Stephen here at BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video I want to talk to you about the 10
critical elements that you must have inside your brand strategy now brand strategy is a bit of a
complicated topic now it's not complicated because it's difficult in fact it's not that difficult at
all if you understand the elements that go into a brand strategy and you know where they go and
you have processes in place to develop those key elements then it's actually not that complicated
at all the complication is in first understanding brand strategy and all of those key elements and
where they all go because if you go online if you type in brand strategy you're going to come
across a lot of key elements that tend to cross over and it can be very confusing especially
if there's a lot of articles contradicting each other and that's pretty much the reality out there
you could look at your purpose statement your vision statement your positioning strategy your
differentiator your usp your value proposition all of these key elements tend to cross over with each
other and it's hard to know what you what you need what you don't need and what goes where so
that's what i want to cover in this video i want to go over those 10 key elements so that you know
where things go into place and first up is your internal brand now your internal brand is a bit
of a difficult one to explain but the best way to explain it is to think of your brand as a person
so we as people we all have our external version of ourselves that other people see and they know
our personalities but on the inside we have how we feel so this is what we think what we believe
about ourselves what we believe about other people the wider world where we see things going in the
future what our vision is how we behave how we hold ourselves what we value all of these things
that we don't tend to communicate with anybody they're just kind of internal but they do dictate
how we behave in life and how we go go throughout our lives and that's exactly what your internal
brand is within branding much in the same way we have our internal selves it dictates everything
we do and your internal brand is exactly the same it influences everything you do it influences all
of your communication all of your strategies everything within the brand is influenced by
your internal brand so you do have your purpose and that is your why why you do things beyond
just the revenue that your brand generates there is a connection with your audience there
and they get some kind of value from what you do for them they get some kind of emotional release
so you need to tap into what that is and develop a why around that and you'll know what your compass
is then going forward beyond just revenue now you also have your vision and this is where your
brand is going in the future and the best way to describe your vision is the aspirations of your
brand so your brand is has come to life for some reason there's leadership behind this brand and
they see a vision for this brand they they look into the future maybe five years maybe 10 years
and they see a vision of where this brand has gone it's very very important to have that
nailed down and to use that as i said ongoing within your brand to have that direction to
know where your brand is going long term then you have your mission and this these are the
commitments that you make within your day-to-day operations of your brand and this ties very much
in with your positioning strategy what it is that you do differently for your audience and
knowing what those commitments are based on what you do for your audience is really really key
so once you nail down what those commitments are then you can develop a mission statement
around that that guides your brand long term and then of course you have your values now there are
a lot of companies that will have a handful of values up on their about us page such as honesty
integrity respect etc etc these don't really mean anything and they don't really guide any brand
that has values like that your values need to be personal to your brand how are you going to go
about your business what are you going to do to personalize your interaction with your audience
and how is that going to apply throughout your whole brand throughout every single touch point
throughout every brand representative within your brand next up we have your audience persona now
i'm sure you've heard of an audience persona before and you've probably filled in an avatar
one or two times before already but we really need to understand your audience on a deeper
level of course we have our demographics and our psychographics now your demographics are
going to give you the basics along the lines of where they live how old they are
what kind of job they have how much income they earn etc etc your psychographics will go a little
bit deeper into their behaviors in terms of what they do on the weekend what kind of card do they
drive what music do they like and that sort of thing but really these two elements here
your demographics and your psychographics they're just really the base elements to
really put in place a silhouette of who your audience is doesn't really give you any of that
fine detail you really need to shine a light on who your audience is from a much deeper level
really understand what they like what they dislike what kind of problems they're going through
because as a brand this is really where you come into their lives when it comes to their problems
what problem do you solve in their lives and what kind of emotional impact does that problem have
in their life because once you start to understand that once you get a feeling for those problems
that they have and again this is not just the very specific problem that you fix but also
the problems leading up to the point that you need they need your brand the problems after
they they come across your brand what are all of those problems around what you do and then what
are all the emotional connections to that how do they feel are they frustrated are they frightened
are they upset what is it that they're feeling because again once you're able to understand
those problems and you're able to tap into that emotion that is when you can make real connections
with your audience so you really need to have a strong audience persona that goes beyond just your
demographics and your psychographics and you need to get down into the emotional connection that
you want to have with that audience now the next critical element that you need within your brand
strategy is solid competitive analysis now most business owners when they come across this for the
first time they make the mistake of jumping onto google typing in what it is they do and looking
