What is Brand Strategy?
Whilst the term “Brand Strategy” can feel really overwhelming, creating a brand strategy without hiring a brand strategist is totally possible to do as a small business owner if you have the right tools to do it.
In this post I’ll break down what a brand strategy is & provide your with brand strategy frameworks you can use to guide you through the brand building process.
Here’s what we’ll cover 👇
01: What is Brand Strategy
02: What’s included in a Brand Strategy?
03: Brand Strategy VS Brand Identity - What’s the difference between your brand strategy & your brand identity?
04: Can you create a Brand Strategy Without Hiring a Brand Strategist?
05: How to create your own Brand Strategy?
01 What is Brand Strategy?
Your brand strategy is a long-term plan that will help you to differentiate yourself from other businesses in your niche & connect with your target audience on a deeper level.
The best way to think of your brand strategy is like a blue print for your business. It’s a set of considerations and & guidelines to make sure that you’re talking to the right people, in the right way in order to build an emotional connection with your customers, clients & potential clients.
It maps out your long-term vision for your business & helps you to ensure that you’re building a business that aligns with your long-term goals & intentions (and therefore sets the groundwork for long-term success!)
Your brand strategy helps you to:
Tighten up your marketing messaging to make sure that every piece of content you put out there will directly help you to increase your sales.
Understand who you need to be speaking to when creating your marketing & what you need to say to help your audience identify why your products or services are a great fit for them.
Identify what makes you different from all of the other businesses in your niche so you can really lean in to what makes you unique & attract the customers that value the same things as you do.
Figure out how to build a business that works for you! It will help you to consider how to build a business that suits your personality type, your working style, personal values & lifestyle goals to help you build a sustainable long term success!
Feel confident showing up for your business because you’ll gain a crystal clear understanding of what your business stands for, why it exists & what it helps both you and your customers to achieve.
📌 FREE Brand Strategy Checklist for Small Business Owners & Personal Brands
02 What’s included in a Brand Strategy?
Put simply your brand foundations are made up of 4 key areas
Who your brand is (brand values, brand vision, brand why ect)
Who your brand is for & how it serves your customers & community (target audience, brand mission, problems your business solves ect.)
What makes your brand different (USP & competitor research)
How your brand communicates (tone of voice, brand messaging ect.)
03 Brand Strategy VS Brand Identity - What’s the difference between your brand strategy & your brand identity?
When starting a business, people tend to think of branding as the visual elements of your brand, such as your logo design, brand colours & brand fonts. However, it’s important to understand the difference between your brand strategy & brand identity in order to understand why brand strategy needs to come first before working on the visual designs for your brand.
💃 Brand Strategy (AKA your Brand’s Personality)
who your brand is, what it stands for, what makes you different & who your brand exists to search.
👀 Brand Identity (AKA Brand Visuals)
tools you use to communicate your brands personality (eg. Logo, colours, photography, typography ect.)
Your logo design & brand visuals are tools that help you communicate your brand strategy & help your customers easily understand core aspects of your brands personality. This is why it’s essential to first understand what you want your brand to stand for & communicate before working on your visual branding design.
04 Can you create a Brand Strategy Yourself Without Hiring a Brand Strategist?
100% YES! Whilst I’d always recommend to work with a brand strategist if you have the budget to do so, when you’re just starting out, this isn’t always possible.
If you’re not yet in a position to hire a brand strategist, developing a DIY brand strategy will still put you miles ahead of other small businesses that haven’t built a strategy around their brand.
As long as you have the right tools & frameworks to help you, it’s totally possible to put together a good-enough brand strategy to help you grow your business & expand your brand influence within your industry or niche.
05 How to create your own Brand Strategy?
🤔 Q. So, how do you actually go about developing your own brand strategy?
👉 A. Whilst there’s loads of information on the individual aspects of developing your brand strategy, it’s really important to work on the different elements of your foundations in a specific order.
Whilst a quick google search will tell you what you need to include, it doesn’t tell you the specific steps you need to take in the order you need to take them in.
This is why I put my Build Your Brand in 30 Days pack together to make it super easy to understand exactly what steps you need to take (in the correct order you need to take them in) so you can feel confident that you’ve built your brand strategy without missing any crucial steps that will lead to problems later down the line.
🤓 Further Reading & Resources:
📥 How to Build Your Brand in 30 Days