It may surprise you to learn that Amul, the most recognizable dairy product in India, sources milk from 3.6 million members of milk producers and distributes over 1 crore milk packets every day. That is the potential of a well-executed branding strategy! In today’s highly competitive market, having a strong brand strategy is essential. Having a strong brand strategy not only helps you differentiate yourself from the competition but also fosters strong emotional connections with your customers. This is the foundation for all long-term business success, client advocacy, and consumer loyalty.
But what really is a brand strategy, and how can it help your business? In this blog, we will delve deeply into brand strategy and demonstrate how to either build a brand from the ground up or just rediscover your existing brand.
What Is a Brand Strategy?
A brand strategy serves as a long-term road map for building a successful brand. It will help you accomplish specific goals. It encompasses every facet of your brand, including its values, personality, visual identity, and communication style. It serves as a roadmap for all of your branding endeavors, ensuring that every interaction—from your website and logo to your social media posts and customer service interactions—is in line with the core principles and values of your business. Your brand strategy is a live, breathing entity that evolves with your business to meet the needs of your target audience and the prevailing market conditions. It is your guide while making decisions, inspiring your team, and setting yourself apart from the opposition.
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How to Create a Brand Strategy
Determine the Objectives of Your Name and Brand
Developing a strategy starts with identifying your brand’s core values—the reasons it exists outside making money. This objective should be founded on the benefits your brand provides to customers and the worldwide impact it hopes to have. For example, when we hear the word Apple, we naturally believe that the products will be imaginative and original.
Once you have identified your brand’s objective, it is time to give it a name. Your brand name should be memorable, easy to remember, and embody the core values of your business. It should be distinctive and help you stand out from the competition.
Determine Your Goals, Mission, and Core Principles
After choosing a name and purpose, the next step is to establish your brand’s mission, vision, and values.
The mission statement for your brand describes what it does, who it helps, and how it brings value. It should be inspirational, brief, and uncomplicated. “Provide quality & hygienic products at economical pricing” is an example of a goal statement from Amul.
On the other hand, your vision statement describes your company’s long-term objectives and the global influence it hopes to have. It must be both realistic and ambitious.
Your brand values are the tenets that shape your company’s decisions and activities. They should represent the principles and actions of your brand. As an illustration, the Tata Group is well known for its commitment to integrity, responsibility, and excellence.
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Communicate Your Brand’s Message Clearly
Your target audience is informed about your brand’s value proposition, personality, and benefits by the language and narrative you use in your brand messaging. It should be consistent across all touchpoints and tailored to your customers’ needs, preferences, and feelings.
Prior to developing your own brand messaging, ascertain the objectives, desires, problem areas, and emotional triggers of your target audience. Next, create a messaging structure that clearly conveys your brand’s unique value proposition, personality, and benefits to your target market.
Determine the Voice and Tone of Your Brand
Your brand voice is the distinct personality that shines through in all of your business correspondence. It should communicate your company’s values, attitudes, and unique character. On the other hand, tone is the emotional resonance of your voice and changes according to the audience and situation.
For instance, Amul’s well-known billboard commercials convey the company’s lighthearted, contemporary, and occasionally irreverent tone. But the voice of a firm like Taj Hotels is more refined, compassionate, and hospitable, and it properly conveys the grace and hospitality of the brand. Establish the core beliefs and personality features of your brand before deciding on its voice and tone. Next, create a set of guidelines that outline your brand’s voice and style across a range of channels and situations.
Make a Catchphrase for Your Company
A brand tagline is a brief, memorable phrase that encapsulates the essence of your business and its main differentiator. It ought to embody the spirit of your brand and be memorable, expressive, and consistent.
In India, a few of the most recognizable commercial slogans have been translated into the language. “Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai” from Airtel and “Thanda Matlab, Cocacola” from Coca-Cola are two instances of taglines that immediately conjure a brand and the emotions associated with it. Before creating your own tagline, consider the personality of your business, the primary benefits for customers, and the distinctive selling points. Try experimenting with different words, phrases, and rhetorical methods after you have a tagline that seems authentic, distinctive, and true to your company.
Create Your Brand’s Visual Identity
If you hear the terms Swiggy or Zomato, you presumably already know that Swiggy is connected with the color orange, and if you think of Coca-Cola, you probably automatically think of the color red. Your visual identity is the collection of elements from your logo, color palette, typography, and imagery that instantly identify and set your brand apart. A strong visual identity that is an extension of your brand strategy should capture the essence of your company’s character, values, and unique positioning. It also needs to be consistently applied to all of your touchpoints, including your website, packaging, social media accounts, and business cards.