at the top 10 results and checking out their website and saying okay well this is what the
top 10 are doing so i need to do the same i need to put this page on my website i need to put these
elements here and that's actually the opposite of what solid competitive analysis is all about the
end goal of competitive analysis is to identify gaps in the market as to what your competitors are
not doing now you need to step inside the shoes of your audience in order to do this effectively
and at this point you'll have done your customer analysis so you'll have a very good idea as to the
problems that they go through and the emotional connections they have to those problems so it is
important that you do that step first because you'd be better placed to see the market from
their perspective and that's what you need to do you need to step inside their shoes look out into
the market from their perspective and identify gaps in the marketplace that your competitors
are not doing and that brings us up to critical element number four which is your differentiator
now a lot of people are intimidated by the differentiator because there's this belief
that you have to be revolutionary in order to be different you know you have to bring
some kind of new technology to the marketplace or a brand new product that's never been done before
brand new design or something like that and that's not actually the case now if you have a budget for
that kind of research and development then great for you there's a lot of companies in the silicon
valley doing that they're raising millions or hundreds of millions to be able to go out there
and do that but if you're like 99 of businesses in the world you're not going to have that kind
of budget so when it comes to your differentiator you have to be clever now i want to give you a
couple of examples here to illustrate the point that you don't need millions of dollars you don't
need a massive budget to differentiate yourself and if you're clever enough you can think of a
differentiation strategy that doesn't need any money at all now the first example is avis and
you might have come across this example before but avis back in the 60s they were number two to
hertz and they were number two by a long way and they were actually losing market share at the time
and they came out with a differentiation strategy that was based on communication only they didn't
put any budget into it they didn't have a team of developers or product developers
coming up with something new they simply changed their messaging and they said we're number two
so we try harder and that change in positioning that change in messaging and that differentiation
strategy was able to turn their business around and they claimed a massive amount of market share
back from hertz and that goes down as one of the best examples of differentiation strategies to
date another excellent example of differentiation strategy is the dollar shave club now this is a
great story as well because they came into the marketplace as a nobody they were just a startup
and they came in with a great differentiation strategy and the strategy was to point the finger
at their biggest competitor who was gillette and what they did was they tapped into the
pain points of their audience so they stepped inside their audience's shoes and they looked at
what problems do they have in and around this market and one of the biggest problems they had
was how much they had to pay for razors so dollar shave club came into the market they pointed the
finger at gillette they pointed the finger at the unnecessary features the unnecessary four
blades and the massively high cost and told them that they don't need all of this stuff they just
need a quality blade to be able to shave with and that's what they offered their audience
and they offered a smart subscription model as well so they just had to pay their monthly fee and
their blades arrived at their door and they ended up saving their customers a huge amount of money
but took a massive massive chunk of the market from gillette so that's another
great example of differentiation strategy without needing a massive budget to pull it off
critical element number five is your human brand persona now relationships between
brands and consumers has changed massively in the last 20 years before in the 80s and the 90s
brands held all the cards and they had all the power because the consumer didn't have
a voice but then the internet came along and the millennial was born through that generation
and then when social media came along everybody went online and they talked about what they liked
and what they didn't like about brands so brands had to change their approach and change the way
they communicated to their audience and if you go out into the marketplace today the way brands used
to go out into the marketplace in the 80s and the 90s and you speak like a company then you're going
to be ignored you're not going to resonate with anybody you're going to come across as a corporate
entity and that's not what the consumer wants from brands today they want to feel a connection and
they want to to feel that the brands that they're choosing is more than just a corporate entity so
having a brand persona having a human persona to help your strategic brand communication is a very
very good way of resonating with your audience on a human level element number six is your tone
of voice now your tone of voice is actually an extension of your personality but it's a really
really effective tool and it's something that you really need to nail down and and this all stems
from who your audience is so all of the research that you did on your customer persona who they are
what kind of personality they have the the struggles they go through the emotional
connections they have to that that that all plays a part in the tone of voice that you have now
if you're a business if you're a brand and you deal with something that's very serious like
law for example then you're not going to have a light-hearted funny tone of voice you're going
to have more of a professional tone of voice but on the other hand if you're dealing with
events if you're dealing with birthday parties then you're going to have a much more playful
tone of voice now there are two extremes but brands today need to look at who their
audience is and the problems that they solve and where they fit into their audience's lives
and the personalities that they have and then that should dictate the tone of voice that they
have throughout all of their communication but again tonal voice is a very effective tool when
used correctly and it can really help your brand to resonate with who your audience is
number seven is your tagline now your tagline ties directly in with your differentiation strategy
because your differentiator is what you want your audience to remember
