The Complete Guide on Branding Strategy in 2024

Did you know that you have 7 seconds to make a good first impression? It’s such a short time, you need to make the most of it. You need to be able to connect with your audience and entice them to learn more or take action. This is only possible if you are working from a branding strategy.

Think of it as a guide to help your business stand out from the rest and achieve the loyalty we all seek in our satisfied customers.

In this article, we will explore the concept of branding strategy and its various elements. All accompanied by actionable tips to ease the process of creating one.

Let’s get started!

In this article

What is Branding?

When it comes to brands, it’s important that we take a few minutes to review 2 concepts:

• Brand strategy
• Branding

There tends to be a lot of confusion between the two.

Branding refers to the process of creating your company’s brand identity. It includes defining:

• Logo
• Visual designs
• Tone of voice
• And any other materials that help consumers identify your company, products, and services.

While branding strategy creates the framework or roadmap for developing your company’s branding. It states how your company will behave in certain situations. And it encompasses several elements, including brand purpose, values, personality, and voice.

In this article, we will help you create this roadmap so that your company can start building a strong brand and enjoy the many benefits that come with it.

Role of branding in building brand identity and perception

One of the first things you need to understand is that your brand identity can make or break your business. It is responsible for influencing how your potential customers perceive you and their decision-making process.

But why does this happen? Simply put, it’s more than just a logo or a catchy slogan. It encompasses all the different elements (visual, verbal, experiential) that revolve around the customer experience. Each of them will help evoke emotions that will influence their decision.

Words, colors, fostering a sense of belonging, and interactions with your brand play a key role in this process by evoking feelings, emotions, and past experiences.

The Importance of Brand Strategy

Why should your company invest time and resources in a brand strategy? Is it really worth it? What difference does it make?

Over 80% of consumers say they need to trust a brand before they will even consider buying one of its products. So how do you help them trust you if you’re not consistent in what you communicate or how you communicate it?

Let’s take a closer look at the various reasons why you can’t go another minute without a brand strategy.

Why is brand strategy crucial for businesses?

There are many different reasons why your company needs to work with a brand strategy. In fact, once you implement it, you will probably find even more reasons than those listed here:

1. Helps differentiate your company from others in your industry and helps you stand out in the marketplace.
2. Builds trust and loyalty. The way you communicate and the consistency of your messages can only help build long-term relationships.
3. Inspires word-of-mouth referrals.
4. Communicates the value of your products and services.
5. Drives brand awareness and builds brand recognition.
6. Helps grow your business.
7. Streamlines your marketing campaigns.

In other words, the colors you choose, the words you use, and the emotions you evoke are all important in the process of attracting new people to your products and services.

A well-defined branding strategy can guide decision-making and drive growth

Think of your brand strategy as your North Star. It will answer your questions about what to do next and what not to do.

Every great brand strategy is based on deep market research. It helps you understand how to direct your efforts, set goals, and even track progress. This will make it easier for you to make decisions and ultimately improve your brand loyalty.

Elements of a Strong Brand Strategy

We have said it before: There are different elements that make up a strong brand. Let’s take a closer look at what they are, but remember that you should always work with them in mind.

Key components of a strong brand strategy

Once you are ready to create a strong brand, you will need to dedicate time, resources, and creativity to writing the various elements that will build your brand.

Let’s take a closer look at each one:

1. Purpose: Focus on answering the question, “Why does your brand exist?” Whatever the answer, it should reflect the alignment between your customers’ needs and your brand’s purpose.
2. Brand’s core values: How does your brand align with your customers’ values? These brand values should be communicated in every message and action your company takes. Creating your brand positioning statement is the perfect way to remind everyone in your organization of the values they should be working by.
3. Voice and tone: Think of your brand voice as the overall personality, it sets the style and character in which it will speak and act. Tone, on the other hand, refers to the variations you need to use when communicating with different audiences or through different channels.
4. Visual identity: This is very similar to the point above, but is dedicated to design and visuals. It establishes the brand colors, typographies, and graphics that better align with your brand personality and help make your brand recognizable and memorable.
5. Brand story: Here you need to answer the question, “What makes your brand different from the rest?” Creating your brand story will help you make an emotional connection with your target audience and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Creating these elements is just the starting point of your successful brand strategy. They will set the tone for how you present and differentiate your brand.

