4 steps to creating a great brand strategy that drives results

Developing a brand strategy is one of the most important tasks in terms of growing a successful business.

In order to develop a brand strategy, it’s first necessary to define exactly who the company is as a brand. What do they want to achieve? How they want to be portrayed to their target audience? These questions will guide the start of strengthening the professional services offered and determine how they align with the business’s objectives.

It’s easiest to break up the development of a brand’s strategy into the following steps.

 step 1: identifying the target audience

Determining a brand’s target audience will be a kick-start into answering the question of how best to communicate the brand. Making sure that the brand is marketing in a way that takes their clients’ perspectives and priorities in mind is key. The best way to discover a brand’s target audience, is through systematic research.

Begin this research by developing client personas. Define the demographics and psychographics of the current or desired audience.

demographics:

• Age

• Ethnicity

• Gender

• Income

• Marital status

 psychographics:

• Personality

• Lifestyle

• Interests

• Values

Next, research the competition through Google, social media, or direct conversations. This research will give insight of the language to use that will best resonate with the target audience, building brand awareness with the right group of people.

step 2: developing a wow website

This is the single most important step in developing a brand’s strategy. The website is likely the first place that prospective clients will go to learn more about a brand or services, which means that if it gives off the wrong message, they will be turned away. The website must be clear, concise, eye-catching, user-friendly, and convey the brand’s message in a way that targets and nurtures the audience’s pain points.

There are many steps that go into developing a wow website, and it’s extremely important to not only nail down every single one of them, but also consistently track how it’s performing and making regular updates.

step 3: developing a content marketing strategy

Now that the target audience and language has been clearly determined and defined, and a wow website has been created, it’s time to develop a strategy for business personalized content marketing. This is where a business will use their marketing tool kit to attract, engage, and retain their target audience by creating and sharing content on their relevant platforms such as, Google business, social media, and their website.

A brand’s strength is driven by reputation and visibility, so keeping a brand’s content consistent with up-to-date SEO keywords is crucial in staying relevant in the eyes of their target audience.

This step can prove to be time consuming with a lot of trial and error. If you need help with curating consistent, relevant, and innovative content, reach out to Vervology. Vervology is experienced in creating content with SEO for small businesses that drives social media engagement.

step 4: implementing, tracking, and adjusting

This step seems obvious, but it’s not uncommon for a business to develop a perfect brand strategy, only for it to fall in the cracks when things get hectic, never to be implemented. If a business is not keeping up with tracking website traffic, social media analytics, and reactions from their customers or clients, then the brand strategy falls apart.

It’s also important to note that once the brand strategy is development, implemented, and tracked, it’s not set in stone to the point where it can’t be adjusted over time. Trends changes quickly in digital marketing, meaning a business’s strategy can and should adjust to those changes.

Keeping a relevant brand strategy is a fulltime job (four to six weeks to develop + long term efforts), and many small business owners don’t have the time to give it the amount of attention and effort that it needs to thrive. When this is the case, it’s best to seek help from a third-party company that is experienced in making these adjustments a priority.

Contact Vervology

Vervology offers brand design and development, digital strategy and marketing, and content creation and social media management to take the process of brand strategy off the hands of businesses completely, so that they can do what they do best – run their business.

If you’re in need of creating or revamping your business’s brand strategy, visit Vervology’s website for a full list of services that drive results.