What is Brand Strategy?

Short answer

Applicable to online small and medium service providers. Is a set of guiding principles to help us build a relationship with an audience to effectively communicate our value.

Long answer.

1. Definition of brand strategy
2. Sections of a brand strategy
3. Brand strategy process

1. Definition of brand strategy

Brand. The perception of your business by a certain audience.

Strategy. A thought-through plan to influence this perception. At its essence, a brand strategy is the choices we make about how, why and what we choose to put out there for the world to see. These choices will determine that a select group of people will interact, reach out, and buy from you.

2. Sections of a brand strategy

The basics of a brand strategy should be:

• essence or substance
• audience
• positioning
• roadmap

Essence or substance

This is the core of your reason for existence. Why do you do what you do? What is your purpose, your calling? Why is this important? And why you are doing this rather than anything else out there that can be easier, more profitable and less time-consuming?

Audience

These are the people you want to help and you want to serve and make an impact in their life. This is not only about a person, people or individual (although this helps us make things more concrete and tangible) but a problem you are solving. A pain you are relieving, a boulder or block you are removing.

Positioning

This is all about how you place yourself on the chessboard. Where you stand on the map within the context of your audience and other people doing similar work to you out there. But about how you want your audience you think about yourself. How do you want to influence their perception of your place in comparison with your competitors? And we always want this position to be #1.

Roadmap

This is where it starts to get more tactical. The roadmap is our intention on the specific actions we want to take to achieve that #1 positioning. The most effective and efficient way to do this is by building trust with your audience, and this takes a bit of time. So a brand strategy (be it a personal or business one) is never a quick fix, it takes time, but it pays dividends in the end.

3. Brand strategy process

Our process to develop a brand strategy consists of 3 core actions:

• Discovery
• Research
• Plan

Discovery

These are meetings with our clients to discover and understand the business we are working with. Their why, their purpose and passions. Understanding their goals desires for the business. What they're want to achieve. Is about communication, understanding and clarity. This is information gathering.

Research

Now we distil and organise that information. We also do research on the market and the audiences of the business. This research helps us validate or disprove some assumptions from the discovery phase.

Plan

We create a road map that will take us from where we are today, to where we want to go. This includes the strategic choices we make about our audience, our positioning and how we plan to achieve this position. The roadmap includes guidance on what to say as well as how to say it. Copy is not included on the roadmap.