“Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touch points.” – Jonah Sachs
You’ve probably heard the term branding or brand strategy thrown around a lot if you’ve put any attention toward growing or relaunching your brand. If you’ve heard the term, it’s likely that someone on your marketing team discussed your company logo, your tagline, your color scheme, and how these materials would be used for both digital and print marketing. But here’s something to think about: Your brand is so much more than just a colorful logo and fancy words.
If your marketing team failed to mention the other aspects of your company’s branding or rebranding strategy, you’re missing out! Branding isn’t just your logo or your color scheme – it’s also:
- Tone and voice: the way you position your brand’s descriptions and wording from website content to advertisements to social media content.
- Target audience: building buyer personas that help bridge the emotional connection between your brand and your ideal customers.
- Story: sharing your story makes a difference, but it must be done in a way that connects with customers.
Each of these components in your branding or rebranding strategy helps you present your company to the public to build a recognizable company with a viable product or solution.
Key Components of Building an Effective Branding Strategy
While many people are very familiar with the colorful elements of a branding strategy, the other aspects of your branding strategy shape your company’s message in a broader sense. Your brand is what people connect to when they think of your company and the greater the recognition of your brand, the greater your business. If you’ve employed a consistent branding strategy to communicate your brand story, your brand is going to be set apart from other companies and encourage customers to purchase your product(s) and/or solution(s).
Tone & Voice
The tone of your company and the voice of your company is one of the most important aspects of your branding strategy. Think of your company’s voice and tone as the way you communicate your message to the world whether you’re using print or digital materials. While conveying your brand message, you’re not only providing motivation and direction for your employees, you’re also telling your customers what type of company you are. Are your employees happy and fulfilled? Are they relaying this same fulfillment and happiness to your customers?
Target Audience
Who are you selling your products or services to? It’s likely that your company sells to a variety of customers, from everyday individuals to business executives. Working with your marketing consultant, decide who your ideal customer is and then work on creating buyer personas. These buyer personas will help you create content that connects with your customers on an emotional level and communicate your brand’s story.
Story
How did your brand come about? What issues did you want to solve when you created the company? Sharing your story helps with motivating your customers to purchase from you and creates brand recognition: the emotional connection between you and your customers inspires loyalty to your brand, which helps to turn visitors into customers. Using the established tone and voice (from earlier in your branding strategy meeting), your employees will know how to relate your company to your customers in order to create buying relationships.
Starting your branding strategy with these points, in addition to your visuals, will help you share your company with the world and potential customers. A solid branding strategy allows you to have a clear vision of your company, how you want your company to be publicly perceived and to be viewed.
Getting On The Path To A True Brand Strategy
Think of some of the brands you support by purchasing their products, such as your Apple iPhone or Amazon. These brands effectively utilize a branding strategy that goes beyond their logos. Can you think of a few reasons why these brands stand apart from their competition?
The first step is to sit down with a team who can talk you through the process of building a brand strategy. You should expect to invest a lot of time and brain power into this process. It might even make you squirm a bit, but it’s well worth it in the end.
What steps have you taken to relaunch your brand’s strategy? Share your insights with us!