Developing a brand is one of the most important things that any business can do. Without a proper brand, a company just provides products and services and fails to offer anything of real value outside the items your company offers. Your company’s brand is the reason why people do business with you! In this article we will be reviewing how to build a brand strategy for any business using an example of an Orlando business at the end of this article. Let’s dive into the creation of a high quality brand!
Key takeaways:
Brands have many benefits to them such as
Influences customer buying habits
increased ad campaign performance
Encourages internal team members
A comprehensive brand strategy requires 7 task laid out in this article
What is branding?
A brand is the identity and story of a company that makes it stand out among its competitors who compete for the same products, services or industry.
What is a Brand strategy?
A brand strategy is a portion of a business plan that companies use to build trust, rapport, and overall brand awareness of a product or service. A well planned brand strategy will allow you to define your brand and target audience, reach new potential customers, solidify your company’s tone of voice and so much more!
Simply put if you have been looking for an article on how to make a brand strategy then this article is for you. Let’s get into it!
A brand strategy should serve a few different areas:
They are the following things:
- Purpose
- Consistency
- Flexibility
- Emotion
- Competitive environment
- Loyalty
- Employee involvement
We will dive into each one individually.
Purpose
Defining a company’s purpose is a key factor behind a brand strategy because in order for customers to want to use your products, they need to get behind them and in order for your employees to get behind your company to achieve the owner operator’s vision they must believe in your organization’s purpose.
Think about the “purpose” portion of a branch strategy to be similar to a mission statement or a “ what your company stands for”
These things can also be referred to as a “brand positioning statement”
Questions like: “what helps send Cindtoro team members get out of bed each and every morning to serve new clients?”
Think about statements, similar to the above for your business. As these types of questions will help you define your purpose. They can then lead you to develop things like this. “We service Your Real Estate Needs With A Hands On Approach”
Consistency
It’s no surprise that building a brand takes consistency. The major problem with a company developing a proper brand strategy is they cannot remain consistent with their actions or their overall brand guidelines to make everything stick.
When you are not consistent with something, it makes it difficult to become ingrained into your company culture, and customers you have done business with!
Creating a brand strategy that is consistent means that your social media profiles look similar, the messaging and presentation on your profiles is similar, the colors that you use for these digital assets match across platforms. Digital platforms can include things like your website, social media as we mentioned, billboards and anything else that has your company’s branding on it.
A great example for you: have people to walk away from your company saying.
“Not only did Cindtoro provide me the best quality marketing services but they were also highly consistent with their communication throughout the time that we worked with them.”
The above is what you are striving for relating to consistency. To make this step actionable for your business think about things that your company can do on a regular basis to enhance your brands overall image, customer retention and brand strategy.
Brand consistency is key want to ensure that each and every aspect of your brand is looked out for across all platforms. Does your brand story match that of your website or do you have in-consistent messages for each digital marketing channel?
Flexibility
In the exact same light, while consistency is important they also needs to be an element of flexibility. Sometimes situations are not ideal, and you are not able to deliver on the consistency that you have in the past. Something may come up which may require you to become flexible with your company’s brand strategy.
Flexibility in this case, being able to tailor your company’s strategy as various different events happen. Perhaps you decide to change your colors, or your overall messaging, or even the way that you service customers due to their feedback. Brand flexibility is a key characteristic of a forward thinking company. Changing one or two elements of your companies brand is not rebranding. A rebrand happens when you change all of your assets.
Emotion
Emotional buy-in is also something that you will want to consider. People buy things in different ways. Appealing to emotion is important because it will help you define your company’s overall messaging.
Here’s a good example: perhaps you’re a real estate company based in California and you help first time home buyers find a home. But, there are also other real estate companies that do the same thing you do. How do you distinguish yourself from them? Well, consider this brand messaging:
“We don’t help you find a just a house. We help you find a Home”
Here’s why this message works well: many people want to own a house but what people are truly searching for is a “home” a place they can build their lives from, watch their kids grow up, and share special memories with.
Developing your brands strategy from an emotional standpoint will help you stand out among your competitors.
Leading with emotion is one of the best ways to win over the hearts and minds of potential clients.
Competitive environment
Speaking of competitors the competition can be an excellent way to promote your brand using ways that you have not previously thought of. Competition breeds the need for Innovation and growth. As you compete with your competitors over similar products or services your brand will be redefined over a series of events that happen over the course of time.
Through competition you will find new ways to do things like service customers. Ways to set your company apart from other Orlando businesses and much much more!
Competition does not mean to copy the best competitors in your marketplace and attach yourself to their brand rather see what they do that works and put your own creative spin on it in a way that is authentic to your company.
Loyalty
Creating both customer and employee loyalty is another key element of your brand strategy. Without loyalty of your customers and employees you will not be able to build a brand effectively. Creating company loyalty to a brand will ultimately come down to delivering the best product or service offered anywhere by a long shot.
