What’s Included in Brand Strategy?
Brand strategy is comprised of the following six components:
Brand Discovery
Brand strategy always starts with a brand discovery. During brand discovery, a business owner writes down everything they know about their business.
During this phase, they pinpoint when and how their business started (or when and how an individual will start one), what made them decide to start it, how much money they will have to spend on it, and what the overall goal is. Brand discovery just covers basic things, as the rest will come out in the process of the brand strategy.
For a head start on creating a brand strategy for your business, you can take this quiz to determine your unique brand personality:
Brand Positioning
Brand positioning is the act of setting your business apart from the competitors. A business can only position itself by discovering who its real competitors are — who are the most important, the most competitive, the closest, and the most similar direct competitors?
Then it’s important to know and learn a lot about each competitor, like what they do well, what they don’t do so well, if they’re growing or struggling, looking at their messaging, etc.
Once you have audited your competitors, you can work on figuring out what separates your business and makes it different (and better) than theirs. Why would people choose a certain business over another? What does your company offer that makes you different? In this stage, you find your unique selling proposition and brand promise.
Brand Attributes
Brand attributes are the attributes that describe a brand. Those are the characteristics that your audience sees as an inherent part of your brand. If a person can be smart, inventive, and friendly, a brand can be all those things too.
When you identify brand attributes, you basically make your brand look and feel the way you want your potential consumers to think and feel about your brand. Brand voice is also part of your brand attributes, since your brand voice influences how your messaging will sound to the public.
We created a free mini-workbook to help health & wellness businesses identify their brand attributes and clarify their brands. You can get your copy here:
User Profiles
Your user profiles, or target market, are your potential consumers. You will need to identify these user profiles, not just in a sense of how old they are, where they live, and what gender they are… but also what they want, what kind of problems they have, and how your business can solve their problems. The entire picture and strategy behind your brand needs to be focused on these user profiles and what they will connect with — not on yourself.
Goals
Goal setting is setting your business’s long-term goals. These are not weekly or monthly goals — they are two-year, five-year, and even ten-year goals. These goals need to be clear and measurable, and most of the time these business goals are measured in revenue.
Content Strategy
Content strategy is basically writing for your company’s target. It’s figuring out what your ideal customers would like to hear, what resonates with them, and how they can connect and engage with you — whether through blog posts, social media, e-mail marketing, direct mail, or other channels.
Are you ready for an outside expert to evaluate your brand and create a fresh brand strategy for your company? Aventive Studio specializes in brand strategy and design to help your company scale. Drop us a line here to schedule a consultation with our team.