Welcome to the confusing, incredible, too-on-trend world of “branding”. It’s kind of a sh*t-show at the moment. (Just the phrase brand strategy is overused and misunderstood. Like everyone has a totally different definition of brand strategy and some designers even use it to just mean “hey, I put some thought into your branding.”
But frankly, that’s not enough for the kind of success you are after. In my opinion, it’s a disservice to you. Creating a logo or design without a true strategy is like prescribing medicine without diagnosing the illness. It’s malpractice plain and simple.
A comprehensive brand strategy is a mapped out plan of action that aligns your brand, your goals, and your audience together. It’s THE shortcut to business success. I like to call my brand strategy process the “Core Brand Roadmap” because we get down to the core, the heart, the essence of your brand and we create a shortcut (or roadmap) that aligns and finds the overlap of your business’s heart, your business goals, and your audience’s needs.
Brand strategy is the process of aligning and finding the overlap of your brand, business goals, and customer’s needs in a way to help any business understand, prioritize and focus on a clear vision and plan to help them achieve their goals. It allows you to have confidence in knowing that you are moving your business in the right direction while serving your people the best you can.
When you know you need to get somewhere fast, you don’t just hop in your car and start driving anywhere without first looking up directions and just hope that you’ll end up at your destination.
Instead, you get in your car, you pull up the GPS and you put in your destination’s location. Your GPS maps out the fastest way for you to get there. And, if you’re using a good one, it will help you avoid traffic and accidents along the way.
You wouldn’t skip the step of pulling out directions because it wastes time. So why are you doing the same thing in your business?
This process is ever-changing for me and I’m always expanding and trying to make it the best that I can for my clients. I break my core brand roadmap strategy down into three phases and you can totally steal this peak of my outline and some of the questions that I ask so you can get started on your own brand strategy today.
Goal: Take an objective look at your industry, your target customers, and your brand
Goal: Articulate who you are, what you do, and how to talk about it
Goal: Articulate how you will put the strategy into action through your brand’s visuals and touchpoints to create brand recognition
After you’ve gone through the process of aligning and finding the overlap of your brand, business goals, and customer’s needs in a way to help you prioritize and focus on your brand’s bigger picture. But the best part of going through these questions and exercises is that It allows you to have confidence in knowing that you are moving your business in the right direction while serving your people the best you can.