THE BRANDING PLAYBOOK: HOW TO BUILD A WINNING BRAND STRATEGY

Strong branding is a powerful tool for any business, and as marketing Guru Philip Kotler says, “if you are not a brand, you are a commodity”. In one of our previous posts, ‘What is Branding?’ we covered the basic details of what branding means, and how it can impact any business. Unfortunately, real branding is an often-neglected part of most business' strategies these days, and that's boring - and we don't like boring.

So, let's get to fixing that. To start, we’ll be going over how to create your own Brand Strategy, starting with defining your Brand Image.

Building a Brand Strategy

The good news is, Branding doesn't have to be expensive.

The bad news is, it's not a quick or easy process by any means. Branding is a long process that involves a lot of research and effort. It's kinda like going to the gym - it'll take a while before people notice those muscles.

First things first, one of the key points to branding your company, especially at the start, is to brand your company according to your main target audience and their region. Due to lacklustre branding, this is a step that brands often skip, leading to businesses that aren't fully optimized to their target audience/region and aren't really making the most of their audience, leaving a lot to be desired by their customers.

While Global and local strategies are vastly different, the most crucial point that brands need to master to thrive in any environment is to learn to adapt to their area and ‘speak the same language’ as their direct customers. This is a crucial point that’s often missed – even by billion-dollar brands with global touchpoints. Famously, Clairol once attempted to launch a curling iron called the ‘Mist Stick’ in Germany without realising the word “mist” is German slang for manure – Not exactly what customers would want on a stick, let alone in their hair. Can you imagine if they sold a candle?

Many other brands, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and more, all made mistakes like these while trying to bring their products to foreign markets. While the most well-known of their mistakes are strongly tied to marketing, they show the potential damage that can be done from branding that doesn’t quite speak the same language as those it’s intended for. That’s why local market research is so important when trying to reach customers of a specific area – this applies to both branding and marketing whether it's for a global business or locally run shop.

So, with that out of the way, let’s get to the actual process of creating a Brand Strategy.

1. Market Research

First and foremost, you need to know the market and its people before being able to successfully establish a brand that resonates with your target audience. If you just skip right to marketing, you’re missing out on half of the equation. When creating your branding strategy, your first step should be to get an understanding of your target audience and what they actually want. After all, you might have what seems to be a great idea for a brand image, but if your audience doesn't agree, it won't work out well.

To start, you need to create a profile of your Ideal Client. You need to figure out who they are, what they want or need, and where they’re looking for services like yours. There’s a lot of questions you can ask based on your service or product, but a strong foundation would be answering questions like:

• Are they male or female?

• How old are they?

• What are their likes and dislikes?

• What is their average income?

• What online platforms do they spend time on?

• What do they talk about on those platforms?

• Where do they look for brands like yours? (Google, social media, Referrals, etc)

• What are they looking for from services like yours, other than the actual service?

• What else might they be looking for that you could capitalize on?

These are far from being all of the questions you could use, but answering these questions will give you a better view of your target audience’s demographic, and the deeper you look, the more interesting those insights can get. As part of your customer profile, you can also look into their psychological profile to help understand how, when, and why that audience makes their purchases. There are multiple factors to look into, but a good foundation would include:

• Lifestyle – What do they spend money on?

• Goals – What do they want to achieve?

• Problems – What do they typically struggle with?

• Habits – Things like always eating out for lunch

• Interests – Hobbies and views on matters

• Values – What value do they want from brands the most?

Putting all that together, you should have a relatively strong customer profile that allows you to define exactly which type of person would me most likely to pay for your products or services. The next step would be to broaden your research to instead focus on the entire market and see what’s currently going on and where you fit in. The questions you’d be looking to answer are quite specific to your line of business, but should include questions along the lines of:

• How many competitors are there?

• What are their Unique Selling Points?

• How does the cost influencer the decision to buy?

• If you have a physical location, how far are customers willing to travel for your services?

• What form of communication is most widely used?

• Other than price, what factors do customers take into consideration before buying?

Once you’ve got answers to all of that as well as other answers related more to your business specifically, you’d have a much better understanding of the market and its consumers. Then you put it all together and voila! You have your customer profile and all the insights you need to build a brand image that really resonates with your target audience.

Now you can move to the next part of the process: finding the right messaging and voice of your brand to relate directly to your target audience.

2. Find The Right Brand Message

Your market research should be able to tell you who your audience is, what they want or need, and what they value most. Knowing this, your brand message should appeal directly to your target audience with that information in mind to tell them why they should buy your product. Brands normally do this through their design style, tone of voice, and their choice of words. Above all, you need to make sure that this brand message remains consistent. That way, your audience always knows what to expect from your brand.

