and fulfills your purpose across the entirety of your brand experience.
At the end of the day, brand strategy saves you a lot of pain and money. So while the investment might seem hard to make, in the long run, your brand will prove to be invaluable.
Remember this: the success of your business depends on the success of your brand.
Bastien Frediani
LinkedIn: in/creativebrandstrategist
Email: strategy@thinkbastien.com
Bastien Frediani is the founder and strategist of ThinkBastien, a strategy studio that helps bridge the gap between vision and audience.