about your brand them remembering what you do differently is critical for your overall brand
strategy so your tagline helps you plant that seed in the mind of your audience as to what you do
differently so you need to use that as a tool so that they can easily remember what it is that you
do they can easily recall what you do and a really effective way to get them to do that is to have a
tagline that is short so try name for a tagline that's between four to five words it's clever if
possible if you can make that a double entendre or if you can make that a clever play on words then
it's much easy to remember and that ties in then to the memorability if the sound of your tagline
is easy to remember if the overall message of your tagline is memorable then it's going to stick in
the mind of your audience so your tagline is a very very effective tool if used correctly
and a ties directly in with your differentiation strategy and the two of those dovetailed together
critical element number eight is your core message framework now if you google core message you'll
get a series of articles that will tell you about how to write a paragraph of text
now it is important that you have a distilled message as to what it is that your brand should
do and what it should be remembered for but if all you have to go when you go communicating to
your your audience about what your brand does is a core message then you'll be lost you need far
more than that within your brand strategy in order to communicate effectively and that's where your
communication framework comes in essentially you need to identify the key elements that you
need your audience to remember about your brand which includes who your audience is you need to
identify who they are the key benefits that you're going to bring to the table how you're
different and how that affects their lives what difference are you going to make in their lives
and all of these elements tied together and you need to identify those key elements and there
could be seven to eight key elements that you want your audience to remember about your brand
and then you write a paragraph of text about each one of them now you're not going to take
that paragraph of text and go and post it on your social media site or put it up on your website or
post the same paragraphs over and over again this is a framework that acts as a guide for
your communication ongoing so when you sit down to create a piece of content or to write a post
that you have a guide to go off you know the critical elements that you want your audience
to know about your brand that you want them to remember and you've got a tool to communicate
effectively and consistently throughout all of your brand communication critical element number
nine is your brand story framework now the biggest mistake i see in the whole spectrum of branding
is in and around the brand story so i just want to clear this up once and for all your brand story is
not about your brand it's not about your founders where your founders have come from why they put
the business together where they're going in the future your brand story is not about that your
brand story is about your audience the reason that we love stories so much is we see ourselves in the
stories we see our personalities and and we we see ourselves in the characters of those stories
all of the trials and tribulations they go through all of the challenges the victories they have when
we sit down to read a book or we watch a movie we're so engrossed because we're connected to
the characters and the reason that we're connected to the characters is that we see ourselves in them
if you produce a story about your brand and tell your customers a story about your brand they're
not going to be able to see where they fit in to your life as as a brand where they fit into your
story your story needs to be about your customers and if you have an effective story framework that
breaks down you know where they are at the moment before they come across your brand what problems
they have what problems they're going through the challenges that they come up against before
deciding that they need help with your brand the transformation that they go through on the way
to success and then what success feels like on the back of that that is a story that they're going to
be hooked into because they will see themselves in that they will relate to the struggles they
will relate to the story and that is how you hook your audience in with an effective brand story
your brand story is not about your brand it's about your customers and finally critical element
number 10 is your brand identity system now a lot of business owners overlook their brand identity
system as a strategic play or part of their overall brand strategy and that's in fact if if
the business owner in the first place even bothers with a brand strategy a lot of business owners
just take the brand identity as the the brand in and of itself but all the brand identity is
is a strategic tool and it's an opportunity for your brand to communicate the characteristics
that you've identified in the brand strategy when you've identified the personality that you want
your brand to portray when you've identified the difference that you want to make
in your audience's lives all of these elements within your brand strategy shapes your brand
identity so your logo your color palette your typography all of these elements have their
own characteristics that you can use as a tool to get across to your audience what you want them to
understand about your brand when you've identified the characteristics within your personality that
you want your audience to understand when you've identified the characteristics within your tone
of voice that you want your audience to understand you can then align them with your brand identity
with your your color palette with your typography with your image style and all of the critical
elements within your brand are aligned and that's when you have an effective brand strategy
so these are the 10 critical elements that every brand must have in their brand strategy
so if you are building a brand then really sit down and go through each and every one of these
elements and make sure that each one of them is ticked off as you build your strategy because
if you leave one of these critical elements out then your brand is not going to be aligned you
need to have every single one of them in there in order for your your brand to to have an effective
strategy in order for it to be aligned and for you to be able to communicate effectively with
your audience i hope this video helped if it did then hit the subscribe button leave any comments
below if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them and I will see you in the next video