Your brand strategy is absolutely critical to delivering on your overall business strategy because fundamentally, it’s about who the business is and who it wants to be in the marketplace.
A brand is so much more than a logo, colours or what kind of furniture you have in the office (although aesthetics is certainly an important piece of the puzzle). This seems obvious, but CEOs and business leaders still get caught up in the details before building out a brand strategy that will inform the expression of the brand.
If you want to learn more about what a brand strategy truly is, and the eight other strategies to create massive growth, sign up for my free live webinar, The Proven 9-Point Strategy for Massive Business Growth Now.
Who You Say You Are and Who the Market Thinks You Are
Consider your business as it currently stands. Where does your brand sit compared to other brands in the marketplace?
Brand strategy allows you to position your business in the market the way you want and address the perceptions that people in the market have about your brand. Sometimes your positioning and the public’s perceptions don’t align.
“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is.”
– Scott Cook
What you say your business is needs to align with the marketplace’s perception of it.
Not only does there need to be alignment between what the business says it is and what the market perceives them to be, but there also needs to be alignment within the internal team. You must do everything you can to ensure that your internal team believes in it and is participating and living it.
I recently worked with a very mature business that hadn’t updated their brand in 20 years. The team created uniforms that were done in a different colour but they simply stuck the logo on there for formality’s sake. They disliked the logo so much that they wanted to express the brand in a different way.
This was just a symptom of a larger problem of the aesthetics of the brand not matching with its true essence and purpose.
We worked with the leadership team and owners to refresh the brand, bring it back into alignment with the team and release it into the market with a new lease on life. If you find yourself in this position, you must honour the past but refresh the brand so it can compete in today’s world.
Want to receive an assessment of the current state of your brand and a clear plan forward?
How do you bring your brand into alignment with perceptions?
You and your team have to build Know, Like, and Trust at a market scale.
How do you do that? You must establish and communicate your:
- Intention: What is your business here on this Earth to do? Why does it exist in the first place? It can’t just be about making profits – the intention of the business has to be much bigger than that so your people and community of customers will rally for and be loyal to your brand.
- Vision: Your vision communicates the size and scope of your business. Think about where you want to be in the next 5 to 10 years or beyond.
- Mission: Your mission is how you are going to execute on your vision and intention on a day-to-day basis. Who are you as a business? How do you operate? Is it about having an amazing team? Do you strive for excellence? Will you build partnerships? Determine the things that will help you deliver on that vision and fulfil your intention.
Getting clarity on these three things is incredibly important. It sets the tone of who the business is and how it’s going to operate. That is your brand.
Your brand gets expressed further in your brand’s values and characteristics.
What is it that you value inside your business?
As a business, are you fun or are you serious? Do you value taking risks or do you like to stick to proven approaches? Think of these characteristics as your brand’s personality. Every brand has a unique personality and expresses it differently.
Remember:
- Your intention, vision and mission sets the tone for your business’ brand
- Its values determine who the business is going to be in the world
- Its characteristics are the way the brand is going to be expressed as a personality
It’s important that the brand is expressed at every touchpoint.
Brand touchpoints are any moment when the market – a customer or prospect – touches your business. Some examples include:
- Website
- Social media
- Digital marketing
- How the phone is answered
- How the team is dressed
- Interior design of the office
- And more
Your brand has to be expressed congruently through every single touchpoint. If there’s inconsistency at any point, customers will get confused about who the business is and how it operates.
Clarity across your brand is essential.
Get absolute clarity on your brand – we’ve done this for hundreds and hundreds of businesses!
