In our opinion, branding and brand strategy is the fundamental part of your business. As you sketch out your business plan, your branding sits side by side. We see a lot of business owners jumping past this stage - setting up social media channels, creating a website, and taking tactical action with their marketing choices. Further down the line, it all starts to feel messy, confusing, unplanned and uninformed.
Brand strategy is the 'why' and 'how' behind your business and what it does. It's the master plan guiding your brand's journey, aligning your business objectives with consumer needs to create a unique space in the market. Your brand identity - that logo we’re frequently asked for - is the ‘who’. The uniform, the outfit, the eye catching attention grabbing stuff.
But it goes deeper than this.
This blog will share more about brand strategy and its importance and how, if you perfect this piece of work, it will smoothly and easily inform the way your brand looks. And your graphic designer will LOVE you.
We’re Kelly and Sophie. A Brand and Marketing Consultant and a Brand Designer/Marketing Specialist. We’re going to talk one at a time here. Kelly, having experience in brand marketing and brand development, will kick start with the importance of branding - the foundation. Sophie with experience in marketing strategy and design, will share her perspective on brand identity. And together we’ll provide a branding checklist to finish.
Keep reading to learn more and take from our wisdom on the topic of branding.
So what is branding? It’s effectively the story you tell about the business you have set up, its origin and vision. What your company stands for.
We often assume we buy products and services, especially when we go about our day to day lives doing the weekly shop, throwing numerous brands into our trolley, or attending the same hairdresser and nail salon every month. But we actually chose ‘a brand’ and that choice was based on an experience and feeling.
The goal of branding is to earn space in the minds of your target audience and become their preferred option. Consumers are 4-6 times more likely to champion and trust a brand if the brand has a purpose and a mission and it is evident that they stand by this in their actions.
This being said, the starting point to building a brand is understanding your driving force - your vision for the business, your mission that will stand the test of time, and your values that will be factored into every action.
From there, your brand starts appearing. You get a feel for the shape and structure of your brand and its substance.
Another key factor in developing your brand is understanding WHO you want the attention of. See how we’re not saying - who you are going to target. Instead, it’s the opposite. Who will be attracted to you? What do they look like, what problem do they have and how can you solve that for them. How will you solve it? What is the process of that transformation?
OK we’re diving in deep here, but it’s a very important point - Who is your audience?
A strategy is defined as ‘a long term action plan to achieve an overall aim’. And now we know what a brand is as described above, your brand strategy is the approach that you will take to present your business (your brand) to your target audience. How do you plan to make your brand favourable and preferred to your audience over and above your competition?
You will see many versions of a brand strategy template if you Google this term. But essentially, to build a brand you need:
An intention and a purpose that link in with your mission.
Consistency with your identity across all marketing channels, along with your tone of voice.
An element of emotion such as your brand story (the why and the mission behind the business and its start) - remember that people do not always buy from rational decision making.
A plan to build loyalty because word of mouth marketing is still a thing and works wonders (the old school influencers marketing).
And if you have a sizable business; employee involvement and cheerleading is definitely needed. We think customers can destroy a brand, but there is nothing more harrowing for a brand than one that its employees do not champion.
This article from Hubspot talks about these points in-depth along with branding methods. Remember though, finding the right brand strategy and method is very personal to a brand and a business owner. You have to do the deep work first in order to follow its path for years to come.
Re-branding is a complex journey and not one that is recommended unless a full consultation has taken place. Re-branding requires as much foundational long-term work as does launching a brand for the very first time.
This then takes us nicely into brand identity and how to create an effective identity once your brand strategy has been mapped out. Keep reading.
Creating an effective brand identity involves a strategic and thoughtful process. To start, defining your brand, understanding its goals and identifying its values are crucial steps, as emphasised by Kelly. This initial stage also involves establishing the brand's personality, whether it's warm and inviting, fun and relatable, or formal and authoritative.
Once the brand's personality is clear, determining the brand voice follows. This includes decisions on whether the tone is formal or informal, comedic or relatable, and the choice between sophisticated language or plain English. This linguistic aspect helps shape the overall communication strategy, making it consistent with the brand's character.
