This article has been contributed by Nico Prins.
A successful brand strategy is more than just deciding what shade of blue to use for the logo, or what tone to adopt when posting and commenting on Facebook.
A brand strategy considers factors such as consumer demand, emotions and the competition. It’s arguably even more important than your company’s name.
If you remove your company’s logo and name, brand strategy might seem like it’s barely there. For the most successful brands, though, it pervades all aspects of the company’s operations, from high-level decision-making through to the shipping and handling of products.
1. Purpose
While a name and a logo are important, they both pale in comparison to your brand purpose. This is what makes you and your employees wake up in the morning. It’s what keeps you going throughout the day. Your purpose is the one thing that sets you apart from your competitors.
There are two kinds of brand purpose:
- Functional: This focuses on success at the financial or commercial level. That is, to sell products, make money or provide value to your stakeholders
- Intentional: This has more to do with how your brand works and the why. In other words, its big ambitions and the larger role it plays
Microsoft, for example, defines its mission as “to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more”. Notice that it wants to play a role in every person’s success, whether that person is an investment banker on Wall Street or a community organizer in Soweto.
Microsoft’s choice of image is also very telling. It shows a tent pitched under the night sky, the Milky Way looming high in the background. The imagery is supposed to show that the company wants to extend its reach to the remotest corners of the planet and even to outer space. The tech giant is focusing on developing solutions that are accessible to everyone, like its cloud based storage and application platforms.
When you define your brand’s purpose, remember that it should not just be about making money, unless you’re an investment firm, in which case it probably should. However, even then there should be something more that defines it. The thing that differentiates you from the competition.
It is imperative to keep your business’ purpose front of mind at all times, as it is what informs everything that the business does and every decision you make.
2. Emotion
Your brand’s purpose should be something that resonates with your customers. In other words, it should appeal to their emotions.
Customers don’t always make purchasing decisions based on what’s cheaper or what provides better value. Whatever your company sells or manufactures, chances are there are other companies with similar products, but with more features or at a lower cost.
Of course, providing value to your customers is important and you should strive to give them more of it. Your customers will develop a loyalty to your brand when you give them more for their dollar. But long-time customers can develop an emotional attachment to your brand for other reasons. This might be a positive post-sales experience, aesthetic value of your product, or the feeling of belonging to a community.
3. Customer Loyalty
If you’ve succeeded in building a customer base that loves your brand, your products, and what you stand for, you need to nurture that love and pay it back. This is where customer loyalty comes into play.
Customer loyalty is worth more to your company than all your endorsement deals combined. The people who constantly purchase your products and tell their friends about their experience with you act as ambassadors for your brands.
4. Competitive Intelligence
In much the same way that knowledge of your brand makes it stronger, competitor knowledge is also a valuable source of insight. After all, you are often competing for the same customers by offering similar products. Watching what your competitors do and determining what works for them can help you make smarter decisions about what to do and what to avoid.
As part of the 1992 USA men’s basketball “Dream Team”, Michael Jordan played with what has been called the greatest collection of athletes in history. Jordan used his experience at the Olympics to figure out his teammates’ weaknesses, defeating three of those teammates in the NBA finals following his return to basketball.
5. Consistency
The key to having a strong brand is being consistent in its application. This means making sure everything you do aligns. Let’s say you use a landing page for a product you’re promoting. You have to ensure that whatever software you use, the colors, images and messaging are consistent with your brand.
If your corporate colors are blue and white, using teal and yellow on your landing page will at best confuse your potential customers. At worst, using the wrong color combinations will turn off your would-be buyers.
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