Brand strategy

Week 3

According to Gavin Wedell, a brand strategy consists following:

- For building a brand strategy, engage everyone in your company.

- Be clear and consistent

- Listen to your people (here I think hi refers to the company´s employees as well as the costumers).

- The brand message should reflect the reality.

- Stay focused

- Keep your Brand promise!!!

WHAT SHOULD THE BRAND STRATEGY CONSIST OF...?

It is important to have a brand strategy so that your brand distinguish you from your competitors, it makes the customers remember you.

The brand strategy is practically a book about the company. It shall contain the following:

(I´ve market the most ones by making them bold)

- The target markets. Target audience and buyer personas

- Brand mission. The mission statement practically defines a poupous for existing.

- Infrastructure. How is the company built?

- Why this brand stands out. Why choose you? What do we offer that they don´t?

- Brand vision. Where do we want to be in x amount of years?

- Brand voice. How those the company sound when communicating?

- Brand message. Should also consist of an elevator pitch.

- Brand personality. Why is your brand unique? Brand personality spectrum included.

- Brand integration. How the brand should be visible and reflected in everything.

- Environment. What do we do for the environment, and what do we stand for?

- The graphics. – logo, fonts, photography style, colours…

- Stakeholders perceptions (if you have stakeholders). Who are important to us?

- The actual product. What is it that we offer?

When you´ve answered all these questions and written them down or visualized them you have a brand manual. But this usually takes a lot of time to do, because you need to be certain about what you put in there, this is the entire company. It´s good to update the manual regally to keep it up to date.

… AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Having a brand strategy also helps with marketing, the marketing strategy pretty much depends on the brand strategy. So, a good brand strategy gives you good marketing and good marketing gives you customers, make sure to keep a good relationship with your costumers because they are your “free” ambassadors = they will bring you more costumers. But that’s not all that comes out of a good brand strategy, you see having a clear brand helps your employees to work towards a clear goal, with a clear vison you bring focus to your employees. So, having all of this, a strong brand will save your company a lot of money, when you’re still a start-up, invest in the brand, it will help you a lot in the long run. A manual that consists all this information will work as a “look up” book for the employees, not only those who works with marketing or have high positions need this manual, it is just as important that the “ground” worker reads it.

Everyone at the company shall strive for the same goals!