Contribution to brand consistency and differentiation

Having these elements well defined will help you avoid talking about topics that are not in line with what your brand wants to communicate, its values, its story, etc.

Being consistent in every word, action, and social media post will help you build brand awareness and, in the long run, customer loyalty.

Sounds good, right? Keep in mind that it won’t be easy. Every time you want to do something… it can be as small as sharing a social media post or as big as hosting an event… you need to think about how it aligns with your brand purpose and values. You need to consider whether it will help build brand awareness, or whether it will confuse your target customer.

How To Build a Comprehensive Brand Strategy

Up to this point, a branding strategy has been mostly theory. But how do you create your own?

Let’s take a closer look at what you need to do.

Understanding Your Target Audience

The first thing you need to focus on is understanding who your target audience is. This will help you address their needs and desires to the point where you can convert them into loyal customers who will refer and recommend your brand’s products and services to others.

And once you know who you want to reach, it will be easier to work on the next steps of your branding strategy: brand positioning, identity design, messaging, experience, etc.

To study the demographics and characteristics of your target audience, you need to do some market research. Try to find the answers to these questions:

• What are your target customers’ beliefs and values?
• What brands do they admire? What brands are they loyal to?
• What are their main objections to buying or not buying a product?
• How do they learn about new products and services?
• What are their key pain points?
• What are their typical buying habits?

Strategies for conducting audience research and developing buyer personas

There are several ways to collect data and learn more about your audience. Some of the most common are

1. Surveys and interviews: As you can imagine, asking people directly is one of the best research methods you can use. Be sure to ask questions that help you gather data about their values, pain points, goals, motivations, expectations, etc. In short, you want to learn more about their behaviors.
2. Analytics and CRM data: By turning to your analytics and CRM data, you can access relevant information to better understand the interactions people have with your brand in each channel. It will also help you uncover key insights such as demographics, behavior, engagement, purchase history, loyalty, etc. All of these data points provide the foundation for identifying patterns and trends in your existing customers’ behavior.
3. Social media and online reviews: Monitoring and analyzing your customers on social media can help you gather data and insights on their opinions, sentiments, feedback, pain points, needs, etc.
4. Observation: Taking the time to observe your prospects in their natural environment gives you access to a deeper understanding of their behavior, lifestyle, culture, and mindset.

Of course, there are other ways to conduct market research and get to know your audience. But these are the ones that will make it easier for you to gather data. Remember, the most important part of this process is analyzing the data so you can build and segment your buyer personas.

Brand positioning and differentiation

When we talk about brand positioning, we are referring to the statement that will help you explain how your brand and product offering is different from anything else in the market. This will lead to a better communication of your value and, of course, a better way to justify your pricing strategy. And in the long run, it will increase brand awareness.

Your brand positioning message should look something like this:

“[Audience] will choose [product] to experience [benefits/outcomes] because of [audience beliefs].”

But in order to fill in the blanks, you must first find the answers to the following questions:

• What makes your brand and products unique?
• What are the differentiators between your brand and the competition?
• How does your offering compare to the competition?
• What do your customers think about your products and brand?

This process allows you to determine how your brand, product or service will stand out and win over customers.

