How do you want your company to be perceived by the market in 20, 30, or even 50 years? If you need help with answering that question, perhaps you still need to outline a brand strategy for your organization. Let’s catch up on that, starting with defining brand strategy and identifying its components.
Understanding a brand strategy - table of contents
Brand strategy can be defined in various ways, but one definition is that a brand strategy serves as a roadmap guiding how a brand aims to be perceived in the market. It shapes the brand’s identity, image, and desired positioning. This encompasses its mission, vision, and values, while also considering the business objectives, consumer needs, and unique selling points that set the company apart from competitors.
So, it sounds quite similar to business strategy or communication strategy. However, these are three distinct strategies, though they are related and interconnected. Therefore, to better understand a brand strategy, let’s examine the differences between them.
Brand strategy and business and communication strategy
Let’s start with the following statement:
While the business strategy defines the overall goals and directions of the company, and the communication strategy focuses on effectively conveying information about the brand, the brand strategy goes further and concentrates on building its identity and image. So it sits between the business strategy and the communication strategy.
Business strategy
Brand strategy
Communication strategy
Below we present the main differences between them.
Business strategy
It focuses on achieving the business goals of the company, such as revenue growth, profits, and market share.
It determines the general direction of the company, such as the choice of the industry and customer segment, etc.
It includes decisions regarding products or services, pricing, distribution, and promotion.
Brand strategy
It focuses on building the identity, image, and values of the brand in the eyes of customers.
It determines how the company should be perceived by customers and how it should differentiate itself in the market compared to competitors.
It involves defining the brand’s mission, vision, and values.
Communication strategy
It focuses on planning, implementing, and monitoring effective ways of communicating with customers.
It involves selecting appropriate communication channels and maintaining a consistent brand message.
It aims to increase brand awareness, build trust and customer loyalty, and support sales.
Elements of brand strategy
To complete the definition above, let’s focus on the elements of a brand strategy. So what should it include? For starters, the five points described below.
Mission, vision, values
While we’ve already written about the mission, vision, and values (you can find the article here), let us briefly remind you what they are. The brand mission defines the purpose of the company – what it does and who it does it for. The vision, on the other hand, focuses on the long-term development of the company – where we want to be in x years, and what kind of world we want to build. It is aspirational in nature. It is meant to motivate. And then we have values.
Values are the principles and beliefs by which organizations make all their business decisions. For example, Nike’s brand mission is to inspire athletes to perform better. Google’s vision is to make information easily accessible – so everyone can get to it. And Apple’s values include “creativity” and “innovation” – the latter of which is an integral part of its products.
In practice
To define the mission, vision and values for your company:
Be specific. Make sure that the mission, vision and values are clear to others,e.g., customers and employees – so that nobody has doubts about “what’s going on” here.
Incorporate the mission, vision, and values into everyday life. If your organization isn’t living its mission, vision, and values, then you probably have a different (unconscious) mission, vision, and values.
Be consistent. While operational and tactical goals may change, the mission, vision, and values should remain constant. They are the heart of the company’s operations.
Positioning
Brand positioning is about determining how a company is to be perceived by customers – what should it be associated with? This allows consumers to position it somewhere in the market, compare it to competitors, and notice the differences.
Milka, for example, is associated with mildness. Volvo has been building its position as a manufacturer of safe cars for years. Starbucks, on the other hand, creates an image of its coffee shops as places where you can come and have a good cup of coffee in a pleasant atmosphere.
In practice
To determine your position in the market
Understand your target audience. Know your customers’ needs, preferences, and expectations.
Next, identify your unique features and the benefits that your competitors don’t offer and that you do. Build emotional associations.
Then ensure consistent, coherent communication. Let every marketing message resonate with the value or emotion you want your audience to associate with you.
Communication
At the brand strategy level, “communication” defines the way and framework of communication – and therefore answers such questions: with whom will we communicate? Through which channels? How will we communicate? What values will we communicate? How often will we communicate?
Let’s look at an example – Coca-Cola. What has this brand been doing for years? It runs advertising campaigns that not only promote its sweet beverage but also showcase it in specific settings – on the family table, on Christmas Eve, at birthday parties, etc. In any case, in social situations – mainly family and social gatherings.
In practice
To determine the communication style of your brand:
Choose the values and benefits you want to communicate regularly – dress them up in a slogan.
Then choose the right communication channels. First, ask yourself where your audience is, and then start being there.
