Essentials Brand Strategy for Long-Term Success: Branding Strategy For Marketing to Boost Your Brand

Essentials for long-term success when developing a brand strategy

According to contributor Allen Martinez, slapping together a couple of ideas and a logo is hardly a brand strategy. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you plan and implement a well-thought-out brand promotion strategy.

It's not enough to have a few bullet points of what you want to do when it comes to a brand strategy. Today's brands require a clear grasp of why they adopt specific methods as well as a precise breakdown of those strategies.

Why?

Because the more specific your branding plan is, the more likely you are to succeed when putting it into action.

The following are three things that every brand must define:

• What is the goal of your brand?

• Who are your clients?

• What does long-term success mean to your company?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you figure out what your goals should be, how you should approach your clients, and how you'll measure your progress toward those goals.

Messaging that is unique

Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO, stated at an AT&T Shape event in 2017 that media executives like Sheryl Sandberg made it obvious to him that

“The creative and the content account for 80% of the available return.”

The success of a brand is ascribed to having the correct creative message rather than simply being in the "right place" or "right moment."

What does Robertson's remark imply? It means that instead of focusing simply on the technology, you should prioritize the story and positioning.

What does it look like to devote 80% of your energy to messaging?

For one thing, it doesn't appear to be like this:

Prior to focusing on strategy execution, it is critical to have a thorough understanding of your strategy.

What is the definition of a brand strategy?

A brand strategy might be difficult to describe, yet it includes:

• What your brand represents.

• What promises does your company make to its customers?

• How your brand's marketing communicates its individuality.

Many of these things, as you can see, are intangible. How can you know whether you've succeeded in expressing a certain personality? How do you know if you've successfully represented your brand, or if you might be doing a better job?

Brand sentiment is the single most important metric for a successful brand strategy. And just because it's difficult to quantify doesn't mean you should disregard it. Although it may be difficult to quantify, it is all too easy for analytical CEOs to overlook the qualitative labor that goes into branding. As Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky stated emphatically:

Experience design is handled by a distinct region of your brain than experience scaling. It's a different set of abilities. The scaling experience is a problem that requires a lot of analysis, operations, and technology. The end-to-end experience design is a more intuition-based human, empathic experience.

It may sound insignificant, but in a larger organization, these two distinct skill sets would be handled by two separate teams who are unlikely to collaborate, let alone agree on anything. That is how time, money, and energy are squandered. You can be overlooking a “creative” aspect entirely in a tiny startup.

Is this something you can relate to? Some people think of branding as fluffy, emotional stuff. But that's just a slick way of putting things. Branding is essential to the survival of your company! It also contributes to the culture of your complete team. Let's have a look at this skill set.

Intuition development

The intuition aspect of your mind is absolutely involved in brand strategy. You can, however, use data to help you make decisions. Consider your brand strategy as a tale you're telling to determine if you're on the correct track with your branding approach.

A good tale is an experience, not merely something to read on a page. And in order for something to be considered an experience, it must have a beginning, middle, and end. There must be some form of change from the beginning at the finish of the event.

What causes a story's plot to shift? Tension. Between your antithesis and your thesis, there must be tension.

Your customer's pain issue is your "antithesis" in marketing parlance. Your "thesis" is your answer to that question. As a result, the customer's problem is the source of the tension. At a subatomic level, this is the foundation of your entire product-market fit. If there isn't any tension (issues to address), you don't have a business, period!

So, at the end of the day, brand strategy is all about telling stories. The strategy of your company is its story, vision, and heart & soul.

Consider the following scenario:

Every cinematic film has a central thesis that begins with the protagonist's "vision" of how things should or should be — but they are unable to achieve it. The harsh reality that is dragging the character away from that image of how things should or should be is the antithesis.

This tug of war intensifies until the character, either inwardly or outwardly, or ideally, both, make a change. The hero's former world is replaced by his vision, which now becomes his new reality, in the climactic conclusion.

Since the first Greek plays were produced in the Theatre of Dionysus at the beginning of the 5th century, this has been the basic building piece of storytelling. The logic flow of crisis and emotional journeys was constructed into the plays and stories, and this technique has persisted over to present times.

This is exactly what excellent branding does as well: it motivates action, change, aspiration, or, in some situations, convinces your customers to correct or alter their opinions about something. Your users are truly transformed when your brand offers an amazing experience!

If you don't feel that story matters, you'll have a hard time crafting a message that elicits emotion and action. At the end of the day, all your brand has is one incredible story, broken down into bite-sized chunks and told over time, across several touchpoints and pain points. That concludes our discussion.

Developing the appropriate message

Story matters, therefore if you want to motivate customers, you need to craft a message that elicits passion and action.

