Putting together a brand strategy
Learn how to put together an effective brand with the most effective branding strategy steps to keep your clients coming back.
Think about all the times you’ve kept going back to a particular company for their offerings. Maybe it was because you identify with their mission. It could be their values, or the business is constantly top of mind because of their timeless logo, corporate identity, and consistent brand messaging. It could’ve even been their excellent customer service and variety of offerings.
Either way, the positive feelings you have towards the company are all factors that play an important role in that business’s branding strategy. When done right, the corporate identity strategy, or brand strategy for short, has the power to separate a company from it’s competitors by ensuring it stands out.
In this blog, we’ll go over the most effective branding strategy steps that are crucial to bringing your business to life and transforming it into a brand. Before we jump in, let’s define exactly what a branding strategy is.
What is a Branding Strategy?
Global Impact: The Essence of Branding Strategy
Every business looking to grow and maintain a loyal client base needs branding in Durban, Richard’s Bay, South Africa, or around the world. It doesn’t matter where your business is; branding strategy is essentially how a company positions itself for ROI(Return On Investment) by having a mission, a solution that it’ll provide to clients, and a purpose for why it exists. The strategy is the point of view the company will take when conveying to consumers its core values and representation within the market.
A branding strategy executed well will ensure the corporate identity is effective in providing results. It creates memorable branding that customers will fall in love with. It’s key to success, as 86% of consumers consider brand authenticity when making decisions about where to spend their hard-earned money. So your brand needs important reasons for existing.
Power of Brand Identity in Marketing Campaigns
An effective brand that incorporates the right corporate identity and visuals will strengthen any marketing campaign. Therefore, having a strong brand identity that your target market loves will lead to loyalty. A consumer is more likely to make a purchase from a successful brand with memorable brand promises that are consistent with why they exist.
They identified that in 2020, brand strategy was the most vital marketing capability, according to 33% of the market leaders.
Now, why exactly could that be? Well, put simply, it’s really difficult to master. The execution of a proper brand strategy requires time and a lot of work. One small action in the wrong direction can derail the whole process.
Thankfully, our team has provided an outline for the six core steps you’ll need to take in order to plan and bring your brand and corporate identity to life.
6 steps breathing life to that Corporate Identity
In South Africa Corporate identity, done properly and using a brand strategy, can set your business on a path to success. The best part is you aren’t bound to just Durban, KwaZulu Natal, Capetown, or Johannesburg. Its effects can be felt globally.
By following the steps below, you can create a brand that will resonate with your clients and customers in deep and meaningful ways.
Clearly define your aims & objectives
How do you create brand awareness without an aim? Put simply, you can’t. Which is why you should start by establishing what you’d like your brand and corporate identity to represent. The problem your business will solve, and don’t forget to bring your mission into focus so that you can channel it through your messaging and design.
Questions you should consider:
- What problem are you solving?
- Why did you create the business?
- What’s your mission with the business? Keep this short and straight to the point
- How do you want customers to feel when using your brand?
- How will you differentiate yourself from the competition?
More and more consumers are becoming loyal to businesses that have brands that stand for something. Over 71% of consumers make decisions based on a brand’s values or social stances.
By understanding and living up to your values, customers will align with the actions taken by that brand. It’ll reassure them that they’ll be receiving consistency and quality.
Looking for branding companies for small businesses to help your brand or corporate identity strategy? Contact us to help guide and ensure your brand resonates with the audience. We offer tailor-made corporate identity services that will help get you started:
It can be overwhelming to build your brand and your business’s corporate identity, whether it’s a rebrand or getting started. We’ve got you covered. It’s crucial to consider how you can grapple this huge design undertaking. We can help with that. Branding companies in Durban, Pietermaritzburg or Johannesburg like ours can sit down and help you clarify your aims and objectives.
Identify and understand your customer pain points
It’s important to create a brand that can resonate with your target market. To do this effectively you’ll need to understand how your customers or clients think.
Think about what your customers value most and what they are looking for when choosing or returning to a company. If your service and products can solve the customer’s biggest pain points, let them shine through your brand and messaging.
