Developing a Strong Strategy for Your Business - BC Design Haus Developing a Strong Brand Strategy for Your Business

‘Creator economy’ is at an all-time high, making it all the more important to take concept development seriously when creating your visual identity and building your brand. Whether you’re developing your personal brand, starting a small business, or working for a large corporation, a strong identity is what makes your brand stand out. It’s what gives your brand or organization a personality, a point of view, and a way to connect with consumers, and as such, it needs to be clearly defined.

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, as consumers, we expect continuity, innovation, integrity, exclusivity, entertainment, and above all, value from brands, and we won’t like, follow, or purchase a product if we feel it falls short. Sure, it’s a lot to consider, but it’s 100% doable with the right vision, tools, and motivation.

Once you’ve established your brand identity, developing a marketing strategy that reinforces it can actually be a lot of fun — especially if it’s something you’re passionate about — because it’s ultimately where you and your team get to let your creativity shine. No matter what industry you’re in, if your goal is to differentiate yourself from your competitors, appeal to your target audience, and make them loyal customers, — which it should be! — a strong brand identity and strategic marketing plan is key.

Let’s look at some key factors.

What Makes a Brand Successful?

It’s memorable.
It communicates its message well.
It has well-defined values.
It’s consistent across all of its marketing channels.
It connects with its audience and creates a sense of community.

If you’re nodding your head in agreement, you’re probably already doing—or are at least aware—of all these things, but for those just starting out or thinking about hiring an agency or freelance designer to help you achieve your goals, you’ll need to spend some time in concept development. Let’s take a look at some options that will help you develop your brand strategy.

Define Your Brand

Every new and existing brand has to ask themselves some basic questions before anything else can happen. It’s crucial to understand your brand inside and out so that you can effectively communicate its purpose to others through your visual identity, personality, story, and ultimately your marketing. Try answering the following questions yourself, your team, or your business partner(s):

What’s your “why?” (This is your mission statement)
What are your values? (What beliefs drive your company?)
What is your brand personality? (If your brand was a person, what words would describe them?)
What is your unique positioning? (What makes you different from the competition?)
What’s your brand voice? (What kind of tone do you want to communicate?)

Once you’ve got a strong idea for each of these questions, you’re ready to move onto the research and development phase.

Research Your Audience, Value Proposition, and Competition

Just like any other aspect of starting a business, the first step in developing your brand strategy is to do market research. Have you considered how your messaging will resonate with your target audience? Start by learning about your audience’s needs, wants, and desires, and communicating how your company or product can help. You need to be able to clarify and understand a couple of key things.

Audience – Learning what your audience wants from a business in your industry is vital to creating a brand people will love. Soon-to-be mothers are likely looking for something different than pre-teens or men in their 60s, so knowing your audience well, targeting their specific paint points, and providing solutions to their problems will win you points and help you gain their trust.
Value Proposition & Competition – What makes your brand unique in your industry? What do you offer that others don’t? Knowing the difference between you and your competition is crucial to developing a successful brand. Keeping tabs on your competitors will also inform you about what branding techniques work well and what aren’t as successful.

Show Off Your Personality

You should use type, colors, and imagery to represent your brand, and then enhance that visual representation with your tone of voice. Looking at similar brands to understand their approach is helpful, but at the end of the day, the more you can stand out, the better. Research may be time consuming, but the more you know about your business and your competition, the stronger brand narrative you can construct.

Your company design assets are the tangible elements that determine how your brand is perceived. Anything that represents you such as your logo, typography, packaging, web design, social media graphics, business cards, etc., are an important part of your brand identity, which ultimately amplify the core elements of your brand’s DNA. Let’s talk about a few of these.

Logo – This is the core of your brand identity, and as such it should clearly communicate your brand personality and what you stand for, be visually appealing—think: simple, clean, uncluttered—classic rather than trendy, and above all, memorable.
Color & Typography – Same rules apply to typography and color as your logo in terms of design. Further, there should be a consistent use of typography and color wherever your brand is represented. Keeping the same typeface, type style, and color palette throughout all aspects of your business maintains consistency, recognition, and helps reinforce your brand identity across multiple channels.
Packaging – If your product is something physical, you must also consider packaging design, as it’s key to attracting the right customers. There’s value in well-executed design. It directly contributes to the user experience, which will ultimately drive loyalty and repeat purchases. Packaging is the perfect opportunity to reinforce your brand identity through creative design.
Online Presence/Marketing – Once you’ve got your logo, colors, typography, and tone of voice chosen, it’s time to build your website, social media channels, and all other marketing materials, whether they be digital or print assets. More on this in the next section.

Communicate Your Message

You’ve established your brand identity and gone through the process of developing it. The next step is to integrate your brand within your community. One of the most successful ways to accomplish this is for your brand to provide quality content. This content should live on your website, email newsletter, blog, social media channels, etc. Every piece of content you share tells your story, which should reflect your brand identity, values, and mission. Storytelling can (and should) be done creatively. It’s another chance to have fun, experiment, and take risks to stand out. It’s important, however, to establish a strong and consistent presence from the start, so that your community can connect with you as soon as possible.

Remember: Social media is also a means of direct communication between you and your customers. You control the narrative, but customers can also choose to interact with your page. If you’re tagged in a tweet, status, or post (especially if a customer has a question or concern), it’s important to respond in a timely manner that is representative of your brand.

Stand For Something

These days, customers are much more likely to become invested in your brand if you’re actively doing something for the greater good. For example, Bombas donates one pair of socks for every pair sold to people and communities in need. Community outreach, environmentally sustainable practices, social impact initiatives, and using your platform to bring awareness to important causes (i.e. Mental Health Awareness Month), are great ways to reinforce your brand’s mission and values through tangible means that your customers will not only appreciate, but that they’ll be able to connect with and feel good about supporting.

Build a Strong Community

Other ways you can further grow your brand, build your community, and reinforce your brand identity are through various incentives, rewards, and exclusive offerings. Developing merchandise is not only a great means of extra revenue, it’s yet another way to reinforce your brand visually and flex your creative muscles. It’s also a great marketing tool. Hosting events—either online or in-person—can be a fun way to generate more community engagement, while introducing loyalty programs and offering rewards in the form of exclusive sales, promo codes, and freebies, is a way to make your customers feel valued, which often makes them more likely to remain loyal.

Takeaway

As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into a successful brand strategy—from concept development to implementation, maintenance, and innovation—but if you follow the steps above, you’ll be moving in the right direction. Just remember that nothing happens overnight. You may not see success straight away, but with enough time and consistency, results are sure to follow. Committing to a cohesive, actionable, and creative strategy that authentically communicates your message to your intended audience is the key to creating buzz for your brand, building a loyal community, driving conversions, and ultimately gaining revenue.

Ready to take your brand to the next level? Get in touch with BCDH today and we’ll help you rethink your current marketing approach to make it even more strategic. BCDH helps brands find their voice, grow their audience, and put their best foot forward.

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