You have a brand but somehow it is all over the place. There is no particular direction in which it seems to be progressing. Your brand lacks a unified voice when it interacts with your target audience. Worst still is when you have a defined brand but it does not fully and correctly portray your scope and content. This is when brand building strategies is important.
What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy is the long-term plan of developing a brand to achieve specific pre-conceived goals successfully. It is important to develop a brand strategy that is well designed and executable across all business functions. Brand building strategies affect all aspects and functions of a business. It should take into account the consumers’ needs while keeping in mind the competitive environment in which the brand performs.
How to develop a brand strategy?
When you develop a brand strategy you need to define the mission of your business along with your vision. The mission and vision together create your business goals. These goals allow you to develop a positioning statement for your business regarding the unique space your business will occupy in the operational market. The mission, vision, and positioning statement then define your brand’s personality, voice, and visual expression. Strategic brand management goes a long way in creating a unified brand experience that promotes loyalty among customers and employees.
Comprehensive brand building strategies
- Defining the scope and content of your business
- Understanding the environment in which your business operates including customer preferences and existing competition.
- Defining SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) objectives for your business.
- Creating a strategic brand management plan outlining your investment plans and the actions needed to achieve the SMART objectives of your business.
- Accommodating changes through testing, refining and constantly developing your strategic brand management which should be flexible and constantly evolving.
Importance of brand building strategies
-
Any company’s value proposition is articulated through branding strategy
Brand building strategies help you to create the value proposition of your business. This value proposition covers your brand’s unique selling points. It presents to the customer the entire range of benefits that they can avail of when they buy from you. A branding strategy will allow you to communicate about your brand in a prolific manner.
Your logo, tagline, website look-and-feel, copy, and customer after-care should always include the selling points of your brand. This entices customers and convinces them to forgo your competition.
-
Branding distinguishes your company from the competition
Thanks to globalization, customers today have more choices and the ability to compare those choices. Brand positioning strategy allows you to create a clear market position for your product. This allows customers to evaluate your product in comparison to your competition. A clear branding will allow your product to be more visible and thereby desirable to the customer.
-
Branding increases relevance
A branded product is more relevant to a customer than an unbranded one. It gains the attention of a customer. When a customer buys a branded product, they are not paying only for the product, but also the entire brand experience. Brand strategy importance lies in increasing this relevance in a customer’s view.
-
Branding builds trust
There is an old business saying – “People don’t buy products, they buy brands.” And people buy those products that they trust. The brand positioning strategy should be such that the elements involved in a brand are eye-catching and memorable. This leads to greater recognition for the brand. Over time, this recognition leads to a relationship of trust between the customer and the brand.
-
Branding builds loyalty
With trust comes loyalty. When a brand comes with a concrete identity, customers tend to trust the products under the brand. This trust slowly evolves into loyalty for the brand. In the long run, it is much cheaper to maintain a loyal client/customer base than to acquire a new one. Loyalty towards a brand is fostered through the dependence and trust that the customers have for a brand.
-
Brand positioning strategy allows you to analyze your weaknesses
Trust and loyalty for a brand are built through consistent performance by the brand towards the customers’ expectations and experience. A well-designed brand strategy allows you to recognize the gap between the deliverables and the expectations. Corrections towards the brand positioning strategy allow you to gain further trust and loyalty.
-
Branding allows you to filter out weaknesses
Once the weaknesses are identified, you can filter them out to create a precise brand strategy. A clear brand strategy would allow you to analyze and incorporate new marketing trends, customer preferences within the mission and vision of your brand.
-
Brand building strategies allow you to increase the price of your products
When you build a proper brand strategy, it gives your product a brand name. It increases both the physical and the mental value of the product. There exists a variety of ice-creams in the market. But people are willing to pay more for a Cornetto than the same chocolate ice cream in a cone from a local brand. Kwality Walls has been able to create a brand name and recognition in the market which allows the company to charge more for their ice-creams.
-
Expansion in market share
Brand strategy importance can be better explained when one understands how an efficient brand strategy increases your market share. With a proper brand strategy, you can increase the price of your product. A strong brand building strategy will thus contribute to your annual growth and over time increase your market share.
-
Increase in company value
A proper branding strategy increases the value, trust, loyalty, and recognition of the company and its products. This translates into an increase in the value of the company or more specifically the shares of the company. Studies conducted by several institutes have shown that brands account for more than one-third of shareholder value. Hence a proper branding strategy must be developed.
-
Growth of company through brand extensions
Brand strategy importance is seen when a company utilizes its existing brand name to introduce new products. This allows a company to be flexible and accommodating of changes in customers’ preferences and requirements. A well-established brand name paves the way for new products to be successful from the beginning itself. A successful brand strategy can be replicated for similar products launched by the company.
-
Branding helps you to create and maintain accountability
Brand strategy importance is observed in the manner in which a good strategy allows the company to maintain accountability. The employees remain focused on the objectives that need to be achieved. In case there is a digression from the objectives, an established brand strategy allows employees to refocus on them.
-
Marketing efforts are more focused
A clear and precise brand strategy makes the execution of marketing campaigns smoother and highly effective. This is because a brand strategy narrows down and clarifies the scope of marketing. This enables a company to concentrate on the most important marketing aspect instead of wasting its time on random marketing gimmicks. It also allows the company to maximize its returns on investments made in marketing efforts.
-
A brand strategy allows for seamless development
Without a brand strategy in place, creative decisions made for a brand are often subjective and arbitrary. Once the brand strategy is formulated, major decisions about logo designs, color palettes, or sales copy follow the same. This gives the brand a seamless appearance which is highly effective in creating the necessary relevance.
-
A brand strategy positively engages employees
Brand strategy importance is seen in the way it can attract and retain the proper employees needed for your business. A skilled workforce is always welcome for the betterment of your business. A proper brand strategy gives employees a sense of purpose. Employees who align themselves with the values of the company are highly productive. By serving customers in a better manner, they bring more profit to the company.
Conclusion
The world is rapidly changing today – more so the business sector. Sales and marketing are no longer linear approaches. They are multi-channel. Brand building strategies will enable you to gain a strong foothold in the extremely competitive market. A professional branding strategy is the need of the hour as more and more companies emerge in the market. A professional branding strategy will allow you to create a strong and relevant brand. It will set goals to be achieved and a benchmark against which you can measure your progress.
