6 Steps to Developing Your Brand Strategy
There are thousands of ways to define ‘a brand’, but here’s the one we use at Outsource Your Marketing when working with our clients:
A brand isn’t what you tell your customers about your business; it’s what your customers tell each other about your business.
We like this definition because it defines the work of developing a brand strategy clearly. It’s all about crafting experiences for your customers that will resonate with them, delight them, and be memorable for them.
So, how do you go about that that? The OYM team has a 6-step approach that gets the process started. It will mature and refine itself along the way, but these are the building blocks.
Step One – Find Out Who You’re Selling To
This is all about staking out your territory. You need to discover who will be buying your product/service, what problems your business can solve, and who you’re up against. Best place to start on your recce is the competition; they’ve gone through this process and will have done a lot of the legwork for you.
- Find out who your closest, and most successful competitors are.
- Analyse who it is they’re selling to, and how they’re doing it.
- Start typing the kind of search queries into Google you think your customers might use.
- Find out where your customers hang out. What are they talking about.
- Consider what it is you can do that your competitors don’t.
Step Two – Your Value Proposition
So, what is it you, or your product actually does? It’s what your customers need to know, so it’s worth being clear about it. Here’s an example:
“We offer tasty snacks kids love, without any added sugar. Unlike most snack providers, all our ingredients are organically produced on our farm.”
Now you:
“We offer (your product) for (your customers) to (problem you solve). Unlike other (product) providers, we (value add).”
Step Three – What’s Your Brand Persona?
Brands are all about relationships between you and your customers. That’s why it’s important to know who your customers are, but you also need to know who your business is when it strikes up a conversation. Are you a mate, an expert, a colleague, a trusted friend, or a disrupter? Spend some time working out who your business is, what it would look like as a person, and how that person would speak to other people.
Step Four – Translate Your Brand Into a Web Design
Once you know what your brand persona is, and who your customers are, creating a web design is so much simpler. Think of your website as a bridge between shoppers and you. Everything you include in your web design is about helping them travel from their side of the bridge to you.
Your key decisions are:
- Colours (emotional temperature – optimistic, dependable, sustainable etc)
- Font (clarity first, personality second)
- Design (personality – cool, quirky, trustworthy etc)
Step Five – Create a Tagline For Your Business
This isn’t forever, but it’s something you can include on social media profiles, emails and business cards. It’s a way to stick in your customers’ heads, a kind of shorthand for your value proposition and your brand persona rolled into one. Here’s some inspiration:
- I’m lovin’ it
- Does exactly what it says on the tin
- Probably the best lager in the world
- They’re grrrreat
Step Six – Create Your Logo
Your logo should incorporate all the steps you’ve taken to this point. Keep it simple. Don’t obsess (you can always change it). And remember – it’s like a little pin badge, or token that you’re giving to people who don’t know you yet. Design your logo to be something that’s easy to bring to mind, and nice to have in your head.
Working With Outsource Your Marketing
That’s just a taster of the kind of branding work we do with businesses – you can see why we enjoy it so much! The OYM team won’t sell you concepts or bombard you with jargon; we have just one focus – helping our clients to grow their businesses.
So, whatever it is you need help with, or you don’t have the time or resources to cover, we’re ready and waiting to step in. Everything we do is measured by goals we set with you, and you’ll get regular updates and reports from your project manager.