Engage in two-way communication – collect feedback from the environment and respond.
Visual identity
Logo, colors, and fonts are just some of the elements of visual identity. In other words, visual identity is a set of graphic elements that are intended to represent the brand and reflect its spirit. At the same time, they are meant to evoke associations with it.
Purple? Milka. Blue? Facebook. Golden arches on a red background? McDonald’s. And so on, endlessly. For example, Apple opted for a simple, minimalist logo of a bitten apple. Interestingly, the logo of this company was not always so simple.
In practice
To choose the visual identity for your company:
Design a consistent logo – let it be simple and easy to remember.
Choose the right colors. Colors evoke emotions. What emotions do you want to evoke?
Consistently use the same graphic elements. Everywhere. In all materials – from the website to flyers.
Brand management
Brand management involves planning and coordinating all activities related to building, maintaining, and developing the brand. From defining the mission, vision, and values, through choosing visual identity, to researching brand awareness.
For example, in Disney’s actions, you can see consistency in building a brand that focuses on strong IPs – Disney owns the rights to Mickey Mouse (at least the contemporary version) and the Star Wars universe. Apple dominates the consumer electronics world – it started with laptops and now also produces VR headsets. BMW continues to maintain its position as a premium brand.
In practice
To better manage your brand strategy:
Clearly define the goals you want to achieve through brand management and the values you want to convey to customers.
Develop a cohesive action plan that encompasses both brand identification and communication strategy to build the desired image.
Regularly monitor the effectiveness of brand management activities – we’ll come back to that in a moment.
Best practices – how to create a brand strategy?
When discussing the elements of brand strategy, we’ve already largely addressed good practices associated with the process of creating such a strategy. Let’s now focus on three additional points.
Do not rely solely on intuition; conduct market research. A thorough analysis of the market, competition, and target audience enables a better understanding of the company’s environment and customer needs. Market research provides specific data and insights. So, research the market. How? It’s best to hire a research agency. However, if your budget is limited, utilize free sources available online.
Find the USP for your brand. USP, which stands for Unique Selling Proposition, is a feature of your offer that will make customers choose you over the competition. It’s not promotion, lower prices, or anything easily imitated or copied. Look for your USP, and it will be easier for you to build communication around your brand.
Think long-term.Brand strategy isn’t about the business outcomes and goals you’ll achieve in a year or two. It’s about a long-term vision that will give direction to your organization, visible over the course of 50–100 years.
On a side note
The result of working on a brand strategy should be a written document. Why?
You will understand your motivation
By documenting your brand strategy, you can clearly define your company’s goals, values, and mission – making all of your objectives more tangible. In addition, you can always return to the written document and, in a moment of doubt, make a decision based on a long-term vision of the future.
You will show the document to team members
Having a written brand strategy allows all team members to understand the company’s goals and the steps needed to achieve them. This enables all employees to work in line with the established direction and values.
You will know what to measure
A documented brand strategy serves as a benchmark for assessing the effectiveness of marketing efforts and monitoring progress toward achieving set objectives. Consequently, it enables real-time analysis of outcomes and the adaptation of the strategy to changing circumstances.
How to measure the effectiveness of a brand strategy?
Since we’re discussing measuring results, let’s delve into that further. Below, you’ll find detailed information on key performance indicators (KPIs) that it’s beneficial to regularly monitor when putting the strategy into action.
Brand awareness
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing efforts in increasing brand awareness, it is worthwhile to use various types of surveys – both online and over the phone. Such surveys can be outsourced to research companies.
Customer loyalty
To monitor customer loyalty, customer relationship management (CRM) tools are useful for tracking customer activity and analyzing their purchase history. By analyzing this data, you can identify your highest-value customers and develop a strategy for building relationships with them.
Customer engagement metric
Tools for monitoring social media and analyzing online data are essential for evaluating customer engagement in interactions with the brand. By analyzing the number of comments, shares, and time spent on the website, you can determine how effectively the brand engages its customers.
Increase in sales
Increase in sales can be monitored using tools for analyzing sales data. For instance, in the case of an online store, analyzing customer behavior on the website helps identify areas where the purchasing process can be improved, potentially resulting in increased revenue.
Customer satisfaction assessment
To assess the level of customer satisfaction, it’s valuable to regularly conduct customer satisfaction surveys that will help you learn what your customers value most.
Adam Sawicki
Apr 10
