Stephen Houraghan here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're going to learn how to run
a brand strategy session with this easy to follow framework so you can produce strategic brands to
give your clients an edge now brand strategy is an art in and of itself and any experienced
brand strategist will emphasize the importance of processes if you skip or rush any of the critical
steps within your brand building process then you're going to end up with a brand
that's misaligned or your brand strategy is simply going to miss an opportunity
the key to a well-developed and well-strategized brand is through the brand strategy process it's
through gathering that critical information and then using that information to strategize the best
foot forward to bring the brand and the audience together now in the last video we went through the
different approaches to the brand strategy session we separated the face-to-face workshop with the
remote brand strategy session and we also went through the different phases of the brand strategy
session itself through the discovery to the research to the development so if you haven't seen
that video i'll leave a link in the description below but regardless of which approach you're
going with this step-by-step process will help you to run an effective brand strategy session
now phase one is the discovery phase and step one is to schedule that appointment so what you want
to do is you want to be on the ball here with your response chances are that your prospect
has engaged not just you but others in the market as well and if you're not on the ball they will
organize a time with somebody else and that's the foot in the door for the other agency or the other
specialist now i'm also not talking about being needy here you're not you know responding to them
three four five times without response you want to be swift and you want to be decisive in your
response give them two options within the next week to schedule an appointment and that sense of
scarcity and urgency is far more likely to drive action than just an open-ended question saying
tell me when you're available over the next three or four weeks step number two prepare for
the session now in the discovery session itself you're going to gather a lot of the information
that you need but you don't want to turn up to your session unprepared you want to have an
understanding of the industry that your client is in and the competitors within that space as well
and just speaking from that level of authority and that level of understanding will help to
build that trust so have some basic preparation in place so that you come across like you understand
the industry and that you've done a little bit of groundwork step number three build rapport now of
course you want to come across as professional you are positioning yourself in the market as
a specialist and an expert you really want that authority but it's important not to come across
as a robot either so you really want to show your human side so tell them a story about yourself or
a client or a friend that relates directly to them but just give across that human side to you
that so that they can see that you're more than just about business and if they need to pick up
the phone and call you and ask you a question there's a human there that can talk to them and
explain the situation but that will really help to build that rapport step number four list your
itinerary of critical information now you'll know from your brand strategy framework here so that's
how you go about developing your brand strategies what critical information you're going to need to
gather from your clients so you're going to need information about their business about their
operations about their industry their market their target audience their competitors now they're
not going to have a really really high level of information at every different point here but it's
important that you gather from their perspective what their idea of that information is and asking
open-ended questions about their business and you know about their market is a really good way
for them to give you an expansive answer and you can get a lot of insights from that information
as well so know the questions that you're going to ask them and have that list of itinerary in
front of you step number five stay focused on structure now it's really important that
within the discovery session you have structure because there is specific information that you
need to gather some critical information that you need to gather and if your prospect is talkative
if they like to talk about other areas of the business that is not included in your list of
itinerary then they can sabotage that meeting so it's important that you have that structure
in place and that you keep them on track but at the same time you need to understand the balance
of building that rapport and allowing your client to talk as well as keeping the session focused so
find that balance and make sure that you stay focused on that structure step number six
identify a lack of clarity so you want to listen to the responses of your client here and look for
ambiguity in their answers look for an element of confusion within their answers so you want to
really dig deep into what they understand about their business about you know their environment
and their market landscape their competitors and if their answers are vague well then that
is a sign of confusion and a lack of clarity so an example of this is if you ask about their audience
and they only have basic information like their sex their gender their age etc well then you know
that's an area that you can dive deep into and this is an opportunity to build more authority and
to build more trust with your client if you take that lack of clarity that they have you identify
that lack of clarity and then you drill down on the importance of that topic and expand on the
information that you're going to need to gather that will help them to know that they are in good
hands step number seven is post session summary so the goal of this step is twofold first of all you
want to clarify that you're on the same page in terms of the information that you covered and you
also want to build empathy as well and you do that by mirroring what they've said to you so repeating
the information that they've given you using the words that they've used but also rephrasing
some of that information so that clarifies to them that you've been listening to them and that
you really understand where they're coming from in terms of their vision for the future their goals
and you know all the information that they've given you about their business and
