What is Brand Strategy?
Hello Friends,
So much of what I do as a strategist and fractional CMO/Head of Brand is centered on educating business leaders and the c-suite on the power their brand has across multiple functions and outputs.
There’s no shortage of tactics and channels, but increasingly evident is the need for an objective perspective from a business point of view to drive action and revenue. What’s needed is a brand strategy to help illuminate the way forward.
Back in 2016 when working directly with a President within the IDG Media family of brands out of Boston, I was asked to stand in front of the whole organization during their town hall meeting and talk about their brand is away that was both aspirational and motivational.
I delivered it and the whole organization was buzzing with optimism and enthusiasm for the change we were driving, going from a revenue-first mentality to a customer-first mentality. Remember, a brand is NOT what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it.
This wasn’t the last time I was asked to give a talk centered around this concept, which got me thinking about how to articulate the value of your brand strategy in a way that is memorable and not too wordy.
Enter the 5Ws and 1H of branding - a digestible way to look at branding and the impact it has on your organization.
WHAT IS BRAND STRATEGY?
Brand Strategy is the long-term plan to outmaneuver the competition through radical differentiation. Put another way, it’s your plan to win customers and revenue while staying relevant and ahead of the curve.
The key term here is “long-term plan” because your brand strategy should be rooted in proactive thinking as opposed to reactive tactics. Too many organizations get into trouble because they allow shiny-bright-new-objects to dictate their strategy and by the time they realize this is wrong, it’s too late.
Who can use brand strategy?
There are two parts to this W: 1) what types of organizations can benefit from having a brand strategy, and 2) inside the organization, who should be leveraging it?
All organizations can benefit from having a long-term plan to win. Whether you’re a start-up with a gazillion dollar idea, or a non-profit helping the elderly, a brand strategy is essential to not only sustain your current position but in winning new customers and market share.
With a proper brand strategy, usage will come from many departments/positions within the organization. Here are a select few examples:
C-Suite: Ensuring the business goals, objectives, and strategic imperatives are all aligned and to some extent, ensuring the appropriate budget is allocated towards the right drivers.
Marketing: Maintaining the strategic positioning, voice & tone, and design guidelines across every marketing touchpoint and output. This is a lot more involved than it sounds as we all are realizing the endless amount of touchpoints and opportunities for customers to interact with our brand.
HR: From hiring and talent acquisition to being culture evangelists, your HR department needs a brand strategy more than you think. They need to embody the core values of the organization for it to shine through.
Customer Service: Often the front lines to your customers, your customer service personnel need to understand the core values and voice of the brand so they can accurately represent the organization, especially when dealing with customers who may not be happy. There is also a strong sentiment to say all employees are in customer service, in which case, the same rules apply.
Sales: Too many times I’m brought into organizations where the sales staff has gone rogue and not only are they designing their own PPTs, 🤦♂️ but they’re using messaging that is either not true or so off-positioned that it might as well be. A unified voice, positioning, and design for your sales staff will lead to greater profits and a better overall culture.
Why do you need a brand strategy?
Would you sail a boat without coordinates? Would you drive to Billings, Montana without a map or directions? Would you blindly try ax throwing with a crowd of people around?
I suspect you answered NO to all those questions (at least I hope so) and that is the exact reason why you not only need a brand strategy but why that brand strategy needs to be updated and worked on thought the year. I recommend a quarterly assessment to always stay ahead.
When should you think about putting together a brand strategy?
This really depends on your business. A start-up in hyper-growth mode has different needs than a mature non-profit and a product-driven organization is way different than a service organization.
If you’re not actively working on ensuring your brand strategy is in alignment with your marketing and business strategy, then consider this your wake-up call.
Where does your brand strategy live?
In a PDF hidden on your internal server or Google Drive, duh! 😂 🤦♂️
All jokes aside, it physically should live in tandem with your design guidelines in a brand playbook. This could be a PDF or a branded PPT, but the idea is to make it accessible to everyone. From there you can design awesome internal culture pieces and pocket guides because consistency is key in branding.
How do you leverage your brand strategy?
Your brand strategy is pulled through in all the activities your organization executes. From talent acquisition to retention. From your marketing to how your products/services are conceived and designed, to your website, social media, mobile apps to how you process documentation — your brand strategy lives within all these functions and should serve as the anchor and north star.
Reflecting back on that town hall meeting I spoke at in 2016, while some of my language and verbiage were different back then, the core tenants of the power of brand hasn’t changed all that much.
For years after our engagement with the company, our client, who has since moved on, would still contact me to tell me how much my thought process changed how she viewed not only the company and her leadership style, but how to engage with customers, employees, and the board.
Branding reverberations that ring true even today.
Have a question/comment/curiosity on how to leverage your brand strategy to win? Want to inquire about how I can help? Respond to this email or shoot me a TWEET.
As always, I’m all👂’s. Cheers for now!
- Steven
My Current Reading List
👉 Deep Work by Cal Newport (I finished this earlier this week and I highly recommend it)
👉 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (More of a coffee-table book that should be looked at often as it’s brilliantly written and 100% applicable to today’s culture)