How to Create an Effective Branding Strategy

What is brand strategy?

Brand strategy is specifically long-term goals and building a successful brand.

Successful companies take branding seriously.

Poor design, a weak brand identity, ineffective marketing, inconsistent messaging, and bad partnerships can tarnish a brand.

Brand strategy can help you do this.

Brand strategy is your plan for how you’ll help shape perceptions of your brand.

With a clear long-term strategy, your brand will be strong and focused, and your business will succeed.

Create an effective branding strategy.

Building a solid brand requires companies to make intentional, intelligent choices about their visual identity and brand story. We discussed these choices when discussing the essential components of a strong branding strategy.

Your potential partners will want to know whether your brand strategy defines how you’ll create a successful business.

Brand strategy is essential.

There are three phases to developing an effective branding strategy: discovery, identity, and execution.

Phase 1: Discovery

Your company is unknown to anyone, and there’s nothing to discover. You can proceed to Phase 2 and create your brand identity.

Before defining your modified or new brand identity, you must understand your existing brand identity and objectively look at all factors that influence how your company presents itself publicly.

It includes evaluating your customers, industry, vision, mission, values, brand identity, brand image, and brand.

1. Start by evaluating your existing brand identity.

Your company’s vision, mission, and values often define your core brand identity.

You may already have your vision, mission, and values documented, but don’t worry if you don’t.

Some companies choose to document these and put them on an office wall or their website. Others need to be more formal but take the time to understand their vision, mission, and values. Here are some questions you can ask:

1. Does your company’s culture align with its vision, mission, and values? Are there any unclear or outdated elements that need improvement? Can you share your company’s main priorities? Also, are your brand identity and marketing strategies effectively conveying your core identity? It’s essential to conduct market research and competitor analysis to ensure success.

Once you understand your core brand identity, the next step involves competitor analysis and market research. Here are some questions when conducting market research:

• How big is your market?
• Why are your customers?
• Who are your competitors?
• How has your market changed since the time you started your company?
• How have you evolved your business since the time you started your company?

How to understand your customers better

A long-term brand strategy requires understanding your customers and their need. Following are some questions about your customers:

1. Who are they? Are your customers male, female, or both? Are they Boomers or Millennials? Where are they from?
2. What do they do? Knowing what your customers do for a living and what they’re interested in is a great way to target your marketing more precisely, primarily when engaged in digital marketing.
3. Why are they buying? Do you know the reason why they’re in your market? If you do, pairing their needs with what you can give them is more straightforward.
4. When are they buying? Find out when your target market typically makes this type of purchase. That way, you can get the attention they want to give you.
5. What’s the purchasing medium? Are they buying from a website? Do they prefer a brick-and-mortar establishment?
6. What’s their budget? Make sure you’re targeting customers whose budgets appropriately align with your product or service.
7. What makes them feel good? Knowing what gives customers that lovely good-feeling glow is critical to ensuring they become repeat customers.
8. What do they expect? Understanding expectations is critical to meet those expectations. Whether your customers expect fast delivery or 24/7 customer support, knowing what they want from you is half the battle.
9. How do they feel about your company? Do your prospects recognize your brand name and your overall brand identity? Hearing praise about your company is excellent – it suggests you’ve built a strong brand image. Hearing where the pain points are is even better. You have to know where your business could use a slight improvement to improve!
10. How do they feel about your competition? You know what they say. Keep your friends close – keep your match closer.

How likely would you recommend our service/company to others?

It is also known as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question.

If you need a deep understanding of your business and brand image’s customer opinion, this is the question you need to ask.

The best way to gauge how satisfied a person is with your business is by learning whether they’d be comfortable telling their mom/brother/best friend/barista to use it.

• Ask: “Considering only your most recent purchase experience, would you feel good about recommending us to a friend?”
• Ask: “Now think about your entire experience with us. Would you recommend us to your friends?”

How would you rate your latest experience with us?

A negative customer service experience has a vast reach and travels to more than twice as many people as praise for a positive service encounter.

Head this off at the pass: once a customer buys something, send them a short email asking them about their experience.

It will save you from scrambling in the aftermath of any potential PR disasters and will help you:

• Discover how your customer feels about their experience with your business and product,
• Provide a solution or make amends to an unhappy or dissatisfied customer, and
• Give your customers an outlet where they are free to tell you everything on their minds – so they don’t have to turn to social media instead.

We do this after every interaction between Crowdspring’s customers and our customer support team. We want to know whether we helped each customer and any feedback they might have for us. We also do this after every project on Crowdspring.

And we’re very proud of our performance in this area – and have even won awards for our customer support. We have a customer satisfaction rating between 97 and 99%.

What would it be if you could recreate one thing about our products/services?

Every product and service has room to improve, explore features, and add refinements.

You probably have your roadmap for where you want your product to go, and that’s great.

