Most individuals are of the view that a brand strategy is restricted to designing a decent logo and creating a catchy tagline. This could not be further from the truth. In reality, the user’s brand contains all the things that make them stand out from competitors as different. Everything ranging from their visual identity and messaging to client experience. Not to mention the way people perceive the user’s business, including all their thoughts and emotions that are associated with the brand.
As branding is so extensive, developing a strategy that works takes both time and careful planning. In order to provide assistance to that planning, consider some guidelines for building an efficient brand strategy for their business.
Ways to develop an efficient brand strategy
Developing an effective brand strategy involves building long term plans for establishing your brand. It might seem like an overwhelming task. So, the question arises, “Where do we start?”. There are the best ways that can provide the user a solid foundation to build upon.
- Choose your niches
Selecting a specific niche or in simple terms an area of your specialization is useful in establishing your brand. It involves providing specialized services to clients, serving specific audiences, or restricting your focus to certain products that best serve your client’s requirements. Niching down can prove to be a smart strategic move as it has various benefits like –
- Extra time and energy to create the best possible products, services and experiences for your clients.
- Minimum wastage of resources ( including money).
- The capability of charging a premium for your specialized area of expertise.
- Differentiation from competitors who appeal to different or more general audiences. (perhaps involving different or more general offerings too).
Instead of disseminating your resources thin by trying to be all things for everyone, the user can allocate them to where they will be the most profitable.
That is not to say that the user must focus on one specific audience, product or service though. Businesses can successfully cater to the needs of a lot of different niches.
In order to lay the foundation for their brand strategy, decide where it would be the most worthwhile for the user to focus. Consider what you enjoy the most and excel at your will to receive a great start and embark on the path to a dialed in brand image that is supportive of your marketing strategy.
Defining a niche
Niche is an area of specialization or the set of particular skills of a user in which they have expertise in. Benefits of a niche include –
- Limited competition
- Robust market demand
- Personal and professional satisfaction
- Solving a practical need
- Higher potential for earning profits
- Setting up your business and marketing objectives
The entire point of a strategy is to attain a goal. Therefore, in developing your brand strategy, the user cannot forget to consider their short term and long term objectives.
Plan where you want your business to be in a month, year or a few years from now? Would you like to enhance the client base by a particular percentage? Will establishing a client loyalty program suitable for you? Do you ultimately wish to open another branch at a different location?
In any case, keep your core objectives front and center as you decide what brand strategy will harmonize with your marketing efforts and help you reach your objective?
- Conduct brand research
Establishing a band strategy in a bubble is a bad move. It is crucial to understand how your competitors and other businesses your audience engages with are branding themselves.
Obviously, you don’t wish to plagiarize your strategy. However, you can learn a lot more by what is working for your competitors, how your audience responds to certain tactics, and also what your competitors are not even doing in their branding. Observing the existing brands will provide you both creative inspiration and strategic insights to help you stand out from the crowd.
- Know what makes you unique
Even if the abilities you offer are not one of a kind, you can still be unique from your competitors. The question arises how? Your brand messaging is a major factor. For example, the commercial coffee branches at Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts sell similar products. However, their brand strategies convey different messages to distinct audiences. Both brands are extremely successful. It can be true in your case too. You can customize your brand strategy and differentiate your business by-
- Adding mission and vision statements that are personal for you.
- Core values that are at the heart of what you do and that are shared by your customers.
- A crystal clear description of the unique way by which you solve a common issue.
- A clear description of the way you solve an uncommon but notable issue.
- A focus on an uncommon or unique characteristic of your target audience.
- The unique client experience you create for your clients.
- Think of your business as an individual
Every individual has a unique personality along with every business. However, in both cases, not every personality is memorable. To prevent having a forgettable brand, it can assist your business to envision it as an individual.
- Craft an exceptional customer experience
Customer experience is the great equalizer of business. Surely, a competitor might provide the same product or a service at a much more cost effective rate, however, if they treat their clients poorly or fail to address small but significant details, it wouldn’t matter. Individuals are willing to spend a little more money or time for a better experience.
Also, the satisfied clients can turn mini marketers for the user’s business, spreading the word regarding their positive experience, writing customer reviews, and recommending them to others like them.
Hence always think beyond how you can deliver a memorable experience or even just a little bit better than your competitors provide. Deliver the best experience for your customers.
What extra bases do you cover to display to your clients that you abide by what you do? What components of your brand can be translate into action when it comes to communicating with, serving, and supporting your clients?
Additionally, how can you make it easy for your clients to share positive experiences with you, especially online?
Conclusion
Your brand begins with you, ultimately, it ends with the perspective that people have of your business along with the actions they do or don’t take as a result. (Actions such as filling a form, which is the first party data collection tool that becomes increasingly necessary in a cookieless world).