Marketing tools measure brands with market share, growth rate and profitability but fail to take consumer perceptions into consideration. In this article, we present 5 ways to map out your brand strategy.

While developing your brand positioning it will require multiple departments to gather all the different perspectives your brand represents. Your target audience, social media accounts, customer loyalty, and market position create your overall brand conception. What we want to focus on are 5 key pillars that will produce a comprehensive brand strategy and give your team a system or framework to bring your brands core values out through your visual elements in everyday life.

Using your brands position compared to its competitors helps perceive how much you stand out. This is not just based on your CEO’s opinion or the opinion of your customers. It largely rests on the “centrality” (how it is perceived) and it’s “distinctiveness” (how it stands out from other brands). When you can predict your brands market place performance, and track it’s strategy and execution you will determine your current and desired position.

By focusing on centrality and distinctiveness—dimensions that, unlike narrow product characteristics, apply to brands in all categories—companies can make comparisons across categories and geographies. Where a brand falls on the map has implications for sales, pricing, risk, and profitability. Marketers can also make important strategic assessments such as “This market is more crowded with distinctive brands than that one.”

A great brand strategy begins with:

• Build your brand upon a system of beliefs –Why would customers interact with your brand? Write your core beliefs and values in multiple ways serving your customers in the different buying stages and then develop clear vision statements that offer customers a differentiating factor from what most companies are providing as their value prop. A great example will drive loyalty and provide a feeling for those who gravitate around it.Your why should get your audience to respond and take action, build relationships, and stand out against competitive environments. Working with a partner like Superlative Creative can help build a successful brand strategy process and deliver a strong visual identity that will give your potential customers a clear brand messaging in their minds.

• Experience the feel of your brand –

  I get a lot of blank stares when asking this question to clients. It causes new customers to take a look at the current brand story and requires many to take another look at their current business model. Popular brands have been focusing on how they want their customer base to interact digitally and offline through their marketing efforts and offline elements.

   

  These elements are utilized by using a strategy based on the emotional benefits of products and services many companies feel would cause their audience to respond. The whole point of building a strong brand strategy is to effectively create a signal in the mind of its customers and share what it feels like interacting with a company. A successful business will not only create a strong brand recognition but solve consumer needs and create long term success and develop loyalty in the minds of its customers.

   

  Share what it feels like interacting with your brand. Give an example of what customers feel with doing business with your brand. Give them something more than just the benefits of your product or service and really drive what your brand story is and how it benefits your audience.

• Develop your brands personality -Now that we have defined why your brand exists and what it feels like to interact with your brand we need to explore what your brands characteristics and personality are.

• Develop a long term mindset for your brand – Branding is more methodical, intentional, and requires constant testing and validation. Make it easy for people to navigate what you offer.
  1. Reinforce individual products or services that are your biggest draws/hottest sellers.
  2. Make sure that you’re able to build a strong company brand and brand equity without damaging the brand of your assets.
  3. Focus on creating economies of scale by tying asset brands to the parent brand.

• Define your brands voice – Articulate your core messages vs supporting messages behind your brand strategy.

The Importance of Strategic Branding

With strategic branding, you future-proof your brand and develop it in a way that differentiates you from others. By communicating uniqueness to customers, you strengthen your selling power, brand value, and customer loyalty. Managing a brand is hard work, and it’s more challenging when you’re in an oversaturated market where every brand looks the same.

One of the crucial steps to growing in an oversaturated market is highlighting what makes your brand unique — which is what strategic branding is all about.