Strategies for effectively positioning your brand and differentiating it from competitors

There are several ways to work on positioning your brand. At Sortlist, we find the following strategies to be the most effective:

1. Create a brand essence map: This helps you organize ideas about what your brand means to customers. It consists of 7 components: attributes, benefits, personality, source of authority and support, what customers say about you, how it makes them feel, brand essence.
2. Identify your competitors: A competitor analysis allows you to have a better understanding of who the competitors are that you are trying to win the market from. Also, it is the best way to understand what they offer and how it compares to your products and services, their strengths and weaknesses, their marketing strategies, and their current position in the market.
3. Identify your unique value proposition: Once you do the competitive analysis, you will find trends in strengths and weaknesses, to the point where you will have something that sets you apart from the rest. This is what makes you unique, and it’s the starting point for your brand positioning in the marketplace.
4. Create a positioning statement: As we said before, it should be a simple but compelling statement that focuses on the key benefits you offer your customers.
5. Make an emotional connection with your prospects and customers: But what works best of all is your ability to make an emotional connection with each of your prospects before you even try to sell them anything.

Strong Brand Identity Design

Your brand identity includes everything that visually represents your business. This includes the color palette, typography, icons, images, and photography style you work with.

But you can’t just make a quick decision on each of these items. You need to take the time to evaluate which colors, typographies, and styles better align with your brand story, values, and target audience. After all, some customers will choose one product over another simply because they like the way it looks on the shelf.

How to create a cohesive visual identity

The visual elements are responsible for carrying out the purpose and vision of your brand. With that in mind, it is important that when making decisions about colors and imagery, you always do so with your company’s vision and mission statement in mind. Every decision you make should convey the values your company stands for.

Here is a quick recap of what you need to do to create a strong visual identity:

1. Research your competitors and pay close attention to their color palette and imagery. There’s a reason why companies in every industry stick to certain colors. For example, organic brands work with green because it evokes nature.
2. Research your target market so you can tailor your look to their preferences and create something that appeals to them.
3. Keep it simple, your visual identity needs to adapt to different purposes, which can be as different as the small favicon of your website to a giant billboard on the street.

Once you have defined your visual elements, you will need to create a style guide. This document defines the proper use of each element to ensure that everyone in the organization is implementing your brand’s visual identity correctly.

Brand Messaging and Communication

Just as the visual aspect is important, so is the messaging and communication. In fact, more than 77% of customers say they are more likely to buy from a brand that shares their values. In other words, your messages have the power to convince people to buy from you simply because they resonate with your target audience.

Make sure your messaging revolves around your brand personality and mission statement, and that it offers an emotional connection with your potential customers.

Importance of consistent brand messaging across all channels

Consistent messaging across all channels is key to establishing your brand identity, building trust and increasing brand recall.

It also helps bring clarity and focus to each communication and strengthens your brand differentiation.

As if that were not enough, consistency is key to improving your customer experience, increasing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, and facilitating your cross-channel integration.

So now it’s time to get to work on your brand messaging.

Tips for crafting compelling brand messaging that connects with your audience emotionally

To create your brand messaging, we strongly recommend that you follow these steps. They are designed to guide you through this process, and the result will be a compelling message that is personalized to the needs of your business and audience.

You want to start this process by going back to your company’s mission statement. As you may recall, it states what your organization does now, for whom, how you do it, and what it accomplishes. This is the foundation of all your messaging.

Once you have memorized your organization’s mission, you want to set goals for your messaging. It can be anything you want or need: get more leads, drive more traffic to your website, get more subscribers, increase sales, etc.

Of course, you want to take a close look at your competitors’ messaging and your target audience. You will find useful insights that will inspire you to create a set of messaging guidelines for any marketing strategy or effort.

You want to establish some ground rules for your messaging that include the ideal tone and voice, grammar, font, creative preferences. Remember, they should all be created around your findings in the previous points. And you’ll want to add a list of keywords or phrases that you want your team to keep coming back to in order to reinforce your business purpose.

Remember, consistency and clarity are your best allies in this process.

Building Brand Equity and Trust

Before we explain how to build brand equity, we think it’s important to revisit this concept. It refers to the perceived quality that comes from a recognizable brand and reputation. For example, there are many varieties of flour in the supermarket, probably most with the same ingredients and nutritional value, but you tend to buy one because you recognize the brand.

