The purpose of a brand strategy is to articulate a promise that will be meaningful, pertinent/relevant, and compelling to your customers and prospects. A brand strategy is not about creating an advertising campaign, or developing a new logo or tagline.

Let’s start by understanding branding. Branding is about identifying and articulating your company’s core promise. The promise your company holds out to itself, its customers, its investors, its employees, its business partners. The promise to all your stakeholders. Developing a brand strategy involves understanding what your company is about and what role your brand will place in the market place.

Answer Seven Questions When Developing Your Brand Strategy

A well crafted brand strategy usually entails answering these seven questions:

1. What does your company stand for?
2. What is the promise you’re making and defending in the market?
3. Why do customers/prospects care about this promise?
4. How is the promise distinctive from the competition?
5.  How do you communicate this promise?
6. How will your customers experience this promise?
7. How does the promise compel people to buy from you again and again?

Answering these questions demands a thoughtful, thorough and honest examination of your firm’s people, history, goals, achievements and failures, as well as the marketplace and competition. The answers will influence the business decisions you make regarding new products/services, the markets and partners you pursue. 

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Three Primary Elements for Your Brand Strategy

Incorporate these three elements into your brand strategy.

a. Relevance: Your value proposition must be relevant to your target market, which means that the target market has to be clearly defined.

b. Demonstrated Value: In the B2B world, purchases are generally made for products and services that can be justified. Very few purchases in the B2B space are made impulsively. The stronger you associate the value of your offer the more likely you will be to secure the targetÌs interest and purchase. Understanding what your customers and prospects value necessitates doing research.

c. Differentiation: Your target must understand why you are the best choice. This requires you to be able to clearly differentiate yourself against the competition and demonstrate your advantage. This element will require you to do investigate your competitors positioning  not only by what you see and hear, but also by learning from customers and prospects their perspective of the competition’s strengths, weaknesses, and value proposition.

Your strategy is far more important than the name you choose for your products. Our research suggests that it’s not the name that is hugely important in the long run as long as the name is pronounceable and translates positively.  It’s what is associated with the name that counts. The success of a name is really the function of the implementations of your brand strategy. When choosing a name the three most important considerations are:

• Make sure you have the legal rights to use the word
• The name does not translate into something embarrassing or negative in a foreign language
• The word carries no undesirable connotations

As long as the name does not bring with it any negative baggage, you can create whatever image you want. The goal is to build positive associations for the name and the brand so that it will stand for something unique, relevant, and identifiable that is differentiated from other brands. Just a friendly reminder, it is the experience customers have with your company that will come to have long-term impact.

The Purpose of your Brand Strategy

Oftentimes an outcome of a good brand strategy is a well defined positioning platform. Your brand strategy and positioning platform help differentiate your company from others. The execution of your brand strategy should help your customers and prospects understand why they should buy from you instead of someone else.

The heart and soul of a brand strategy is your promise, which serves as the foundation for your one central compelling message. The message should explain to the qualified leads/opportunities how you can uniquely help their business or solve their problem. This is the connection between your brand strategy, revenue and business results.

Your Opportunity to Prospect Ratio Is Indicative of Your Strategy

When you’re confident that your product addresses the needs and wants of your target, but your qualified lead/opportunity to prospect ratio is off, then you may need to revisit your brand strategy. Brand strategy may be the issue when opportunities are truly qualified and planning to buy but ultimately purchase from someone else. A key attribute of your brand strategy and its execution should help targets understand why they should buy from you instead of someone else. Therefore a good measure for how well your brand strategy is performing is your opportunity to prospect ratio.

Once you formulate your brand strategy, we encourage you to define the behavioral commitments of your target at each step within the buying pipeline. We can facilitate these workshops to  help you address brand strategy, positioning, and your customer journey mapping. 

FAQ:

1. What does your company stand for?
2. What is the promise you’re making and defending in the market?
3. Why do customers/prospects care about this promise?
4. How is the promise distinctive from the competition?
5. How do you communicate this promise?
6. How will your customers experience this promise?
7. How does the promise compel people to buy from you again and again?

1. Relevance: Your value proposition must align with your target market’s needs.
2. Demonstrated Value: In B2B, purchases are justified by clear, research-backed value.
3. Differentiation: Your target must understand why you are the best choice, based on competitive analysis and customer insights.

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