A winning brand strategy is more than just a catchy slogan or a flashy logo. It's a comprehensive plan that defines your brand identity, values, positioning, and goals, and guides your marketing and communication efforts. In this article, you'll learn how to create a winning brand strategy using some proven frameworks and tools.
Your brand purpose is the reason why you exist beyond making money. It's the core value that drives your brand and connects with your customers. To define your brand purpose, you can use the Golden Circle framework by Simon Sinek, which consists of three questions: Why do you do what you do? How do you do it? What do you do? The why is your purpose, the how is your differentiation, and the what is your product or service.
A winning brand strategy is not complex. It does not have all the smart frameworks involved. Sometimes, all it needs is a story and purpose. It is as simple as 'Utterly Butterly Delicious' and can be all the way back from 1966. The Indian butter market was markedly distinct and had locally, unorganised brands that tasted quite different. Amul defined its strategy to focus on the taste and how it is purely made from villages. You can surely follow the essential frameworks, but remember to have a story too. Amul's story is narrated till date by the Amul girl, the fictional mascot.
Defining your brand purpose can be challenging, especially if profit was your sole motivation for starting the business. In this scenario, envision a world where your business thrives: - What impact has it made? - What significant change have you introduced to people's daily lives? - How do people feel after using your products? Answering these questions will get you closer to uncovering your brand's true purpose.
What it comes down to - the problem you're solving for your customers. What's the problem you solve for your customers? Why do you solve this problem? How do you solve it? You aren't, though, the only brand doing what you do - if you are, you're in the minority. So - how do solve the problem differently from everyone else? What do you do that no one else can?
The purpose of winning brand strategy is to create a strong and distinctive brand that resonates with the target audience, differentiates itself from competitors, and drives business growth. It involves developing a clear brand identity, positioning, and messaging that effectively communicates the brand's unique value proposition and builds emotional connections with customers. Winning brand strategy focuses on consistently delivering on the brand promise, cultivating loyalty, and adapting to market dynamics. The goal is to establish a recognized, trusted, and preferred brand, leading to increased market share, customer loyalty, and profitability.
People are often daunted by the prospect of trying to define a brand purpose. The key part of this process is a discovery session to really understand the core truths; what are the underlying objectives? why do you exist? what do you do for your clients that your competitors don't?
Your brand strategy should be based on a deep understanding of your target audience, their needs, preferences, and pain points. To research your audience, you can use tools like surveys, interviews, focus groups, personas, and customer journey maps. These tools will help you segment your audience, identify their motivations, behaviors, and emotions, and map their touchpoints with your brand.
Audience deep dive: craft a strategy that sings! Setting the stage for a killer brand strategy? Know your audience inside out. It's like tuning into their favorite radio frequency. Don't just scratch the surface, dive deep. What makes them tick? What do they love? Where do they stumble? Tools like surveys, interviews and focus groups? Pure gold! They're the backstage passes to your audience's hearts, souls and minds. Personas and customer journey maps? Think of them as your setlist. They showcase the highs, lows and everything in-between of your audience's experience. Bottom line: to truly resonate and make some noise, you've got to be in harmony with your audience. With a little research, you'll hit all the right notes every time!
When you're doing this - researching your audience - don't forget to talk - like, actually talk - with them. It's so very easy to think you've understand someone when you're looking at them from a distance, but data can only tell you so much. So - talk with often - as much as you're able to. Ask questions. Why’d they first enter the market for a solution like yours? What was the problem they wanted to solve? Why? How were they compensating for the problem before they were using your solution?
Audience is key. One thing I often see is internal stakeholders making decisions on their wants and needs and not the needs of their audiences. Remember, as the great Arnie Lund (Principal Director of User Experience at Microsoft) said; “Know thy user, and YOU are not thy user.”
Brand strategy secret sauce: - You can't just know your audience, you need to start predicting what they don't know they don't know yet! - Be ready to solve the next problem that is going to occur in their life - Be authentic - publicise the 1* reviews as well as the 5* - Personalise wherever possible - Showcase your people - have your teams at the forefront of your brand - Take people on the real journey, not the glossy consumer facing one, the back office one - this is where affinity starts - Reward loyalty - it can be tiny, a public thank you message, a bag of sweets, a milkshake... - Evolve - don't reinvent the wheel, but keep iterating your brand strategy based on what people want and how consumer behaviour changes - Go your way.
Your brand positioning is how you want your audience to perceive your brand in relation to your competitors. It's the unique value proposition that sets you apart and makes you relevant and desirable. To position your brand, you can use the positioning statement formula by Geoffrey Moore, which consists of four elements: target market, category, benefit, and reason to believe. For example, "For busy professionals who need a quick and healthy snack, Kind Bars are the natural energy bars that provide wholesome ingredients and great taste, unlike other bars that are loaded with sugar and artificial flavors."
