The fact is that big brands in the world today have powerful brand identities. Consumers can easily identify their products in the market, making them repeat customers. This leads to consumer loyalty and enhances the overall brand performance.
The key to building a powerful brand that customers can easily identify with is strategic branding. Strategic branding is a distinct way by which brands communicate with their consumers to enable them to identify their products in an overcrowded market.
Strategic branding and its importance in building a successful brand are some of the things that we will discuss in this article. But for you to create a strategic branding strategy, you must first know what a brand is.
What Is a Brand?
The brand includes the following:
- The personality of the brand,
- The visual and other sensory aspects,
- Brand values and vision, and
- Customer experience.
A brand is the totality of a business’s identity and concept, which is the way customers perceive it. Having a logo is enough for customers to recognize your business. But it takes more than a logo to establish your brand identity. You need a firm strategy to market your brand to the right audience.
What Is Strategic Branding?
Strategic branding is part of a business plan that holistically attempts to outline how a business will present its brand to consumers and establish its position in the marketplace.
With strategic branding, businesses aim to build a rapport with their consumers and be preferred over their competitors. Implementing strategic branding can inspire consumer loyalty and enhance the performance of the business over time. A good strategic branding plan will also cement the business’s spot in the minds of competitors and customers.
There are various types of brand strategies that businesses can choose from, but two of the most applied ones are:
Branded House
In a branded house, there is one brand which is an umbrella under which all of the company’s products fall. The Apple brand is an example of a branded house. All of the Apple products have the same brand design that tries to show creativity and innovation, but they are all different. The iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iMac are all products made by the brand. These products are all marketed together as products that are part of one big picture.
House of Brands
In the house of brands marketing strategy, a company markets its multiple products independently and separately from one another. For example, the overarching company Procter & Gamble has multiple brands such as Old Spice, Pampers, and Tide as part of its products.
Why Is Strategic Branding Important?
With strategic branding, a business can achieve some of the following things:
- Effectively distinguish their brand from the competition. When a business has successfully carried out its brand strategy, it can present its unique value proposition – why they are better than the others – to its target audience.
- Successful branding will create brand equity. Brand equity is the amount of money that people will pay to buy your products. A successful branding strategy will increase this amount because any price increase will be well justified in the minds of your consumers. Because it is your brand, they will believe that any price change is worth it.
- With strategic branding, a company gets to run cohesively. All employees are carried along with the brand strategy so that they know how best to represent the company and its values to the consumers. Everybody needs to agree to work together so that there will be no contradictions between what a company promises consumers and what it delivers to them.
- The cohesive running of the brand that results from successful branding will lead to better company culture. This is because the business is now running smoothly as everyone is working to achieve a common goal.
- At the end of the day, successful strategic branding will inspire consumer loyalty. Customers who have had a good experience with a brand will become repeat customers. They will also tell other consumers about the company and encourage them to patronize the business. This is what marketers call the flywheel effect.
How to Create a Good Brand Strategy
To create a good brand strategy, here are some of the steps you need to follow:
Identify Your Brand’s Vision and Mission Statements.
The mission is the promise that the business sets out to deliver to consumers, while the vision statement refers to the future goals and aspirations of the business. Defining what these are will serve as a guideline for your future decisions.
Know Your Target Audience.
Your target audience is simply the people that your products and services are marketed towards. Define who they are, and try to learn what they expect from a business like yours. You can do this by the use of questionnaires and interacting with them. Learn their spending habits and what appeals to them. When you know this, you can then apply the knowledge to create your brand strategy.
Analyze Your Competitors.
Your competition is every other brand that provides the same services that you provide. Know who they are, and study what their marketing strategy is and how it works for them. Knowing this will help you create your unique way to stand out.
Give Your Brand a Make-Over.
Your brand values are the things your brand stands for. Is your brand committed to providing quality healthcare for old people? Or was the initial plan to create luxury products for people on vacation? Think about what you set out to do when you just founded your brand. What is the actual purpose of your brand? Change any values that you think you need to modify. Develop a voice for your brand and establish a set tone to communicate with your customers. Tell your brand story and redesign your brand’s look and feel. Establish the identity of your brand to suit the new strategy.
Conclusion
Strategic branding is an effective tool that businesses use to achieve their goals of identification and preference of their brand by consumers. It is a positive and emotional way by which brands can connect with their target audience.
A good branding strategy is a very important tool I’m building a successful brand, as it helps to create brand equity and enhance overall brand performance.
A good brand strategy will ultimately establish your business in the marketplace and differentiate your business from the competitors.
FAQs
To create a good brand strategy, you need to first identify your brand’s vision and mission. Define what your brand is trying to say to people and identify your target audience. You should also study your competition and their brand strategies that help their businesses to perform better than yours. When you know this, you can then pick a better strategy that will help you to drive more sales to your business.
Yes, you can. You can enlist the aid of a specialist who will be able to study your business elements and determine the best strategy to employ to make it into a successful brand.
Yes, you can. The internet contains a lot of resources that people who want to learn to create a good brand strategy can use.
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