How to Take Your Brand Strategy to the Next Level

Whether you are a small neighbourhood store, an international firm, a non-profit organization, or something else entirely, you need to have a branding strategy. Branding is how you build trust with your target audience, how you deepen connections, and how you get to the forefront of their minds when they consider a purchase decision. Even the best product or service in the world will not reach the right people if there isn’t a well-thought-out branding strategy behind it.

How to Take Your Brand Strategy to the Next Level

Understand the Importance of Brand Strategy.
Recognize the Key Components That Need to be Included.
Prioritize the Visual Elements.
Invest in Your Website Design and Development.

1. Understand the Importance of Brand Strategy.

In order to take your brand strategy to the next level, you first need to understand its purpose as well as its importance to your company or organization. When talking about brand strategy, you are talking about the long-term plan for developing and maintaining a successful brand. This is crucial if you will achieve your organizational goals as a well-defined and implemented brand strategy influences all areas of your organization, including (crucially) the relationship with your target audience.

When you take the time to design an effective brand strategy, you are helping cultivate a strong brand that can bring significant ROIs. In addition, this type of strategic planning aids you in defining your business, figuring out your unique selling points, and ascertaining what your long-term branding goals are. What’s more, when you create a brand strategy, you are also creating a benchmark by which you can measure your progress and judge which efforts are working and which are not.

Additionally, a strong branding strategy can significantly assist you in articulating and communicating your core values to your target audience. This is crucial as more and more consumers care about supporting businesses and organizations that align with their values. For this reason, your branding strategy also will help you to clarify the scope of your marketing efforts so that you can ensure you are focusing on the most profitable campaigns. This occurs because your branding strategy defines your target audience, what they value, and the best way to reach them. All of these aspects make a branding strategy integral to any business or organizational plan.

2. Recognize the Key Components That Need to be Included.

Now that you know why a brand strategy is essential, it is time to ensure that you are incorporating the key components into your own. For starters, you must include your organization's core values. After all, these values inform everything that you do. Ideally, your brand values make you stand out from the competition, so you should clearly communicate these through every branding touchpoint.

In relation, you should also be thinking through and including your strategic positioning statement. This is a brief summary of your target market and a detailed depiction of how you want them to perceive and recognize your brand. While you will only use your strategic positioning statement internally, it is vital to any branding strategy because it will inform every marketing decision you make. In other words, these decisions should all align and support your statement.

An excellent strategic positioning statement will be simple and memorable, and quickly explain how your brand is different from your competitors. It will be tailored to your target market, but it has to be credible. In other words, you have to deliver on the promise you make in this statement.

Moreover, your strategic positioning statement should also be designed so that it can grow with your business while keeping your branding and marketing decisions consistent. If you have more than one distinct market segment, then you may want to develop positioning statements for each of them.

Other core components that need to be incorporated into your branding strategy include:

Your ideal customer profile(s).
Your brand promise.
The visual aspects of your brand identity.

You will also want to develop your brand touchpoints and your brand's tone and voice. All of these aspects are necessary if your branding strategy is going to be consistent and cohesive.

3. Prioritize the Visual Elements.

Visual elements are pivotal to a strong brand because humans are highly receptive to them. Therefore, if you are able to design a solid visual identity, you are well on your way to having an effective brand strategy. However, this is more challenging than it seems because it can be difficult to know how to capture your whole brand identity in a logo or image. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you work with experts who can determine your visual brand guidelines.

In this partnership, you can discuss what emotions you want your brand's visual identity to evoke. The right colours, images, fonts, and logos will help make this happen because our brains associate specific designs with emotions.

Therefore, when designed appropriately, visual elements can be the most effective at attracting your target audience as they quickly and easily notify them whether or not your brand aligns with them.

Once you have created visual elements that work for your brand, you then need to ensure that they remain consistent across your website, social channels, advertising campaigns, and retail locations (if applicable). All these brand touchpoints need to have consistent visual elements that are carefully considered and integrated. This is crucial for developing trust between your brand and your target audience, as inconsistent visual branding causes people to feel that you are not genuine or trustworthy.

Before you can start designing the correct visual elements, you first need to understand what you want them to communicate thoroughly. Therefore, you don't want to rush into this part of your branding strategy; you want to take your time and work with professionals to ensure you get it just right.

From the top marketing company in Dubai, read on to learn what you need to know to take your brand strategy to the next level.

4. Invest in Your Website Design and Development.

At this point, every business and organization needs a website – no matter what industry you are in or how big (or small) your operations are. In all instances, having a solid online presence will significantly impact your success because today's customers want to visit a website before making a decision.

In other words, having a website for your business is key to boosting your credibility. In addition, it is a way to stand out from the competition and demonstrate that you are a high-quality, reputable organization.

Unfortunately, if you don't have a website, you are demonstrating the opposite, as people will question your legitimacy and look for another organization that provides a more favourable first impression. Of course, this is all related to your branding strategy because the last thing you want is to have your brand seen as unreputable.

Therefore, a website design that is professional-looking will showcase your organization in the best possible light. It will communicate who you are and what you are about and increase the likelihood of your target market choosing you.

To ensure that you are putting your best foot forward in the digital world, it is highly recommended that you choose to work with a professional website design and development team, as this is the most effective way to obtain a website that aligns with your branding strategy. The best professional website development company will work with you to design and build a responsive website that fulfils your target market's needs and is SEO-optimized. They will do this by utilizing UX wireframe development and user journey mapping, as well as carefully designing the site and content to match your branding feel and tone.

When looking for a professional website design and development team, make sure you choose one that will work with you after the website is launched. This may include regularly ensuring that the website is performing appropriately, optimizing the website based on insights and trends, and aiding you in driving traffic to your site. Setting up your website to attract and convert new leads is crucial to developing your business, which is why a professional website has such a high ROI.
Final Thoughts

As with everything in business, it is also essential to remain flexible when it comes to your branding strategy. After all, the market, your target audience, and your competitors change, and you need to be able to modify your strategy while remaining true to your values and core beliefs. To set yourself up for success in this regard, you need to be clear about how your digital and physical assets interact to ensure that you are reinforcing your brand across all touchpoints.

At the same time, you also want to be catering to individual customer preferences, which can be done through measurable KPIs. However, even as you continue to personalize your branding and customer outreach, you still want it to be rooted in your overarching brand strategy. No matter what you do, an effective brand strategy should always be your compass.

Are you looking to take your branding strategy to the next level? If so, what steps are you taking? What are you currently finding the most challenging aspect? Let us know your thoughts and any questions or insights you have in the comments below.

AUTHOR BIO

Stuart Harris is the Creative Director at Yellow, a Dubai branding agency, digital partner and advertising company working with progressive businesses to build bold, meaningful brands.