Last week, we talked about identifying your brand. Now, it is time to develop a strategy around that brand that is going to help you grow. This strategy will help you position yourself in front of your ideal customer and stand out among your competition. Consistent, value-driven efforts will go a long way. Let’s look at how you can build your brand strategy.
First we will start with your brand’s foundation.
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Create and Refine Your Buyer Personas
When understanding how to reach your target audience, it is important to know who that audience is. The best practice for understanding said audience is to build our profiles, or buyer personas, that look like your ideal customer. Ask yourself the following questions:
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What are your target customers’ values and beliefs?
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How do their typical purchasing habits reflect their personalities?
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What are their typical objections when considering whether or not to purchase a product?
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What other brands do they admire, buy from, and stay loyal to?
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How do they find out about new products?
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What social channels are they on?
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How old are they?
These are all important questions to know and understand when it comes to putting a strategy together.
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Explore Your Archetypes
There are 12 brand archetypes: the innocent, the regular, the hero, the outlaw, the explorer, the creator, the ruler, the magician, the lover, the caregiver, the jester, and the sage. Most of these are self explanatory, but clicking here will give you a more detailed overview of each one. Identifying your brand archetype will help you appeal more to the human psyche, which will allow you to better position yourself in front of your target audience.
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Build a Business Plan
Your business plan is a formal document that outlines your business’s goals; it will document your KPIs and help you implement and execute a plan to reach each or exceed each goal. These often include mission statements, buyer personas, business models, your brand guidelines, and measurable goals. SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals are great for business plans.
Now that we have a strong foundation, let’s get into building the actual strategy.
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Define your brand’s mission and vision. We discussed this last week, but we will touch on it again. The mission is what inspires you and how you aim to help consumers; the vision is more of a long-term goal that you want your brand to achieve.
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Identify your brand’s values. What do you stand for?
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Create your brand’s guidelines. During this part of the strategy, you will utilize the elements we discussed in last week’s blog – your personality, voice, positioning, and so on. This determines which logo is used where, website layouts, social media content dos and don’ts, tone guidance for copywriting, and so much more. Keep this in a central location for all employees to easily access.
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Build out a business plan; now that you know who your brand is, it’s time to start outlining how you plan to grow it. This plan should include all of your brand’s elements and guidelines, as well as goals for sales/revenue, employment, acquisition and so on. These are typically built out in one, five, and ten year plans.
We know how overwhelming it can be to build your brand and put it all into practice; that is why we are here to help. If you are struggling or simply have questions, contact us today to see what we can do to help you take your brand to the next level.