Create a Brand Style Guide.
Once your company’s verbal and visual identities have been created, it is imperative to formalize them in a brand style guide. Anyone creating content or designs for your brand can use this document as a guide to achieve coherence and consistency across all touchpoints.
Your brand style guide should address the use of your company’s color scheme, typography, voice & tone, photography, messaging, and logo. It should also provide examples of how these elements should be employed in different media and circumstances.
Establish a Brand Architecture
Establishing a clear brand architecture that outlines the connections between the various products, services, or sub-brands your business offers and their parent brand is essential. A few examples of the different brand architecture models are the branded house, where all products and services are sold under a single master brand (like FedEx), the house of brands, where each product or service has its own distinct brand identity (like Unilever), and the endorsed brand, where each product or service has its own identity but is supported by the parent brand (like Marriott).
The ideal brand architecture model for your business will depend on several factors, such as your industry, target market, and growth strategy. By developing a distinct and intentional brand architecture, you can create a cohesive and successful brand portfolio that maximizes the value of each unique brand while also encouraging the growth of the parent brand.
Maintain the Image of Your Brand
Your brand’s reputation is the result of the thoughts, convictions, and experiences that people have with it. Everything has an impact on it, including your products and services, public relations, marketing, and customer support.
To build and maintain a positive brand image, it is imperative to actively monitor and control brand impression both online and offline.
Examine Your Brand’s Performance
Ultimately, to ensure that your strategy is effective and reaching its goals, you need to keep an eye on and evaluate your brand’s performance on a regular basis. For your branding activities, this means setting clear KPIs (key performance indicators) and employing technologies like web analytics, social media analytics, and brand monitoring surveys to analyze your success. Typical brand KPIs include brand consideration (the proportion of your target market that would consider buying from you), brand loyalty (the proportion of your customers that are devoted to your brand and would recommend it to others), and brand awareness (the proportion of your target market that is aware of your brand).
Various Types of Branding Strategies
Different branding strategies can be used by businesses, depending on their goals, target audience, and market competition. Here are a few of the most common types:
Corporate Identity
Corporate branding is the process of creating a strong, cohesive brand identity for the entire business as opposed to just specific products or services. This type of branding is widely used by large, complicated organizations that want to maintain a consistent brand image across all of their business divisions and touchpoints.
Consider companies like Adani, Reliance, and Tata Group.
Product Branding
On the other hand, product branding focuses on creating a unique brand identity for a specific product or product line, usually inside a larger company. This type of branding is commonly used in extremely competitive marketplaces when making a statement is crucial.
Strong, recognizable brands help companies like Amul butter, Kingfisher beer, and Maggi instant noodles stand out from competitors in their respective marketplaces.
Personal Branding
One typical tactic to establish oneself as a thought leader or authority in one’s sector is to employ personal branding to create a strong, authentic brand identity for oneself. This type of branding is often used by public figures, independent contractors, and entrepreneurs who want to build a loyal following and profit from their expertise.
Journalist Rajat Sharma, celebrity chef Ranveer Brar, and motivational speaker and entrepreneur Sandeep Maheshwari have all been successful in building a solid personal brand in the last several years.
Local Character
Geographic branding is the process of creating a brand identity that is closely linked to a certain location or area. It is often used to promote travel or a feeling of place-based pride. This type of branding usually uses the locality’s unique history, culture, and natural beauty to create a compelling brand story.
“Make in India,” a national campaign to promote India as a manufacturing hub, and “Incredible India,” the official tourism brand of the country, are two examples of geography branding in India.
Individual Branding
Emotional branding is the process of building a close, personal connection with customers by appealing to their desires, aspirations, and feelings. This type of branding typically uses storytelling, imagery, and music to arouse strong emotions in the target audience.
A few examples are the “Jaago Re” campaign by Tata Tea, the “Har Ghar Tiranga” campaign by the Indian government, which encourages patriotism and pride in one’s nation, and the “Real Beauty” campaign by Dove, which challenges traditional ideas of beauty and celebrates diversity.
Thus, creating a solid brand strategy is essential for any business looking to stand out in today’s cutthroat marketplace and build long-lasting relationships with its customers. “Great brands can only be created by individuals,” says Mr. Kapil Vaishnani, the founder of Litmus Branding. Stated differently, creating a memorable logo or tagline alone will not create a successful brand strategy; you also need to build a solid rapport with your target audience on an emotional level and consistently deliver on your brand promise over time.
We hope that this guide’s instructions will help you get started. In the interim, you are welcome to peruse a selection of the brand stories we have the privilege of working on. Once you get underway, we are here to help you craft the success story of your brand, chapter by chapter.