What motivates us to do this? Because a well-told tale is memorable, it encourages loyalty and aids recall, and it translates to people caring about your brand. These are things that no amount of technology or media can or will ever be able to accomplish.

These feelings are amplified by technology and the media. If your story lacks this amount of complexity, it will be garbage in, garbage out.

Define your brands and what you want them to achieve.

The purpose of your brand is its objective. Knowing why your brand exists, what role it serves in the world, and what it represents from the beginning is what defines it.

When defining your brand, you'll need to ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the problem that my brand solves?

• Who is the ideal customer for me?

• Who is my main rival?

• How do my customers react to my brand?

Why Why do my customers have faith in me?

• What is the backstory to my brand's creation?

• What would my brand's personality look like if it were a person?

After you've answered these questions, you can start deciding on logo colors and fonts, a motto or slogan, and other marketing aspects that will help you tell your brand's overall story.

Let's look at an example and see how this works.

Let's imagine you've discovered that the perfect customers for your brand are young brides-to-be. High-end bridal companies with very elegant appearances compete with you, but you promote yourself as more youthful.

Because you don't sugarcoat the reality of pricey weddings, you're trustworthy. Instead, you assist brides in having a memorable wedding without getting into debt. You have your backstory for why you built this brand, and if your brand were a person, she would be a young, frugal bride who wants a beautiful day but is sensible.

Given all of this, and the fact that you're targeting younger brides, you can avoid using elegant and mature logo colors. Choose feminine and charming bridal colors that are fresh and modern. That's how you use marketing to tell your brand's story.

Here are three organizations that have achieved success through branding strategy:

Dia

“Clothes you'll love from stylists who actually listen” is a terrific tagline, in my opinion.

Boom! In a single line, it addresses both the benefit and the pain. Sure, there's more to it, but as a user, this helps me decide whether or not to continue.

The mind answers these questions in a fraction of a second:

• Is it true that I'm a plus-size woman?

• Do I care about clothes picked by stylists?

• Will I have to work with salesmen who are unfamiliar with my body type?

If this is your intended user, the answer to all three questions is almost certainly “yes.”

Molekule

Molekule appears to be well-versed in modern marketing. This is how a website should be designed.

In the initial area of their website, we see user testimonials and three testimonial videos centered on three customer trouble points: asthma and allergies, mold allergies, and multi-chemical sensitivity.

These three areas are further defined by three case studies from real Molekule customers who have noticed a difference after utilizing the company's goods. When a user sees someone else who is also dealing with these concerns and shares their story about how it helped them, it can be cathartic. Molekule starts with an emotion, which is smart; for a new product in a competitive market, starting with testimonials makes sense.

What is the level of competition in this market? Dyson is hot on their tail, according to a simple search for their distinctive brand name. A publicly-traded company (Dyson) is spending money on brand name searches for this little business? That's a bit of bravado. Molekule, you did a fantastic job!

This is an excellent example of a strategy brand-derived quantitative discovery.

A suggestion on another page of the Molekule website defines them as the world's first molecular air purifier: "Meet Molekule, the world's first molecular air purifier."

We can presume that even Dyson does not have a device like this based on that comment. This is a new product in an established market, and it's not easy for a company to get off the ground and succeed. However, if the product accomplishes what it claims, it should perform admirably.

Ubiome

This is an extremely exciting field, one in which I am personally interested and have worked.

This site is nice, however, it falls short in a handful of areas, in my opinion. The home page is mostly focused on the firm, rather than user-centric language and stories. It explains what they do, their vision, how things function, how they did it, and where the company has been highlighted. Those characteristics are admirable, and the information is valuable, but as a first-time user, I don't have a strong connection to the product.

I had to dig to uncover this information, which was buried midway down a secondary page in body copy:

The Fertilome test identifies genetic risk factors associated to reproductive disorders that may influence a woman's ability to conceive, unlike carrier screening tests, which look at the health risks for a kid.

Aha! A user can now see "what's in it for me." This line might be condensed into a single powerful statement that hangs at the top of the webpage rather than being buried and grabs the reader's attention right away.

Currently, they feature a revolving slide with numerous call-to-action (CTA) statements:

The Fertilome test is the world's first multi-gene genomic test for reproductive health, bringing customized treatment to fertility.

Celmatix has been named one of the world's 50 most innovative firms by Fast Company.

The remarks highlight significant achievements, but they don't explain what they're about. And, more significantly, they don't explain what the brand is supposed to help me do, fix, or decide.

Because the slides change so quickly, I missed something hidden in one of the three slides the first time I went to the home page:

“Are you curious about what your DNA can tell you about your reproductive health and fertility?”

This is the only slide with text that suggests what I, the user, might gain from this brand.

Ubiome changed their home page as I was writing this post, adding a number of new features that make it more user-friendly and informative.