Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this video you're gonna learn
how to create a brand strategy using this 14 step roadmap used by some of the
now when you build a brand for yourself or for a client essentially what you're doing is you're building an
entity that's going to connect a business to a group of people and try as
you might a logo and a brand identity is not gonna help you do that you need to
first understand who the audience is and what they want and then devise a plan to
show them that your business has what they want in a way that's gonna resonate
with them best and that's exactly what the brand strategy is so why is brand
strategy so important well if you have products or services that you want to
sell to ultimately grow your business then you want to give your business the
best possible chance to grow now if you think of any team in the world any
professional team in the world then they work hard on their techniques they
understand who their competitors are including their weaknesses and then they
go and devise a plan to go out and beat them now does this mean that every
team is successful because they have a strategy no but every successful team
does have a strategy and the same is said for every successful brand in the
world they all have a strategy for success so now that you know that you
need a brand strategy you just go out and whip one up right well it's not that
easy and although most businesses do understand that they need some kind of
brand strategy most don't know how to go out and develop one and that's what
we're gonna clear up in this video right now with this 14 step roadmap step
number one develop your internal brand now this is the very first step in the
brown building process and even some business owners who do understand the
value of brand strategy tend to skim over this quite quickly but it is a
really important step because it provides a solid foundation for your
brand and if your brand doesn't have a solid foundation it doesn't take long
for the cracks to appear so your internal brand includes your purpose
your vision your mission and your values and it's really important that this
stems from the leadership team because it is the leadership team
that directs the brand and if there's not a solid belief behind why
the brand exists then as I said it won't take long before cracks appear so
develop your internal brand stemming from who the brand leadership team is
and you'll have that solid foundation in place step number two define your target
audience now in order for any business to survive and then thrive they need
some kind of value that certain people want and these certain people are a
group and that is who your target audience is and it's your job as a brand
builder brand manager brand leader to understand these people as intimately as
you can understand everything about them so use every tool at your disposal to
paint a picture of who they are so your demographics your psychographics
understand the challenges their pain points and ultimately get to their
emotions because it's through their emotions that you're gonna be able to
really understand them empathize with them and connect with them step number
three map your market landscape now if there is a group of people that want
what you have then chances are there are a group of competitors already serving
those people so you need to understand that group of competitors as well as you
can because you need to understand what your audience already has available to
them in the marketplace why because you don't want to offer the same thing you
want to be different you want to give your audience something that they don't
already have as an option in the marketplace because if you just go out
into the market and offer the same as what's already out there you're just
contributing to market noise and you're not giving your audience a reason to
turn their heads and look towards your brand step number four uncovering your
market position so at this stage you'll understand who your audience is and
you'll understand who your competitors are and that is a clear picture of your
market landscape and having a clear picture of your market landscape allows
you to see gaps and opportunities in the market where you might be able to fill
and go in and give yourself or give your audience something that they don't
already have already so you need to understand those gaps and start to ask
some questions as to how you can be different how are you gonna be better
faster more convenient just a better option for your audience in the
marketplace to give them that reason to turn their heads that difference that
you're gonna make in their lives is gonna be the reason that
they turn and look towards your brand and ultimately choose your brand over
your competitors step number five shape your brand personality
now once you've defined the position that you want to own in the market
you'll understand the value that you're gonna bring to your audience and the
impact that you're gonna make in their lives so now you need to try and come up
with a plan and devise a plan to convince them of that value and show
them of the impact that you're gonna make in their lives now what we say to
our audience is very important but how we say it will have a big impact on
whether or not our message is received now on a human level we all connect with
people through our personalities through the characteristics that we display and
we connect with other things in the exact same way we connect with brands in
the exact same way if we see personality if we see characteristics that we're
attracted to then we're far more likely to be open to those messages so
understand who your audience is the characteristics that they're attracted
to and then infuse your message with those characteristics and your audience
will be much more open to your messaging step number six identify your brand's
tone of voice now this is an extension of the personality and another
opportunity to inject characteristics and personality into our brand now we
