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You Don't Need A Brand Strategy Until You Do

You know that branding is important, but the concept of brand strategy seems so abstract, and you're not sure if it's worth your time or money.

By Edison AdePublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 6 min read
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You are a small business owner, and you are overwhelmed. You know you want to grow your business, but you don’t know how to define it. And you know that branding is important, but the concept of brand strategy seems so abstract, and you’re not sure if it’s worth your time or money.

Let me assure you—it is. Branding gives purpose to your business and helps your customers understand what makes you special.

A brand strategy defines what your company believes in and who it serves. It provides a clear direction for everyone in your company to follow as they work toward your goals. It allows you to compete in the marketplace by standing out from other businesses in the same industry. And it helps your customers feel connected to what you are doing and why.

You know how you have a few friends who are super passionate about something, like the environment? And whenever they say anything, it’s somehow related to saving the Earth?

It’s not like they’re being preachy, it’s because their whole world revolves around this one thing. It informs everything about them, from the way they dress to the way they eat, and even how they treat people.

Somehow, it’s just… normal for them.

A brand strategy is like that for your business: it guides your content and advertising decisions and determines how people view, relate to, and engage with your business.

Here are 5 reasons why you need a brand strategy:

  1. It helps you attract customers. Branding helps you build awareness for your business and develop a loyal customer base. A good brand strategy gives you an edge in increasingly competitive markets.
  2. It helps deliver your message. A well-defined brand helps to communicate your core values, differentiators, and personality in a way that resonates with your target audience.
  3. It helps put a face to your name. Branding is the process of building trust by showcasing what makes you unique from others in the industry. It gives people a way to connect with and remember you so they can come back for more.
  4. It makes the buying process easier. The right branding allows people to get to know who you are and what you stand for before they even meet or speak with anyone at your company. This is crucial when it is time to make purchasing decisions because they’ve already built up some level of trust in your offerings based on their previous interactions with you
  5. Make decisions about how to grow. A brand strategy is a comprehensive guide to supporting the future growth of your company. It will help you make decisions about how to grow and what steps to take to help you get there, and it helps you refine your brand identity.

When you’re in the early stages of creating a business, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of creating a product or service and bringing it to market. But there’s a lot more to being a successful business owner than coming up with an idea, putting it out into the world, and waiting for people to buy it.

In fact, that doesn’t work at all.

What does work is having a clear brand strategy—a set of guidelines for every decision you make about your business—that reflects who you are as a company, who your customers are and what they need from you, what makes you different from competitors, and why your offering matters in the first place.

Every last thing about your business should align with this overarching plan—every ad, every piece of content on social media or on your website. If one of these things doesn’t match up with your brand strategy, it will confuse people and undermine your business.

When you’re just starting out as a company, brand strategy can seem like a pipe dream—something only the most established businesses have. You think, “I’m just trying to get off the ground. I don’t have time for something so technical and corporate.”

But that’s a mistake! Even if you’re in the very early stages of your business’s life, you should be thinking about building your brand identity.

So, even if you haven’t set up any marketing efforts yet or are still trying to figure out how exactly your product works or what people want from it, take some time to think about building a brand strategy. It’ll make all the difference later on.

There are a number of different ways to perform a brand strategy audit for existing businesses.

Oftentimes, businesses can get so wrapped up in the day-to-day tasks of their operations that they forget to step back and evaluate their overall brand strategy. If this is you, don’t worry—you’re not alone! It’s easy for businesses to lose sight of the bigger picture when it’s been a while since you’ve done a brand assessment.

When you’re thinking of a brand strategy, it’s important to take a look at the state of your current brand. Doing so will allow you to identify areas where you can improve and also evaluate what’s working well so that you can build on those strengths.

A clear way to do this is to perform a brand strategy audit. A brand audit is a process of examining the performance of your current brand and identifying areas that need improvement. You can use it as an opportunity to refresh or rethink aspects of your business in order to achieve greater success in the future.

  • A discovery session with an expert can help illuminate key details about the current state of your business and where it could be headed in the future. Gathering input from customers and employees can also give you a clearer picture of how people perceive your company and what they want from it now and in the future.
  • You should also gather input from customers who are already buying products or services from your company. One way to do this is by sending out surveys or asking questions on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, which will give people easy access to them and allow them to answer anonymously if they prefer not to reveal their identity online.
  • A review of marketing materials, messaging, and content will give you insight into whether these are helping or hindering your overall brand strategy. You should also analyze your company’s digital presence—including website traffic, social media engagement, and visitors’ actions on your site—as well as what’s working and what isn’t working on all fronts.
  • You’ll also want to hear directly from employees who are involved with day to day operations of the business.

A brand audit can be done internally or externally, and it’s typically performed every few years. An internal audit will look at things like customer satisfaction surveys and employee feedback on how they feel about the company culture. External audits include everything from analyzing competitors’ social media strategies to talking with other brands in your industry about their marketing tactics.

The moral of the story is—and sorry to be blunt here—if you don’t have a good brand strategy, your efforts are likely to go nowhere fast. And there’s no need for you to waste time and money! So let us help you get your brand strategy together before you go another day without it!

We have put together a comprehensive Brand Strategy kit that you can use to guide your brand strategy brainstorming with your team. Get it for only $2.99 for the rest of the month. Original value $18.99

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About the Creator

Edison Ade

I Write about Startup Growth. Helping visionary founders scale with proven systems & strategies. Author of books on hypergrowth, AI + the future.

I do a lot of Spoken Word/Poetry, Love Reviewing Movies.

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