What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in
this video you're going to learn 10 brand strategy workshop questions
that you can use to leverage the intimate knowledge of your
leadership team and develop a strategic brand that's
built to succeed.
now if you're new to the channel and you want actionable brand strategy tips and
techniques to grow your business well then hit that subscribe button and
the notification bell as well and you will be well on your way
make sure you stick around to the end of the video and grab your brand strategy
workshop questions checklist which you can download for free now before we go
diving into the questions let's understand first what a brand
strategy workshop is a brand strategy workshop is a meeting
between a brand strategist and the leadership team to first
understand the business and what it's all about what it wants to
become and then to look at the competitive landscape
and who the audience is so that they can collaborate together to map
a plan for the brand to go out and express itself now to uncover the best
way forward you need collaboration and creative thinking and you also need
tools to be able to uncover the critical information and one of the best tools
are questions so in this video I'm going to go through 10 questions
that you can take into your brand strategy workshops question number one
what is the story of how and why your business
was started now you're asking this question
to really uncover the why behind the business why was the business
started in the first place what is that story what is the founder's story
now you may use this later on in storytelling but that's not why you're
asking this question you're really asking this question to
get underneath the idea of how and when the business
was started and more importantly why the business was started question
number two what is the brand that we're building going to look like
in five to ten years time so here you're tapping in
to that aspiration what their vision is for the future what do they really have
in mind for this brand to grow into because
you need to understand that in order to be able to help them get there so
you're really tapping into their hopes and dreams for the future here and that
will really open up the conversation question number three as the brand grows
what should remain constant about what you do so you're doing a
couple of things with this question first of all you're tapping into those
aspirations and you're getting them excited
about what their possibilities are for the brand in the future but the other
thing that you're doing is you're setting in place that solid
foundation and you're getting clarity on what they're committed to
question number four what reputation do you want your brand to build
in the way you go about your business now with this question
you're really tapping into how they want to be perceived
in the marketplace and what they hold dear as a business so this is really
important and adds to that foundation but it also adds
to how the brand is going to influence its audience
question number five who is your ideal customer and what does their life look
like so this question obviously opens up the
idea of who we're trying to appeal to with this
brand and there might be more than one ideal customer but in asking the
question the way you have asking about what their life looks like
you're going beyond just the demographics and the psychographics
you're tapping into the life they lead the problems that they have
and you're really trying to understand what their life is like because
by understanding what their life is like you can start to understand
the emotions they go through so this really opens up into a broader
conversation but it's really important to get the ball rolling
in terms of understanding who the brand is trying to appeal to question number
six what problems do you solve for your
perfect client and what impact does that have on their lives so
here you're really tapping into why your brand exists
and the challenges and the problems that your brand helps your perfect client
to overcome and in asking this question you're really
getting down into not just what the problems are but the
impact that those problems have in the audience's life in the client's life so
you're really tapping into the emotion here and this is when it really
opens up and it really starts to go deep in terms of your understanding
of who the client is and the more you understand about them the more you
understand about their journey and the emotions that they go through and the
challenges and the problems that they have and what they want to
overcome what they want to achieve what their goals are
then you can really start to connect with them you can really
start to uncover ways to resonate with who they are and what
they're going through question number seven
who is already solving their problems and how are they going about it
so here you're looking at who the competitors are in
the competitive landscape but you're looking at them from your audience's
point of view so of course you're going to see what
they're doing well and why your shared audience
might go with your competitors but you're also looking at your competitors
from your audience's point of view as to what they're not getting
from those competitors and this helps to identify gaps
so the critical aspect of this question is to not just understand
who the competitors are but to understand them from your audience's
perspective and from their shoes so you can uncover
gaps in the market question number eight why should your
audience choose you over your competitors now this is a very
direct question to the leadership team and it really does put them on the spot
and sometimes they may have never considered this question
because they've just gone into the marketplace and they've assumed that
their audience knows exactly how they can help them but this
really shifts the conversation and helps your
leadership team to step inside the shoes of your audience and look inwards at the
brand to understand why exactly would our audience choose us
and have we given them a reason to choose us
and if not what should that reason be so this
really starts to uncover the position that the brand might take
in the marketplace and it's a great question for opening up the conversation
with the leadership team question number nine what exactly do you
want your audience to understand about your brand
and how you can help them so the previous question would have set in
place the position that the brand is going to take
in the market but here we're getting into more specifics and you're getting
into the nitty-gritty of messaging so now you know the position
that the brand is going to take what messages are you going to send out
to that audience to help influence their mind so they position
that brand in the place that you've identified so
this really uncovers and it forces the leadership team to think
beyond just the position and to think about
specifics that they want the audience to understand
about the brand and question number 10 if your brand was human
how would it speak to your audience so I really like this question
because the leadership team often get excited because they start to feel like
they know the brand at this point they've gone through
a lot of questions and who the brand is from a human perspective really starts
to come to life and it starts to feel tangible like they know
who it is so as I said this can be a fun exercise so take the time with the
leadership team but really focus on drawing out those characteristics
so you can then take those and apply that to your messaging and your
positioning later on now although I've only given you 10 questions here
each one of these questions are foundational and they open up the
door to multiple other questions and answers so if you take each one of
these 10 questions into your brand strategy workshops and
make sure you ask these to your leadership team
I guarantee you that the information that you will get by the end of your
brand strategy workshop will make you feel like you have a vivid
picture of the brand that you're trying to build who you're
trying to build it for and what difference
that brand is going to make in the marketplace on top of that
through the collaboration the leadership team will feel that this brand has been
built from their ideas their thoughts their
opinions and their beliefs as well so they'll be
fully committed to its success and they'll be right behind the brand
strategy that you develop now if you want all of these questions
in a really handy checklist the link on screen
will take you to that free download and I'll leave a link in the description
below as well but I'd love to hand it back over to you now I'd love to hear
your experiences when it comes to brand strategy workshops do you have a series
of questions that you ask every time you go into them
do you have a process that you use if you have any questions or challenges
around brand strategy workshops let me know
in the box below I'll do my best to answer all of those if you like this
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that list and there's plenty of resources on there as well
if you want to build brand strategies from scratch but as I said
I would love to hear from you your experiences your challenges
I'll do my best to answer all of those until next time brand like a master
and I will see you in the next video!