If customers crave quick and easy solutions, don’t create unnecessary steps within your client journey. Give them what they want and be straight to the point. If a premium service is what they’re itching for, your branding, logo design, and positioning should reflect exactly that.
The moment you can understand what your customer is going through, you can better equip and position your brand to connect with and help resolve their pain points. They will always look at your products and services as a solution.
At B&E: Design Firm, our team is dedicated to helping you find those customer pain points, making your brand resonate, and helping where it matters most.
Analysing the competing brands
A show-stopping logo isn’t the only thing you’ll need. What you need is to ensure it stands out when measured against the other brands in the market.
With a SWOT(Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats) competitive analysis, you can understand how your brand will fit into an ecosystem that’s filled with competition.
It allows you to target exactly the pros and cons of the other companies currently in the market. If standing out is what you want your brand to achieve, it’ll have to be unique from other competitors within your industry.
Why copy another brand, when you can stand out above the rest. A massive 90% of consumers consider authenticity a major factor when selecting a brand.
Start your competitive SWOT analysis with B&E: Design Firm to get that competing advantage.
Use the information from the SWOT to create a lane that your brand will own. This will allow your brand to know exactly where it can be able to shine.
Mastering your brand messaging so it hits the right tone
With the right data gathered, you can now head in the accurate direction.
This is where planning your messaging comes to light. From your copy to messaging, ensure that it’s written with a similar tone in mind.
Is your brand fun and friendly? Or Premium and sophisticated. Take into consideration how you’d want to interact with your target market (customers). What’s the type of personality you’d like your brand to have?
This copy will distinguish your brand from the competitors, it’s what will bring it to life. This is what your customers will devour so make sure it’s both consistent and good.
To help you achieve this right tone for your brand, consider gathering inspiration from other brands, online digital platforms, social media, podcasts, youtube and more.
At B&E: Design Firm.co.za we can compile, strategize and help you create the ideal brand tone and messaging.
We’ll be with you every step of the brand development journey. And we can serve as a powerful resource as your brand’s voice and tones evolve.
Creating your colours and design elements
A crucial component of a great brand is visual design. There are a lot of design elements to take into consideration when creating your brand. To establish these it includes:
- Iconography (icons and elements)
- Colour
- Fonts
- Vector illustrations vs Photo image styles
When thinking of branding in South Africa or even around the world, it’s easy to think of just the logo design but it’s really so much more than that. A brand is much more than simply a logo, that’s just one important piece of the brand puzzle.
The corporate identity design elements you often discover are the most memorable for consumers. We help you implement these key decisions in your brand strategy process. A great brand will be so consistent with its colour that it becomes easily recognizable. For example, when I say Coca-colas, what colours come to mind? That’s right red and white, same thing applies for The blue and white facebook logo, Outsurance’s Purple logo or Starbucks white and emerald green.
Companies that stick to consistent branding colours can increase recognition by up to 80%. I’ll let you imagine how much difference that can create for your brand.
There are a lot of design elements to consider, which is why it’s important to assign different parts of the projects to members of your team or to a specific agency as there are a lot of branding companies in Durban, Johannesburg and South Africa.
You can use B&E: Design Firm to bring your brand to life, we care about seeing your vision become a reality. We understand the production of visual design can be a process, which is why we make sure to always strive to stay on track.
Time to Test, analyse and complete your brand
Now with all your brand element pieces in place, it’s time to test, analyse and complete your brand.
Gathering feedback from your existing customers is important in helping you understand how your brand is being interpreted by the market. Those final tweaks will be helpful before you publish your brand.
You want to avoid creating a brand that doesn’t resonate with your customer base. The way customers think about your company plays a crucial role towards your overall brand.
Test this out by exposing your updated brand to current customers and a small group of people who have never heard of your brand before but fall under your target market. This will be helpful in allowing you to collect unbiased data.
Hit the mark by getting it right
You can execute successfully effective branding strategies if everyone on the team is working towards a singular goal. Whether that be greeting a brand that lasts or dominating your market.
By having a branding strategy in place, it takes away all the guesswork as you can use the data to make informed brand decisions. Which will result in leaving a memorable impact on your customers.
Turn your business into a brand by bringing the vision and brand strategy to life with B&E: Design Firm.
