Did you know that Amul, the most recognisable dairy product in India, distributes over 1 crore milk packets daily and sources milk from 3.6 million members of milk producers? That is the power of a skillfully implemented branding plan! It is imperative to have a strong brand in the very competitive market of today. In addition to making you stand out from the competition, a powerful brand allows you to develop close, emotional bonds with your clients. Long-term business success, client advocacy, and customer loyalty are all built upon this basis.
However, what is a brand strategy exactly, and how can it benefit your company? We’ll go deep into brand strategy in this blog and show you how to either start from scratch and create a brand or just rediscover your current brand.
A Brand Strategy: What Is It?
A brand strategy is a long-term blueprint for creating a profitable brand. It will assist you in reaching certain objectives. It includes all aspects of your brand, such as its personality, visual identity, communication style, and purpose and values. It acts as a guide for all of your branding initiatives, making sure that every touchpoint—from your website and logo to your social media postings and customer support exchanges—is consistent with the fundamental identity and values of your company. Your brand strategy is a dynamic, living thing that changes as your company does and adjusts to the demands of your target market and the state of the market. It serves as your compass while making decisions, motivating your group, and differentiating you from the competitors.
How a Brand Strategy Is Developed
Identify the Goals of Your Brand and Your Name
Establishing your brand’s basic purpose—the reason it exists for reasons other than to earn a profit—is the first step in creating a strategy. This goal need to be based on the value your brand offers to its clients and the global effect it aspires to have. For instance, we automatically assume that things from Apple would be unique and inventive when we hear the name.
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It’s time to give your brand a name after you’ve determined its purpose. Your brand name should represent the essence of your company, be simple to say, and be memorable. It should set you apart from the competitors and be unique as well.
Establish Your Vision, Mission, and Values
Establishing your brand’s goal, vision, and values comes next after deciding on a name and purpose.
Your brand’s mission statement explains what it does, who it benefits, and how it adds value. It ought to be motivating, succinct, and straightforward. One example of a goal statement is “provide quality & hygienic products at affordable prices” from Amul.
Conversely, your vision statement outlines the long-term goals and the impact your company expects to have on the globe. It need to be both aspirational and doable.
The guiding principles that direct your brand’s actions and choices are known as your brand values. They ought to be a reflection of your brand’s values and behaviour. For instance, the Tata Group is renowned for its dedication to excellence, accountability, and honesty.
Clearly State Your Brand’s Message
Your brand’s value proposition, personality, and advantages are communicated to your target audience through the language and story you employ in your brand message. It should be adapted to your customers’ needs, preferences, and emotions while maintaining consistency across all touchpoints.
Understand your target audience’s goals, wants, pain areas, and emotional triggers before creating your own brand messaging. Next, develop a message structure that effectively communicates to your target audience your brand’s distinct value proposition, personality, and advantages.
Establish Your Brand’s Tone and Voice
The unique personality that permeates all of your business communications is known as your brand voice. It ought to convey the ideals, dispositions, and distinct personality of your company. Conversely, your tone is the emotional resonance of your voice and varies based on the context and listenership.
For example, Amul’s famous billboard advertisements reflect the company’s humorous, relevant, and slightly irreverent voice. However, a company like Taj Hotels has a more elegant, kind, and welcoming voice that perfectly captures the elegance and hospitality of its brand. Determine your brand’s primary personality traits and values before defining your brand’s voice and tone. Next, draft a set of rules that specify the tone and feel of your brand in various contexts and touchpoints.
Create a Tagline for Your Brand
A brand tagline is a succinct, memorable statement that sums up your company’s core and primary point of differentiation. It should be expressive, memorable, and consistent with the essence of your brand.
Several of the most recognisable brand slogans in India have entered the national language. Airtel’s “Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai” and Coca-Cola’s “Thanda Matlab, Cocacola” are two examples of taglines that quickly evoke a brand and the feelings connected to it. Think about your brand’s personality, main advantages for clients, and unique selling factors before coming up with your own tagline. Once you have a tagline that seems genuine, unique, and true to your business, experiment with different words, phrases, and rhetorical devices.
Establish the Visual Identity of Your Brand
You probably already know that Swiggy is associated with the colour orange when you hear the phrase Swiggy or Zomato, or when you think of Coca-Cola, you automatically picture the colour red. The set of visual components that quickly identify and distinguish your business, such as your logo, colour scheme, typography, and images, is known as your visual identity. Your business’s personality, beliefs, and distinctive positioning should all be reflected in a powerful visual identity that is an extension of your brand strategy. Additionally, it must to be applied uniformly to every touchpoint—from your business cards and social media profiles to your website and packaging.
Make a Style Guide for Your Brand.
