How to Create a Brand Strategy for Your Business

In today’s marketplace more people than ever are starting their own businesses. Whether they’re small, local shops dedicated in serving the community surrounding them, or if they’re startup giants dominating Silicon Valley, every person has the opportunity to create and thrive in a business of their own making. But with so much competition, how do business owners set their visions apart from the rest? The answer is simple: Branding. JustFly reviews must-do’s for every business looking to successfully brand themselves in today’s over saturated and competitive market.

One of the largest misconceptions about branding is that people naturally assume that it can be reduced to an image. Iconic brands like Nike have successfully associated their brand to the “swish” logo they’ve created, but it’s naïve to believe that Nike’s brand is simply the swish. A brand is the direction in which you want to take your company, how you want it to move and grow within its industry. Though consistency in designs, colours, or images allow consumers to associate your brand with an image, it is not the be-all, end-all of your brand. When articulating your business and brand strategy, creating a direction that will elicit a positive and emotional response from consumers is your main goal.

Now that you’ve established your vision, translating the vision into a cohesive and manageable message is the next step in establishing your brand according to JustFly. This is where the positive, emotional response comes to play. To fully understand this step, take one of the core values your business has, for example reliability, and begin to translate why and how your business is reliable. Insurance companies are a great example of how they brand themselves as reliable; like Allstate’s “you’re in good hands” message (or slogan), every marketing, advertising and branding effort reflects on this core message. Reinforcing these key words to your consumer allows them to relate to your business in a way that is meaningful to them.

Your brand story, voice and imagery is the way in which you directly target your audience and consumers. This isn’t necessarily new idea as brands have spent years cultivating relationships with their consumers, but with the rise of social media branding a business becomes a multi-layered platform, one where visual imagery—and not necessarily words alone—create the message. Lifestyle and retail brands like Lululemon actively reflect their brand story and voice through visuals on their blogs, Instagram and community pages. They engage their customers and followers in ways that allow even more direct B2C communication than ever before. This helps create and solidify a business’ brand, allowing it, once again, to move forward.

Branding isn’t a one-stop shop; it’s constantly evolving, growing and moving in order to fit the needs of consumers and customers, yet remaining true to the core values that established your business in the first place.

Author: BusinessVibes

BusinessVibes is a free B2B social media network built for global trade professionals. Our goal is to connect like-minded businesses from all over the world. Our app allows users to connect with companies all over the world and instant message them directly and lets you create your own online product gallery... View full profile ›

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How to Create a Brand Strategy for Your Business