Ideally, the message your brand gives out allows customers to immediately understand a few things about your brand, like:

• What are your Brand Values? What do you stand for?

• What’s your USP? Why should they buy from you instead of others?

• Calls-to-action – What do you want consumers to do?

• What’s your personality? What tone do you have – Fun? Serious?

If done correctly, your brand message should answer these questions for the target audience with the answers that they would like to hear most: a brand with a personality they like, and values they share, that also solves a problem for them in a way they understand. That brand message should have the same feeling everywhere – on websites, content or campaigns. That way, you’ll always be targeting your audience with the right message.

That, in essence, is how to 'speak the same language' as your audience.

How exactly you structure your message is a whole other debate, but some things don’t need to be said for consumers to understand. A perfect example of this is Nikes “Just Do It” campaign. No other words are really necessary since the brand image, tone of voice, style, designs, and the entire campaign as a whole explain the meaning behind those words.

3. Implement your Strategy.

Knowing your customer and what you’re going tell them may be the hardest part, but it’s still only half of the puzzle - you've still got to actually tell them. Once you’ve put all of that together, you need to decide how you’re going to position yourself in the local market. There’s a couple different ways to do that:

1. SEO

To begin with, SEO is a massive undertaking for any type of brand due to the precision required to pull it off. Whether you're focusing on a local or global audience, that precision is precisely what makes it truly the best way to generate targeted traffic to your website. If you're starting with a local audience, then normal SEO rules apply here, but with a lot more focus on geographical location using local keywords, locations, and effective link building. If you're going a bit more international and focusing more on your audience than their location, it's still important to remember their respective keywords, languages, and other details. In one of our earlier posts, we cover more about Global SEO Strategy if you want some more details.

2. Targeted Social Media

This one is pretty much a given – it is the 21st Century after all. If your research shows that your target audience uses social media (which it more than likely does), then you should share targeted content on their primary social media platforms. Although, it’s worth using other social media platforms while you’re at it for increased exposure. Your content doesn’t need to be too stiff or marketing oriented. Try posting things along the lines of what your target audience would interact with – even memes if they fit the bill. Taking the example of a car dealership, you could post short videos of cars, races, people getting gapped, impressive engines, and anything else that your audience likes engaging with, really.

3. Build Local Partnerships

This is a highly effective, yet often forgotten, method of getting your brand into the market. Creating partnerships with other local businesses is a great way to tap into market if your line of business allows it. Whether your brand is taking a more global than local approach, this step can still be incredibly useful. For example, a global online fashion retailer could partner with local fashion houses to feature their products or vice versa. Or, that fashion retailer could develop a partnership with local designers that are popular with their demographic. That would help generate some hype and PR while also getting you into the local market with style.

These kinds of partnerships can help to incentivize working with your business and also lead to referrals and introductions in the future. The best way to build these relationships is through frequent outreach and great content marketing, just make sure to communicate the brand effectively to potential partners.

4. Engage With Your Audience

This one is pretty straightforward. If you're focusing on a local approach to creating your brand image, then things like networking events, helping with local endeavours, and just generally being active in that local area can be a massive competitive advantage. For a more B2C approach that fits both global and local strategies, just get social. Engage with your audience online through social media - comment on posts, share posts, launch targeted campaigns, create an event, make some videos; there are many ways to engage with your audience and let them know you exist. It doesn't sound like much, but the little things add up - and people love a personal touch in engagement.

5. Effective Marketing

Lastly, and obviously, targeted marketing is always an effective way to generate leads and sales. Depending on your business and target audience, you can market your brand in many different ways. Whether it’s on a billboard, online ads, social media, or even through events – there are plenty of effective methods to market your brand to a local or global audience. Just make sure to base your main form of advertising on what would work best for your targeted audience. So, if your audience doesn't drive, then highway billboard might not be the best bet.

No matter what you do though, you should always remember to always keep your brand message consistent. Brands are like personalities, but for businesses. If your company’s personality changes frequently, it undermines your reputation as a whole and can cause far more damage to your brand than ineffective marketing.

Branding Strategy Overall

As a whole, certain parts of branding and marketing can be quite difficult to execute, and some markets can be far more complex than others when considering differences in culture, language, and values. However, most of these issues can be overcome with proper market research. As long as you follow the points we listed above and make sure to build your customer profile, you should always have a strong understanding of your market and audience before any marketing.

Once you've got that down pat, you can start applying that consistent brand image and message to your marketing to better engage with and relate to your audience for better marketing results. And if ever you need help unboring your content and stepping up your marketing and branding, just contact us to get started!