if you do this correctly if you mirror them in the right way if you rephrase the information
then you'll also build that empathy as well they'll feel that you really understand them
and that can help to build that rapport moving on to phase number two and we dig deep now into
market research and step number eight is developing your audience persona so you
want to take the information that you've learned and that you've discovered through the discovery
session with your client and then you want to double down on that so you want to dig
a lot deeper and really start to build a clear profile of who this audience is so you can use
paid market research tools or use free software such as social media platforms forums and review
sites and dig into exactly who this audience is you want to understand their psychographics
and their demographics and then you want to drill down further into their challenges
and their pain points the journey that they're on to get to where they need this brand to where they
need the solution and the emotional investment that they have as well step number nine to find
your audience's personality so you want to use the information that you've gathered in
the last step and really start to understand the characteristics traits and personality
of your audience and then using the archetype framework so this is the archetype framework
developed by carl jung you want to assign an archetype to that personality now when you do this
you have a really high level understanding of their personality and you can use this later
to develop the personality for your brand step number 10 conduct a competitive analysis now
again you need to understand exactly who your competitors are and especially the most relevant
competitors so who are your direct competitors who are your indirect competitors and then using again
social platforms groups forums review sites really start to understand how your audience feels about
the options that they have already in the market how your audience feels about these competitors
because this will really uncover the strengths and the weaknesses of those competitors which will
help you identify gaps and opportunities moving on to phase number three and we're getting into
the brand strategy development and step number 11 is to start with the aspirations of your client
now within the discovery session you will have had in-depth conversations with your client
about their aspirations about their beliefs about their commitments and their values and their
philosophies and it's really really important that you use this within the development of your brand
and if they see their philosophies and and their ideas and their beliefs within
the fabric of the brand they'll feel a real connection and that's very very important
step number 12 map the competitive landscape so you've taken the time already to define who
your audience is and you've taken the time to define those competitors and placing those two
side by side to understand who your audience is what they want their likes dislikes their
fears desires and comparing that to what they have as an option already in the marketplace
what they want and what they're being served with is the perfect environment for you to define how
you're going to be different how you're going to offer real value within that competitive landscape
and then defining that value will really help to solidify your position in the market
step number 13 identify your market position now this is going to define how you are going to win
in the marketplace and you've done a lot of work up until this point in identifying the gaps and
opportunities left by your competitors but you really need to push them now you need to apply
creative thinking to those gaps and to those opportunities and turn them into really unique
positions that you can own in the mind of your audience so defining an exact position and the
exact value that you're going to offer within the marketplace will help you to solidify that idea in
the mind of your audience step number 14 uncover your brand character now you want to make your
brand as human as possible because it's through being human that your brand makes connections
with your audience so you've done again a lot of work up until this point in identifying the
personality type of your audience and now you need to use that information to assign an archetype for
your brand and to develop your brand strategy upon but you want to go further than that you want to
really apply opinions and attitudes and bring that that personality to life so that when you
communicate within the marketplace they feel a connection that they feel that this brand is
more than just a corporate entity so really build that human persona step number 15 develop your
communication strategy so you know the difference that you're going to make in the market now
you know the value of that difference and this step is about really shaping that communication
identifying the key messages that you want your audience to understand about your brand so that
you shape their perceptions you shape the idea and the image of your brand in their mind so you
can really own that position so identifying those key messages identifying the stories that you're
going to tell and again the work that you've done within the audience persona really feeds into this
because the journey that your audience is on is the story that you need to tell so really tap
into the information that you've already exposed there so this step is really really important
in shaping the perceptions of the mind of your audience so really put the extra work
into defining that communication strategy but i'd love to hear from you have you learned something
new in this video if you did please give it a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button and hit
the notification bell as well it'll let you know when i've got new videos coming out if you want
exclusive brand strategy techniques and tips well then head on over to brandmasteracademy.com
and sign up for the newsletter it's free and i'll drop those techniques directly into your
inbox but i want to hand it over to you now did you learn something new from this video
are you running brand strategy sessions already and if so can you take one or more steps
from this process and enhance your processes yourself or if you're running brand strategy
sessions for the first time maybe you can take all of these steps and implement them directly
into your processes if you've got any challenges at all around brand strategy sessions if you've
got any queries please let me know in the comments below i'd love to hear from you i'll do my best to
answer all those questions until next time happy branding and i will see you in the next video