Brand equity not only helps with sales performance, it also gives you room to play with your pricing strategy.

How to build brand equity through consistent brand experiences and positive customer interactions

There are different ways to build your brand equity, each with its own set of actions you need to take. But trust us, it’s worth the effort. Brand equity opens the doors to greater market share and the ability to charge premium prices.

• Brand Awareness: All of your efforts should be focused on ensuring that your customers recognize your brand whenever they are looking for products or services. You can do this by:
  • Being consistent in your messages and images.
  • Providing great customer service.
  • Providing value.
  • Staying in touch with your database.
  • Telling a story that connects with users’ emotions.
  • etc.
• Brand meaning: Think about the different ways your products meet the needs of your customers. Needs that go beyond the physical world and become both physical and social. A good product connects and excites its customers.
• Customer feelings: Of course, an important part of this process revolves around how your customers feel after purchasing and using your products. You want to make sure it is a positive experience as it opens the doors to trust, confidence, loyalty, referrals and more.
• Loyalty: Finally, the overall and most challenging goal of this is to turn your product users into loyal customers who act as brand ambassadors. They will make repeat purchases and recommend your brand.

In short, you need to build a brand that customers love in order to enjoy the various benefits that come with equity. In this process, you must always work with a clear understanding of who your customers are and what they need and expect from you.

Brand Experience and Customer Journey

As you begin to plan your brand strategy, you will want to pay close attention to two specific concepts: brand experience and customer journey.

The first refers to the overall impression your customers have of your brand. This includes their thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and even their reactions when they interact with your brand. It applies to every touchpoint with your brand: marketing messages, social media, customer support, in-store, etc.

And the customer journey talks about the different interactions each person has with your brand. It starts when they first become aware of your existence and continues even after they have purchased one of your products.

You want to make sure that both their interactions and impressions are positive, as this will pave the way for them to become organic ambassadors of your brand.

Importance of delivering a seamless brand experience at every touchpoint

How would you feel if your interaction with a brand was not seamless? One that wasn’t tailored to your needs and where you had to wait hours to speak to someone to get help… Would you buy from them again? Chances are slim.

The experience your customers have with your brand can make or break them. It can be the reason why they buy from you again, or why they walk away and look for other options in the market.

A good brand experience leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand reputation, and differentiation from your competitors.

How can you do it? There are many details and actions you need to implement, most of which will depend on the type of business you have, the products you offer, and who your audience is. But the most important thing you need to implement is a customer-centric approach.

You need to invest time and resources to create memorable experiences for every person who interacts with your business. You need to deliver a personalized experience that integrates every touchpoint.

How to map the customer journey and identify opportunities to enhance the brand experience

Mapping your customer journey allows you to understand their perspective, identify pain points and opportunities – information that lays the groundwork for improving their overall experience and increasing the chances of converting leads into happy, loyal customers.

This process also gives you greater insight into how your buyers think and feel at every stage and level of engagement with your organization.

While this tool is important for every business, there are some that may need to implement it sooner rather than later. This is especially true if you are experiencing a decrease in customer satisfaction or conversion rates, an increase in customer complaints, or even an increase in your churn rate.

In other words, you need to map your customer journey:

1. Create your buyer personas with detailed information about their needs and areas of interest.
2. List your customer touchpoints, starting with your target customer’s first interaction with your brand, and continue to map their movements. Every interaction is a touchpoint: website, social media, email marketing, ads, reviews, mentions, etc.
3. Visualize the journey and create a map of the paths customers take.
4. Identify common customer actions for each touchpoint and step in the journey.
5. Understand the resources you have available to build the customer experience. And identify the gaps or places where your prospects might encounter problems that interfere with the interaction.
6. Implement and test improvements.

Measuring Brand Performance

Brand strategy is not a matter of time. It is a process that requires constant evaluation and improvement.