To position your brand for a winning brand strategy, follow these steps: 1. Define your brand identity 2. Understand your target audience 3. Conduct a competitive analysis 4. Develop a brand positioning statement 5. Create a consistent brand experience 6. Build brand awareness 7. Foster brand loyalty 8. Monitor and adapt By following these steps, you can position your brand for a winning brand strategy that effectively communicates your unique value proposition, attracts your target audience, and builds long-term brand loyalty.
The word "value" does not belong in your brand strategy. It's about "differentiated value." If you're doing and saying what everyone else is doing, whatever it is do and say is going to end up being perceived as crowd noise. You have to provide your audience with a reason to consider you out of a crowd of increasingly identical voices, all of whom provide "value." How do you do so differently? Why should they care? What can say to the decision-makers in their company when asked why they went with your solution?
I used to think about positioning in this formulaic way. There are endless templates for every aspect of marketing, so I guess the "templatization" of positioning is bound to happen. But I would argue that filling in the blanks for a positioning statement formula falls short of what you want to accomplish during a positioning exercise. Who fits your ideal customer profile? What can you deliver that will delight them? Why will they pick your brand over others in the category? The "Mad Libs" approach may cover the same bases, but the spirited search to answer those three critical questions will deliver a more durable positioning statement.
Positioning is not solely about logical reasoning; it's also about emotional resonance. Determine what emotions you want your brand to evoke in your audience. Is it trust, excitement, or a sense of belonging? Align your positioning with these emotional triggers.
Your brand identity is the visual and verbal expression of your brand. It includes your name, logo, colors, fonts, tone of voice, tagline, and story. To develop your brand identity, you can use tools like mood boards, style guides, and brand books. These tools will help you create a consistent and coherent identity that reflects your brand purpose, positioning, and personality.
Sound for me is paramount to get right and be consistent with it, We all know Netflix from the ba-dum, Dominos Domino-who who or the classic Intel tone. You can create your own or build long-term around an existing song like McDonald's use of Yello - Oh Yeah. Sound is emotive, people hear your brand as often as they see it.
Your brand message is the key idea that you want to convey to your audience. It's the promise that you make and the value that you deliver. To communicate your brand message, you can use tools like the message hierarchy, the elevator pitch, and the brand story. These tools will help you craft a clear and compelling message that resonates with your audience and inspires them to take action.
Communicating your brand's message requires two things: 1. Simplicity 2. Consistency Reading Smart Brevity challenged me to find a way to simplify, simplify, and then simplify more. Simplification makes your message easier to receive. And after you get bored by your messaging because you have shared it so much, your audience is at the infancy stage of recognizing it. Do not do a "brand refresh" now. You are just starting to make an impact. Keep going!
In addition to crafting your own brand message, encourage your customers and fans to create content related to your brand. User-generated content, such as customer reviews, testimonials, and social media posts, can be a powerful way to reinforce your message authentically. Showcase this content on your website and social channels to let your satisfied customers become your brand advocates.
Your brand strategy is not a one-time project, but an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and improvement. To evaluate your brand performance, you can use tools like the brand audit, the brand scorecard, and the brand feedback loop. These tools will help you measure your brand awareness, reputation, loyalty, and equity, and identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Net Promoter Score (NPS), is usually a good indicator of brand health too. This specifically looks at how likely you are to recommend a brand on a scale of 1-10. Brand strategy should also encompass the experience you deliver to your end user (digital and physical). Design and deliver a flawless customer experience that’s aligned to your brand promise and advocacy will heighten. Your customers essentially become advocates of your brand. Turn your customers into fans and they’ll take care of your reputation. ??
At P&G, we never put much faith in absolute scores for brand measures like TOMA (top of mind awareness), equity, loyalty etc. With these metrics, absolute numbers don't matter as much as trends. How have your brand measures been moving vs last year, last quarter, last month? That's what counts.
The way I learned brand strategy is that you follow a process with three buckets: * Diagnosis (Research/Segmentation) * Strategy (Targeting/Positioning/Funnels/Objectives) * Delivery (Tactics/The 4Ps)
A winning brand strategy is one where you put in the discipline and commitment to implement consistently over time to get the results. Too many businesses fall in love with the idea of having a "brand strategy" but fail to allocate resources to do the grunt work that makes the strategy work.
Work on the who, why, what, where, when and how. Target audience is who is it for ? Why are you there, - your current situation. What is the brand purpose Where do you want to be ? When - by when you want to be where you have planned. Brand purpose is marrying the product and the customer needs.