are in a content driven world today and there is content everywhere we see
advertisements we see social posts content articles videos and each one of
those is an opportunity for our brand to inject characteristics and inject
personality so that we can resonate with who our audience is so understand the
personality that you want your audience to be attracted to that you know that
your audience will be attracted to and then use your tone of voice to inject
more of those same characteristics and if you use that tone of voice across all
of your content then they'll feel a connection to your personality they'll
feel a connection to your brand when compared to you know your competitors
who are at they're just creating content that doesn't have personality that
doesn't have a tone of voice step number seven develop your messaging strategy
now the personality is the how behind your message how are you going to
deliver that message and the characteristics that you're going to use
to resonate there but the messaging strategy
is the what you're going to use so what is it that you're gonna say to convince
your audience that you have some value that's gonna impact their lives what is
it you're gonna say that's gonna connect with them and if you think about us on a
human level when we're in to introduce to something new we all think the same
way we all have this subconscious thought of what's in it for me that is a
primal instinct that we have and that's related to our reptilian brain we're
always thinking what's in it for me is this a threat is it a danger or is it
some value that's gonna help me survive so that is the first thought when we
have that we have when we come into contact with something new and that is
the first itch that we need to scratch with our messaging we need to scratch
that what's in it for me itch so we need to break our messaging up into a series
of key messages that's first gonna scratch that itch and tell them the
value that we're gonna offer in their lives but then we're gonna follow those
messages up with messages that show them that our brand is more than just a
transactional brand we want more from this relationship than just the
transaction than just their money and that is what the follow-up messages will
do so we need to split our messaging strategy up into messaging that's gonna
prove the value of our brand that's gonna show them that we have value to
offer and messages that are going to show them that we want more from this
relationship than just their transaction step number eight craft your brand story
now as humans we are fascinated by story and this is because it was the primary
way to pass information on from one generation to the next so it's built
into our DNA and when we hear stories we just listen more intently we're more
engaged and you know we always want to hear what the next step is and what
the end of the story is so that's built into our DNA and that's why we listen to
story and remember story far far more effectively than we do simple fact
sharing and this has been proven by neuroscience and we're actually 22 times
more likely to remember story based information than we are to remember fact
based information so if you're able to show your audience why your brand is
different and the impact that your brand can make in their
lives through a story or series of stories well then they're gonna listen
far more intently they're gonna be more open to that story because it's part of
their DNA step number nine develop your name and tagline now it might seem
pretty late in the process to be creating the brand name and the tagline
and this actually flies in the face of most brand building processes because
what you'll find is that most businesses and you know most brand names are
created by the business owner very very early in the business development stage
and it's usually created because you know they like the name or you know
they're emotionally attached to it some kind of way but if you think about what
brand name and taglines are they're just another communication tool and
another strategic tool to be able to send a message to your audience and
plant a seed in their mind so if you also think about the information that we
now have at hand we know the position that we want to own in the mind of our
audience we know who our audience is we know why we're different to our
competitors the personality that we want the characteristics that we want to
deliver the messages the stories we have all of this information at hand now so
we're in a much better position to be able to name the brand and develop the
tagline to plant the seed in the mind of our audience as to why our brand is
different what we want our audience to remember about our brand so we need to
take all of the information that we've gathered and developed up until this
point and use that when developing the brand name and the tagline step number
10 design your brand identity now this is where most business owners start the
branding process they'll go out into the market look for a designer to design
them a logo and then they'll deem themselves branded and away they go
but this really puts a bit of context into the idea that a brand is not a logo
because at this point in the stage we have developed 90% of the brand all of
the work that we've done up until this point all of that strategic work is 90%
of the brand and now we're just bringing it to life visually through the visual
identity and that's where we design you know the logo the typography the colour
palette the image style and all of these now put
more emphasis on the visual identity on that brand identity before if you're
developing a visual identity as the starting point for your brand well then
you don't have all of that strategic information and therefore your brand
identity doesn't have that strategic input but now you have all of that
information and now you can develop and design a brand identity that is speaking
to who the audience is that is delivering a message based on the