Moving on to brand design, I can’t emphasise enough that a brand is more than just a logo. Defining who you are as a brand is foundational before crafting the visual elements. The importance of avoiding hastily thrown-together logos is highlighted, as a logo should reflect the business and convey a thoughtful message. The essential components of brand design include a set of logos, a colour palette and a selection of fonts.
Consistency in brand design is then stressed as a key element. Following the establishment of the brand design, a Brand Guidelines document is recommended. This document serves as a comprehensive guide for representing the brand correctly, outlining specifications for logos, colour usage, fonts and even extending to providing guidance on areas such as tone of voice and photography style.
Your brand identity and guidelines will now set the foundation for every other piece of marketing material your company produces, from your website and social media posts to your packaging and business cards. You need to ensure that if someone is holding your business card and looking at your website, the two align. The alignment between various touchpoints is a priority, ensuring a coherent and recognisable brand presence across all channels. In essence, the brand identity and guidelines act as a roadmap for creating a unified and impactful brand image throughout the entire spectrum of marketing materials.
In the words of Hubspot, Brand Awareness is ‘a marketing term that refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand and how well they recognise it.’ We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Brand awareness can feel like a vague concept, and to some degree it is. Brand awareness marketing activity is often tricky to metric but it’s an absolutely fundamental part of building a business - your brand.
So what are the important aspects to building brand awareness and what is the purpose?
Think of your brand as a person. You may ‘feel’ a certain way when we shout out the brand names - Nike, Innocent Smoothies, Kelloggs, Pepsi Max, even Barbie. You associate something with these brands and that something is personal to you. But if you like the brand, they’ve essentially built a bond and trust within you. And once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought — which then bridges the gap between trust and loyalty. See where we’re going with this?
Digging deeper, brand awareness builds brand equity which means the value of your brand - and this is determined by your customers perception of your brand.
Once a consumer is aware of a brand, they start to recognise it without assistance, seek it out to make a purchase, begin to prefer it over other similar brands, and establish a loyalty that not only spurs on other purchases but also inspires recommendations to family and friends. Now we’re getting into social proof.
And how do you create brand awareness?
Through personality. As Sophie references above, selecting your tone of voice that is aligned to your brand mission, purpose, values and one which you know will resonate with your target audience is really important. Establishing a personality and a human connection through your brand is what builds connections and trust.
Consistency. Not only is the visual important here - the colour way, the logo, the fonts - your consistency needs to be within your tone of voice, that personality, your activity level across the channels you choose - being consistently visible - and let’s not forget, customer service, sales and process.
Your culture. Not only is your brand awareness your external, it’s the internal culture of your organisation too. This part is often forgotten. But the truth is, people talk, and if your employees do not believe in your brand, they won’t advocate it in front of their friends and family and be your cheerleaders on social media either.
Of course there are tactical ways to implement brand awareness - advertise in as many places as your target audience hangs out, create free content like podcasts, blogs, webinars, co-create with other brands in your field, those that match your personality or compliment your offer. We’re getting into the ‘doing’ of brand strategy here, but you get our drift.
To summarise, we’ve added a branding checklist below. If we were so lucky to work alongside you, these are the elements we’d tick off to develop your brand strategy, create your brand identity and build a tactical plan for brand awareness.
Your Branding Checklist:
Purpose (Your driving strategy)
Vision (Navigation)
Mission
Values
Positioning (What's important to your customers)
Target Audience (Primary and Secondary)
Personality and Tone (This influences your communication strategy)
Brand story (Origin)
Tagline
Messaging
Visual Identity
Logos
Colour Palette
Typography
Visual Elements
Brand Touchpoints
Website Design
Social Media
Print
Email
Events
YouTube
On-site
If you’re looking for support with your brand strategy and brand awareness activity, visit KJ Brand and Marketing Consultancy.
To develop your brand identity with brand and graphic design, Sophie at Serrano Media can help.
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