As a team leader, you need to constantly monitor whether your messages and images are still relevant to your audience. If not, you need to tweak and test them again.

If that is not enough, you need to monitor your competitors. What are they doing, and is it resonating with the public? You don’t want to fall behind and let them capture your segment of the market.

Let’s take a closer look at the KPIs you should be monitoring regularly to stay ahead of the game.

Key metrics for measuring brand performance and success

To monitor the performance of your efforts, we recommend that you track and analyze the following metrics.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

The total amount of money a customer is expected to spend with your company. This metric can help you get a better idea of how valuable each customer is and whether your branding efforts are having an impact.

Sales revenue

This is one of the best indicators of how well your branding efforts are working and whether they are paying off.

Website traffic

You can turn to Google Analytics for this one, but beyond focusing on how much traffic you’re getting, you want to pay close attention to insights such as the keywords you’re ranking for, the sources your traffic is coming from, and goal completion. Are people doing what you expect them to do when they land on your site? Are they engaging?

Brand Awareness

Nothing will help you understand if your efforts are paying off better than this metric. Tools like Hootsuite can help you track it through mentions of your brand and keywords, interactions with your posts, comments, and even sentiment.

Customer Retention

Don’t forget your now-paying customers, you want to understand how good you are at retaining them and turning them into ambassadors for your brand. Review your customer data and subscriber metrics to see who keeps coming back, and conduct surveys to better understand what they think about your branding and their purchases.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You want to know how likely a customer is to recommend your product or service, so you want to measure and track NPS. Basically, you would need to send a survey to your customer base asking them how likely they are to recommend your product or service on a scale of 0 to 10.

There are other KPIs you can add to this list, but the ones mentioned here will give you a good starting point to understand if your messages are resonating with your target audience or if you need to make some edits and relaunch.

Brand Management and Maintenance

In addition to creating and implementing your brand strategy, you need to focus on maintaining your brand over time. These efforts will help you improve and increase your brand awareness, as well as your brand equity and reputation.

This term encompasses a range of actions and techniques, from the design and look of your brand to the messages and images you use to manage the perception of your brand.

Tips for managing and maintaining your brand over time

But how do you get the most out of your brand management efforts?

1. Take the time to understand what defines your brand. The values it stands for, its mission, its core beliefs, its principles.
2. Understand who your audience is, what they want, and what they need.
3. Know your competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t forget to look at their marketing and branding efforts.
4. Define your unique value proposition – what makes your brand different.
5. Always work with a consistent brand message across all marketing channels.
6. Adhere to your brand identity and make sure everyone in your organization has access to the brand guidelines.
7. Train your employees so they all know your brand values, story, mission and vision. You want your employees to be ambassadors.
8. Always work with a plan and an end in mind. This will help you track progress and make necessary changes in a timely manner.
9. Manage online reviews and social media comments. Address customer complaints and provide a great support experience.

The importance of staying consistent while also evolving with market trends

That said, it’s imperative that you learn to adapt to different market trends to stay ahead of the competition and keep your customers happy, but don’t forget to stick to your messaging and visuals. Consistency not only helps with brand recognition, but also helps customers feel safe, confident, and satisfied.

Don’t risk years of work on the fad of the moment. Consistency pays off, just ask Coca-Cola, which has had the same logo for decades.

Conclusion

Through these lines, we have covered the various actions you need to take to design and implement a successful branding strategy. But remember, in marketing, you always need to go the extra mile and make sure your plan includes steps and ideas for maintaining your brand through the years and different market trends.

All of these efforts revolve around the firm belief that consistency is the key to increasing brand recognition, awareness, purchases and loyalty. In the end, you want happy customers who keep coming back for more and who encourage others to buy from you. It’s the easiest and most reliable way to increase sales.

Now it’s your turn to start the process. And remember, the key to success lies in understanding your target audience, their needs, interests and pain points.