personality and the characteristics so through the brand strategy the brand
identity becomes more important because it has all of that information at hand
to use in the brand design process step number eleven craft your brand
collateral now this is where your strategy and your identity come together
and this is the dressing room for your brand launch so everything from your
purpose to your typography your color palette to your positioning strategy to
your personality to your image style they all come together through your
collateral so everything from your website to your brochures your business
cards your advertisements your billboards your point of sale any piece
of collateral any form of physical or digital communication from your brand is
part of your brand collateral suite so you need to develop that in this stage
and at that stage you are ready then to go ahead and launch your brand you have
all the tools at hand that are laced with your strategy and your identity and
you're ready to go step number 12 devise your brand awareness strategy now we've
already done some groundwork with audience in terms of understanding who
they are and this point in the brand building process we're going to find
where they're congregating so we need to understand where they hang out online
where they hang out physically where they congregate where they go to for
information about the problem that we have that our brand solves and where
they're gonna be most likely to be open to our messages then we need to
prioritize those congregations in terms of where our messages are going to be
most effective and develop specific messages for each of those environments
so that is what the brand awareness strategy does yes we've devised how
we're going to communicate to our audience what messages were gonna say
how we're gonna resonate with them through our characteristics and our
personality and their tone of voice through our brand strategy that we have
developed but now we're getting more into the tactical side of getting our
brand out into the marketplace and this is where marketing comes into play so
our brand awareness strategy and our marketing strategy are one in the same
and we need to tactically decide where we're gonna place our messages and where
to prioritize those messages step number thirteen launch your brand so you've
done all the hard work here you've developed all of your communication
you've developed your visual identity and your tactical strategy to place your
messages out into the market and now it's about executing now the type of
budget that you have will have a big impact on how quickly you move here if
you're working with a decent-size budget and you've got Google Ads to play with
Facebook Ads to play with then you can reach a lot more people through that
budget but if you don't have a budget then your marketing efforts are gonna be
a lot more guerilla-style you're gonna be doing a lot more hard work rolling up
the sleeves and getting stuck in there on forums and chats and really trying to
put your name out into the marketplace through those free platforms so
depending on your budget will depend on how quickly you can make an impact but
it's important to keep that perspective and it's also important to determine
what success looks like within your brand awareness strategy so how are you
gonna approach the marketplace and what's your strategy gonna look like in
three months time how are you gonna define whether or not that strategy was
a success so as you launch a brand keep that perspective in mind if you've got a
budget you're gonna make more impact if you've got less of a budget you're gonna
make less of an impact but keep that perspective so you don't get overwhelmed
and finally step number fourteen analyze optimize and evolve now a huge advantage
that business owners have today compared to 15 years ago or even 10 years ago is
the level of data that is available so analytics is a very very useful tool and
whether you do this yourself or engage somebody to help you it's important that
somebody understands the power of analytics and to be able to analyze that
data so you can see whether or not needle is moving or not and then it's a
case of optimizing improving evolving do more of what's working do less of what's
not make those changes be nimble and evolve over time and that is how you're
going to find out what it is that your audience is responding to what they're
not responding to and then do more of what they're responding to so if you
didn't know already but you probably did you can see now that a brand is far more
than a logo but luckily for you 90% of your competitors are still going out
into the market looking for a designer to design them a logo and away they go
they don't have any messaging they don't have a position in the market they don't
understand their competitors their audience and they're not connecting with
them they're not resonating with them so what you need to do now you need to make
that advantage work for you follow this 14 step framework and develop a brand
strategy for your brand so you can start connecting resonating with who your
audience is and you can start moving that needle raising that brand awareness
and growing your brand but I'd love to know if you learned something new from
this video if you did hit that subscribe button and hit the notification bell as
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directly into your inbox but I want to hand it over to you now is there
anything that you've learned from this video do you now know that a brand is
more than a logo of course you know you knew that already but is there any
more steps that you can introduce into your brand building process to help you
connect and resonate with who your audience is if you've got any queries or
any questions or any challenges at all in relation to building a strategic
brand please let me know in the comments below I'll do my best to answer all of
those messages until the next time brand like a master and I will see you in the next video!