But it’s also a good idea to involve your customers in this process. They are an invaluable source of ideas, feedback, and feature requests and often see ways of using your product that you hadn’t imagined.

That means you should place only some features requested by customers and prospects.

It means you should ask, listen, and assess.

Some of the best features and products originate from customer feedback. The challenge is to be receptive to customer requests for improvements while engaging with them meaningfully.

For example, Crowdspring offers core design and naming services in many areas. It includes logo design, web design, print design, product design, packaging design, and business names.

When we started thirteen years ago, we asked only a few questions to help customers draft a creative brief to look for design help. For example, we initially asked some general questions in logo design projects.

But the answers provided little direction to designers, and we received lots of feedback about our questionnaire.

This feedback was precious. We changed our questionnaire to be more specific and informative, and this improved the experience for everyone.

It was a win-win-win.

Whatever service or method you use, make sure you’re not only listening but responding, too.

No one likes feeling like they’re yelling into the void, and your customers are no different. Make your feedback process a conversation so your customers know their input is valued.

Customers will often take the time to give you input on ways to improve if you ask, but if the exchange feels one-sided to them, they may give up.

What options did you consider before you chose us?

After completing market research and investigation, you may know who your competitors are.

But there’s always the possibility you’ve missed or passed on one because their offering seemed different from yours.

What distinguishes us from our competitors? Asking this question lets your customers tell you what makes you unique.

It is more than asking about brand identity design and your visual design. It is why a customer might prefer your company’s products or services to your competitors.

The answer tells you about your unique selling proposition.

Your USP may not be physical or tangible like a product, but instead, be more thematic or emotional.

Your goal isn’t necessarily to be better than your competitors. Apple and Samsung compete in many market segments. Some people say Apple is better. Others say Samsung is better. But nearly everyone agrees that they’re different.

Brand-led companies invest heavily in their brand and can often release new products or enter new markets at different price points with little resistance. Nike and Shinola are two good examples of brand-led companies. For each of those companies, their brand vision, not market pressure, influences decisions, and growth.

Both branded and brand-led companies can be sustainable and prosperous. There is a right choice. But you must decide about the type of company you want to build.

Anything else you’d like us to know?

Leaving the floor open to unexpected responses or feedback is always good. You can only ask some of the questions, and you can know in advance what might be top of mind for your customers.

Asking this question allows your customers to mention anything they feel is essential. It also gives you insight into what’s important to them.

And it gives your customer the last word and clarifies that you’re interested in more than just your questions.

Ways to gather customer responses

There are many different ways to gather answers to these questions.

Your choice depends on your objectives, target audience, and the best contact method. But here are some ideas to consider.

1. Customer feedback surveys: Surveys are tried and tested, but they can be challenging to run in ways that will satisfy your customers. Companies like SurveyMonkey or TypeForm make running surveys easy. Make sure you keep surveys as short and easy to respond to as possible, and remember to embed elements of your brand identity (color palette, logo, etc.) in those surveys. Also, keep this important fact in mind: every question on a survey will reduce the number of people who respond to the study.
2. Email and customer feedback forms: Having an arrangement on your site or a feedback box at your store gives your customers a recognizable way to get feedback. These tend to work best as either wide open (“How can we improve?”) or more targeted with one or two quick questions.
3. Direct contact: Forms and surveys may be easy to use, but they could be better at gathering the greater context or circumstances in which your customers find themselves. The best way to get helpful feedback is to contact customers directly and talk to them. Bonus points if it’s in person, but if that’s impossible for you, even a phone call or a video chat can be a great way to form that connection.
4. Usability tests.: Is something working the way you hoped? Is your shopping cart on your site hindering or helping customers complete their orders? You can use QA services to test these things and more. UserTesting.com is one of the better-known services that help companies run usability tests on their websites, and many companies specialize in testing how usable software or a site is. Once you identify friction points, you can tweak your web design to smooth the process.
5. Social media: Asking people who follow your brand on social media is an excellent way to gather candid feedback quickly. Many social media sites offer integrated polling as well. But be sure that your social networks properly reflect a consistent brand identity. If your social presence differs from the brand identity you showcase on your website, you’ll need clarification on most customers and your target market.
6. Customer service: If you have a customer relations or service team, your company might already have a team perfectly positioned to ask questions like this. Asking for permission at the end of a service call or chat can effectively get the input you’re looking for.

No matter what method you use, ensure you’re engaging with your customers in a conversation. As we mentioned, let your customers know you’re talking with them, not just at them.

Analyze your competitors

Developing a comprehensive brand strategy and strong brand identity requires more than just understanding your market. It would help if you also analyzed competitors to determine your company’s position in the industry. This analysis should include examining the brand identity of your competitors.

Take the time to build a compelling brand strategy, and you’ll create a sustainable, profitable brand.

We regularly update this brand strategy guide. We most recently updated this guide on February 26, 2023.

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