What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video I'm gonna explain brand strategy in five simple steps so you can
understand why the demand for strategically developed brands is
increasing and how you can go about developing brand strategies for your own
business or for your clients.
now if you're a subscriber welcome back if you're new to the channel and you want
actionable brand strategy tips and techniques to grow your business well then click on that
subscribe button and the notification bell and you'll be well on your way now I've been in the
branding game for around about ten years or so and I've spoken with hundreds of
entrepreneurs and business owners and I've spoken to a lot of other designers
and strategists about their clients as well and the general consensus seems to
be that branding is something that's visual and branding is a task that the
entrepreneur or business owner needs to undertake in order to provide a look and
feel for their business and I've been there I've been on the other side of
that I provided those logos and provided those websites and handed over that
request to the client they've asked me for those services and I've handed them
over and I've seen what happened after that once I hand over the logo and I
hand over the website I go back months or week later and check on what it is
that they're doing how they're managing their brand how they're marketing
how they're speaking to their audience and there is no action going on at all on
their social pages on their website and I can't see any kind of evidence of
marketing so they've asked me for a logo on a website believing that that is
what they needed to be successful with their business and they didn't really
have any other plan after that they didn't know how they were gonna speak to
their audience what personality they were gonna use for characteristics they
were going to display how they were gonna be different to their competitors
what kind of messages they were gonna send out there what kind of stories they
were going to tell they didn't really have any kind of plan and that's exactly
what brand strategy provides so branding goes far beyond
those visuals far beyond the logo and the look and feel and the typography and
colour palette and it's about influencing the perceptions of the audience as to
how they should see the brand and that distinction is really really important
influencing perceptions because that's what branding is at the end of the day
it's about bringing an audience in a business closer together and the way we
do that is by influencing their perceptions about that business now of
course the look and feel gives us a tool to influence how they see the brand but
there are far many more tools of influence within the brand than just
that look and feel so brand strategy gives us those other tools that would
influence the audience as to how they perceive the brand and ultimately the
decision to buy and those tools include what the brand stands for what it
believes how it behaves in the marketplace why it's different to its
competitors how it's going to speak to the audience who that audience is and
what they feel and what they really desire and you know what kind of
personality they're going to be attracted to what characteristics the
brand should display and the message that it should send out into the
marketplace what tone of voice is it gonna use and what stories is it going
to tell all of these considerations are tools that can influence the audience's
perception of that brand and of that business so that they feel that it's a
brand and a business that might appeal to them that might resonate with them
more on a human level so again going back to that influence influencing
perceptions is what we're trying to do with a brand and we have far more tools
at our disposal than those visuals so let's look at five steps that you can
take to develop a brand strategy for your brand step number one discovery now
if you go ahead and ask any kind of service provider in the world whether
it's a dentist a plumber financial planner before they can go and fix a
problem they need to understand what the problem is and that's what the discovery
session is all about it's all about sitting down with the business leaders
and really understanding everything that you need to understand before going
ahead and developing a solution to their problem and the information
that you need to gather here is broken up into four categories that's the
information that you need on their business and their industry the
information that you need on their audience their competitors and of course
their goals as well what is it that they're trying to achieve if you're able
to gather all of that information then you're gonna have a solid foundation on
which you can build your brand strategy step number two strategy development now
this is where the real strategic work begins and there are a couple of ways
that you can approach this the first is a workshop environment so this is a real
collaborative environment where you sit down with the business owners and you
basically develop the elements of the brand in collaboration with them now
this can take anywhere between a day to two three four days even a week it really
depends on the scope of the project and the size of the business but essentially
you're collaborating here with the business leaders to develop the elements
of the brand that you can polish off later on now the second way is to do a
research and development session in isolation so taking that work and that
information from the discovery session and developing out the brand in
isolation and touching base with the clients here and there to get a little
bit of input from them but essentially one is in a workshop environment in
collaboration with the business leaders and the other is in isolation through
research and development taking the information from the discovery session
and the third way of course is a hybrid between the two taking the time to sit
down with your business leaders for a day or two and then taking that
information and developing out that brand later on there are a few different ways
that you can approach this strategy development but again going back to that