It’s critical to formalise your business’s verbal and visual identities in a brand style guide after you’ve established them. To ensure consistency and coherence across all touchpoints, this document acts as a reference for anyone who develops content or designs for your brand.
The utilisation of your company’s logo, colour scheme, typography, photography, voice and tone, and messaging should all be covered in your brand style guide. Additionally, it ought to include illustrations of how these components ought to be used in various contexts and media.
Create a Brand Architecture
It is imperative to establish a well-defined brand architecture that delineates the relationships between your company’s many goods, services, or sub-brands and their parent brand. The branded house, where all goods and services are sold under a single master brand (like FedEx), the house of brands, where each good or service has its own unique brand identity (like Unilever), and the endorsed brand, where each good or service has its own identity but is supported by the parent brand (like Marriott), are just a few examples of the various brand architecture models.
The best brand architecture model for your company will rely on a number of variables, including your growth strategy, target market, and industry. You may build a unified and effective brand portfolio that optimises the value of each individual brand while simultaneously fostering the expansion of the parent brand by creating a clear and purposeful brand architecture.
Take Care of Your Brand’s Image
The culmination of people’s opinions, convictions, and encounters with your brand is its reputation. Everything influences it, including your marketing, public relations, customer service, and goods and services.
It’s critical to actively track and manage brand perception both online and off in order to establish and preserve a positive brand image.
Evaluate the Performance of Your Brand
Finally, you must continuously monitor and assess your brand’s performance to make sure your strategy is working and accomplishing its objectives. This entails establishing precise KPIs (key performance indicators) for your branding initiatives and analysing your progress using tools like web analytics, social media analytics, and brand tracking surveys. Brand consideration (the percentage of your target audience that would consider purchasing from your brand), brand loyalty (the percentage of your customers that are loyal to your brand and would recommend it to others), and brand awareness (the percentage of your target audience that is aware of your brand) are some examples of common brand KPIs.
Different Branding Strategy Types
Companies can employ a variety of branding techniques, based on their objectives, target market, and competitive environment. Here are a handful of the most typical kinds:
Business Identity
Developing a powerful, unified brand identity for the entire company as opposed to simply certain goods or services is known as corporate branding. Large, complex organisations that wish to have a consistent brand image across all of their business divisions and touchpoints frequently employ this kind of branding.
Take Tata Group, Adani, Reliance, etc. as examples.
Branding of Products
Contrarily, product branding concentrates on developing a distinctive brand identity for a particular product or product line, frequently inside a bigger corporation. This kind of branding is frequently employed in fiercely competitive markets where standing out is essential.
Amul butter, Kingfisher beer, and Maggi instant noodles are just a few examples of companies that stand out from rivals in their respective markets thanks to their strong, recognisable identities.
Individual Branding
Developing a powerful, genuine brand identity for oneself through personal branding is a common strategy used to position a person as a thought leader or authority in their industry. Entrepreneurs, independent contractors, and public personalities who wish to develop a devoted fan base and make money off of their expertise frequently employ this kind of branding.
Over the past few years, inspirational speaker and entrepreneur Sandeep Maheshwari, journalist Rajat Sharma, and celebrity chef Ranveer Brar have all succeeded in creating a strong personal brand.
Regional Identity
Developing a brand identity that is strongly associated with a particular place or region is known as geographic branding, and it is frequently done to encourage travel or a sense of place-based pride. This kind of branding frequently makes use of the distinctive history, culture, and scenic beauty of the area to craft an engaging brand narrative.
Examples of geographic branding in India include “Make in India,” a nationwide initiative to market India as a manufacturing hub, and “Incredible India,” the nation’s official tourism brand.
Personal Branding
Developing a close, intimate relationship with clients by appealing to their feelings, goals, and aspirations is known as emotional branding. Storytelling, images, and music are frequently used in this kind of branding to evoke powerful feelings in the target audience.
The “Jaago Re” campaign by Tata Tea, the “Har Ghar Tiranga” campaign by the Indian government, which appeals to pride in one’s country and patriotism, and the “Real Beauty” campaign by Dove, which questions conventional notions of beauty and embraces diversity, are a few examples.
Therefore, developing a strong brand strategy is crucial for any company hoping to differentiate itself in the competitive market of today and establish enduring bonds with its clientele. “Only people have the power to build great brands,” says Mr. Kapil Vaishnani, our founder at Litmus Branding. Put differently, crafting a memorable logo or tagline is not enough to make a successful brand strategy; you also need to establish strong emotional bonds with your target market and continuously fulfil your brand promise over time.
We hope the instructions in this guide will assist you in getting going. You may also view a few of the brand stories that we have the opportunity to work on in the interim. We’re here to assist you in creating your brand’s success story, chapter by chapter, once you begin going.
