Business owners, who devote hour after hour to perfecting every detail of their company’s products or services, sometimes shortchange an increasingly important element of success: brand strategy. If your business’ performance has been stagnant, branding might be the boost to your bottom line you have been missing.
Our seven steps to a successful brand strategy are a path to repackaging your business that promises to increase visitors, leads and customers.
1. Define Overall Business Strategy
Before diving into producing content, take a moment to reexamine your overall business strategy. From the logo to content marketing, a clear business direction informs each part of the branding process.
Once you understand where your business currently stands and where it is going, you can begin reaching for new goals.
2. Identify and Research Target Clients
Identifying your target audience early in the branding process sets the tone for your entire campaign. Your business can create its target audiences based on age, geographic income or other more specific factors. This early planning will allow you to create more effective campaigns for specific groups rather than universal ones for the general public.
The next step is researching your target audience to create buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your target customers. This allows your business to identify clients’ perspectives and priorities as you begin to craft messaging to them.
3. Position Your Brand
Every company, big or small, can benefit from branding, which identifies and differentiates your business from the rest of the pack.
Brand positioning flows naturally from a thorough understanding of your buyer personas.
Successful branding creates an image of your company, which sticks in the mind of potential customers. It offers them an idea of what to expect from your company, product or service.
Ask yourself a few questions:
What does my company specialize in? Is there something different about our products and services? Does our business offer something new or better than the competition?
These brand strategy steps will help your company move towards becoming an identifiable business in its industry or neighborhood.
4. Develop Name, Logo and Tagline
Your business name, logo and tagline are essential building blocks of branding. While fine-tuning your brand strategy, take a second look at how your name, logo and tagline represents your business.
If any of those three essential elements are out-of-date or misdirected, it will hurt your overall strategy.
Logos, which can be used on websites and social media pages, can be revamped or simply touched-up. Recently, major brands like Verizon and IHOP have unveiled updates to their old logos.
5. Upgrade Your Website
A website serves a lot of functions, but it also serves as the virtual face of your company. It can tell the story of your brand or it can generate new business. If it looks bad, it creates a bad first impression with everyone who has an Internet connection.
Today’s websites have many advantages compared to websites built just a few years ago, including mobile friendly designs and payment gateways. Depending on your business’ needs, there are many types and styles of websites that will enhance your brand.
6. Develop and Implement Content Marketing Strategies
At this stage, content marketing can position your brand by building its reputation and visibility. Content marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, blogging and email marketing, follow-through on delivering tailored content to your target audiences. This informative content attracts new visitors to your website, who can later be transformed into fresh leads for your business.
7. Monitor and Revise Your Brand Strategy
Once your brand strategy is complete and has been implemented, it’s beneficial to monitor its effect so it can be revised if necessary. Tracking analytics of blogs, emails and social posts will give a sense of the amount of traction your campaign is receiving. This information can be used to guide any future updates to your strategy.
Building a brand is a cost-effective investment that offers an edge in today’s changing, digital marketplace.