brand strategy and the elements of that brand strategy you're really trying to
develop out here exactly what the brand is standing for that solid foundation
and what the business leaders believe in and then of course defining the
difference that the brand is going to make in the marketplace what is that
differentiation strategy and how's it going to differ from all of those
competitors and then of course developing out that personality and that
tone of voice before the messaging and the story so there's a lot of
information and a lot of elements in the brand developed within this
session but what you're left with at the end is a brand that oozes clarity step
number three identity development now any business leader that has taken the
time to work on a brand strategy here is at a distinct advantage because most
business leaders start a brand development process at this step they
believe that it's a visual identity that they need and they haven't bothered with
any of that strategy stuff so they don't have a tone of voice they don't have a
personality a differentiation strategy or a position in the market they don't
really know who it is that they're talking to in terms of their audience
and they don't have a message or a story that's gonna resonate with them so any
business leader or brand that has taken the time to develop out a brand strategy is
at a significant advantage but this step here is all about infusing
characteristics of the brand strategy into the visual identity so again that's
another advantage to having that brand strategy is that you have identified the
characteristics that are going to appeal most to who that audience is so you want
to take those characteristics into the visual identity development session and
really infuse those visuals with those characteristics because that's the key
here those characteristics are how you can communicate strategy visually and
the more characteristics that you're able to infuse into your visuals the
more effective your visual strategy is going to be step number four brand
launch now this isn't about putting up a website and leaving it there that's not
what's gonna grow your brand you need to actively put your brand out there you
need to actively market to your audience so having a distinct understanding about
who your audience is and where they're congregating is really important and you
will have done a lot of this work in the brand strategy development phase in
terms of understanding where your audience is congregating but when it
comes to launching your brand you need a marketing strategy in place you need to
understand where you're going to put your messages how you're going to put
your messages out there are you going to use social media organic post are you
gonna use social paid ads are you going to use SEO Google AdWords content
marketing how are you going to get your messages
out there and how you're gonna resonate with who your audience is where are they
gonna be most open to your messages and step number five brand management now
building a brand is not done in a day and again you don't just put up a logo
on a website and call it a day that's not how brands are built it doesn't take
a day it takes weeks or months or even years to really raise that brand
awareness and this is all about listening to your audience yes it's
about getting those initial customers in the door and then speaking to them
asking them what they want talking to them about their challenges so you can
further refine your messaging you can further refine your offer you can
further optimize your websites you're giving them more of what they want so
managing a brand is all about listening to the audience it's all about
understanding what they want and then tailoring your brand optimizing your
brand and developing your brand to give them more of what they want so this is a
task that takes time it's a task that takes ongoing nurturing and that's how
brands are built at the end of the day brands are built by nurturing not by
broadcast marketing not by broadcasting messages out there and just expecting
sales to come in their droves it's about nurturing it's about listening to who
the audience is and giving them more of what they want
now the third brand strategy has been around for many many years but up until
recently it's really only been reserved for much bigger brands yes bigger brands
have had brand strategists in-house they have had brand managers managing their
brand ongoing but as far as small business owners are concerned brand
strategy is really only coming to the forefront now and although I have said
that most business owners and entrepreneurs believe that branding is
about the visuals that is slowly changing yes there is a big gap to close
but more and more small business owners understand that branding is about far
more than just those visuals and when you have you know public speakers like
Gary Vaynerchuk and Richard Branson and Grant Cardone
all talking about the importance of branding and brand strategy
then entrepreneurs are going to be listening and that's why we're seeing
a much higher demand in these brand strategy services because these smaller
business owners understand that they are building a brand if they're going to
build a business then they need to build a brand around that business and a logo
on a website is not gonna do it for them if you like this video please give it a
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strategy tips and techniques like this well then head on over to
BrandMasterAcademy.com and get yourself signed up for the list it is free and I do keep
some exclusive tips for that list so get yourself involved but I'd love to hand
it over to you now what is your experience when it comes to brand
strategy are you building a brand for yourself are you trying to implement
strategy for the first time or are you speaking to clients about brand strategy
and about the importance of brand strategy and if so what kind of
conversations are happening there and what kind of pushback are you getting are
you finding that you're needing to explain what brand strategy is time and
again I'd love to hear what your comments are what your questions are
I'll do my best to answer all of those questions until next time brand like a
master and I will see you in the next video!