Customer loyalty / retention can also be enhanced when negative situations arise. In business, there are things that will not always go your way, perhaps you deliver a service, and a client becomes unhappy with the service that you were providing.
To create brand loyalty from a negative situation look to help solve the clients problem in a way that shows you understand the situation that they are in. This will likely turn them into a strong advocate of your companies brand. Of course, this does not mean that you let a client walk all over you if they don’t like the way you operate. Stand firm but if needed meet in the middle while also solving the problem.
Employee involvement
Without getting the rest of your team involved, and bought into the brands overall mission and strategy, it will be very difficult to get penetration into the marketplace for the products or services you offer. Employee involvement is a critical step in the branch strategy process because they are in charge of delivering the end result to your customers.
People who work at your company should understand what your purpose is, The importance of consistency, competitiveness, emotional buyin and much more. As long as they understand that they are key to creating an effective brand strategy, it will be much easier to gain their involvement while also making a positive impact in the target market that your company services.
What Are the benefits of branding
As we’ve discussed from above in regards to the creation of branch strategy, if you are still not sold on why branding is important we are now going to cover the benefits of branding your company.
Influences customer buying habits
Did you know that your brand has a lot to do with influencing customer buying habits? There are many people who are searching for companies that have specific attributes. For example potential customers who are looking for companies based in the United States because they want to hire American workers. If you create a brand around hiring Americans workers and make that known there are people who will sand behind that message. Thus helping to influence their buying decisions and habits.
Increase performance from marketing campaigns
Marketing campaign, Weather, digital or traditional, can also be enhanced through proper branding. The brand will help to tell the story that a marketing campaign may not be able to do. With a combination of these things, digital or traditional marketing campaigns will be enhanced because there is a match between the branding and the advertisements that are being served to potential clients.
Encourages your internal team members
As you branded your company, it also encourages internal team members to get behind what your brain stands for. We previously spoke about people who looked to buy from American based companies. we didn’t touch on the other aspect of this which is there are people who also would like to work for American based companies. This example highlights weighs in which encouragement of internal team members can happen.
Create a strong company persona
Branding helps to create a strong company persona because defines an organizations goals, informs the way a company services customers, or produces products.
Branding is a part of the creation of the company persona. A stronger company persona also creates more emotional connection with a customer and the brand.
Closing thoughts
The steps, creating a successful brand strategy, require a long, thoughtful approach. One that satisfies all seven needs laid out through out this article on branding. With the knowledge you gained here you will be you will be able create a comprehensive marketing strategy and with clear and consistent branding to take a company from unknown to known.
Example: How to Create an Orlando Brand Strategy
We mentioned at the beginning of this article that we were going to take an Orlando Business as an example. Here’s how to create an Orlando brand strategy.
Develop Purpose
First, you’re going to want to develop what your brand stands for overall. This would be your mission statement or purpose like we talked about above. Identify the key selling points that people and employees can get behind so they can execute on your company’s purpose
Develop Consistency
By developing systems to stay consistent whether this means checks and approvals for style guides, messaging or others you will want to stay consistent with your Orlando companies marketing efforts.
Ensure that all digital platforms match this includes things such as your social media profiles, headers and hero images, overall messaging and promotions that take place from social media to your website and more.
Flexibility
Consider the negative situations that will arise in business. In order to protect your brand in a positive way you should plan for ways to deal with negative situations. What will you do when something goes bad? How will you solve the problem a customer is having in a way that puts them on top and makes them an advocate for your brand.?
Emotion
Tie your Orlando businesses overall brand messaging to emotion in a way that speaks to your target audience through their wants and needs. Since the example of buying a house is such a good one, think about things that have a much deeper meaning to them. Remember people don’t just want a house they want a home…
Competitive environment
Use your Orlando competition to develop better ways your product or service can be used in the Orlando market. See what your competitors do and using your own creative spin make your product or service better than theirs by a long shot.
Brand Loyalty
To develop brand loyalty from Orlando natives, think about ways to reward your customers who have worked with your business. So, for example if you have a product based company provide them with a free product that you know they might enjoy.
if you have a service based company provide them with the service for free that they may enjoy. Another good way to encourage brand loyalty is to give discounts to your best customers. This will make them advocates of your Orlando company long term.
Developing Orlando Employee Involvement
The final thing on this list is to develop Orlando employee involvement. you won’t be able to get anybody behind your company if you don’t have the employees involved in executing your overall brand strategy. Show them why it’s important to do things the right way and in accordance with your standards. Make sure that they know that the better they do in serving customers their lives will also be greatly enhanced.
Summary
In summary, if you put these steps together for your Orlando business then not only will you create an effective Orlando brand strategy but, you will be able to create a powerhouse company that is capable of branching into other markets across the United States and the globe. It only takes seven things!
