Implementing Your Brand Strategy

Developing Your Brand Strategy - 6 Week Course



Developing a brand strategy can be one of the most difficult steps in the marketing plan process. It's often the element that causes most businesses the biggest challenge, but it's a vital step in creating the company identity.

Your brand identity will be repeatedly communicated, in multiple ways with frequency and consistency throughout the life of your business.



To begin the development of your brands strategy you must have an understanding of these four marketing components:

1-Primary Target Customer and/or Client.
2-Competition
3-Product and Service Mix
4-Unique Selling Proposition

By identifying these components of your marketing plan you have created the basis for crafting your brand strategy. An effective branding process will create a unique identity that differentiates you from the competition. That is why it's often deemed as the heart of a competitive strategy.

If you are ready to begin the development of your brand strategy, but need guidance and feedback the Brand Course is just for you. In this 6 week course we will explore the following:
Week 1 - What is Branding?

Week 2 - Define Your Brand

Week 3 - Determine Your Objectives

Week 4 - Focusing on Your Target Audience

Week 5 - Exploring and Defining Brand Barriers

Week 6 - Brand Packaging

How it Works

Each week you will receive a new lesson and assignment to complete. When you have completed the assignment post it in the Marketing Forum. I will review each lesson and coach you through the 6 weeks, by the time you have completed the 6th week you will have created your Brand Strategy. Sign up below to get started today.

1-Determining Your Brand's Objectives

Critical to effective brand management is the clear definition of the brand's audience and the objectives that the brand needs to achieve.
What are the objectives that you hope to achieve with your brand?
Your brand should be comprised of the company personality, image, core competencies and characteristics. The impressions that you make as well as the words people will use to describe your company to others, are the basic framework of your brand.
With a strong brand you build credibility, have more influence on your market, and motivate customers and clients to purchase from you.If done correctly your company will be looked at as a leader not a follower.
To determine your brand objectives ask yourself the following question:
What is it that you want your brand to do for your company?

What do you want others to know and say about your products or services?
Sample objectives may include:
Being recognized by receiving a specific award

Picking up a certain number of choice projects

Gaining a specific number of new clients in the next year

Positioning your company as an industry leader in the next five months

You will find that by defining your objectives with specifictimelinesit is easier to develop a plan of action to achieve those objectives. By defining your objectives you are able to map out a plan on how to achieve those objectives. Say for example your objective is to position your company as an industry leader. How can you go about doing this? You could:
Have members of your team speak at Trade Shows

Schedule lectures at professional group gatherings within your industry

Write and publish articles in newspapers, magazines, or online media

Once you've determined your objectives the next step is to build and develop your brand strategy by listing out how, when, and what you are going to do to accomplish and meet your those brand objectives.
Use the questions above to determine your brand objectives. List each objective and map out how you plan to accomplish and succeed in meeting those objectives. Don't stop there! Once you've finished take time to list out what you can do in the this month or this quarter to meet that objective. Be specific and schedule those action items in your business calendar.


2-Focusing on your Target Audience


Your value proposition must be relevant to your target market. This means your target market must be clearly defined. It's not uncommon for a business to have to refocus and revisit their targeting, especially if it was not clearly identified in the beginning stages of business.
It is necessary to find the right balance when defining your target market in a way that causes your audience to recognize that you are talking specifically to them. This often requires companies to narrow down their target market.
Why is Your Target Market Important in Branding?
It does not matter what your Brand mission is identifying and gaining the devotion of your target audience is the necessary means to reaching those objectives.
To achieve your brand marketing goals it is important that you know your target market inside and out. This requires conducting a market analysis. This market analysis must be as in-depth as possible providing you will all the data you need to reach your target effectively. By knowing your target audience you will be more confident in the steps to take to connect with that audience.

The power of your brand relies on the ability to focus. That is why defining your target market will help to strengthen your brand's effectiveness.
There are two steps in Lesson four of the Developing Your Brand's Strategy course. The first is to conduct and informal market analysis of your target market and the second is to write a target audience definition for your company. The instructions below will walk you through the process of completing both of these steps.


3-Conduct Your Informal Market Analysis


The following questions will help you assess your market analysis. Make your study as complete as possible. Use the Internet to conduct research. You can also read news stories that are related to your target market. This will help you to narrow down your target by interest, demographic, and common trends.
Who is your target audience?

Where is your target audience located?

What do they think about your current brand?

What would you like them to think about your brand?

How will you attract them to your products or services?

Who else is competing for their loyalty and devotion?

Are you targeting business or consumer sectors?
Write Your Target Market Description

Using the questions below write a target market description. Be as specific as you like. The more specific the better.

4-Discover and Crush Your Brand Barriers

Second draft a statement on the type of relationship you would like to have with your clients.

When creating your brand strategy for a product or service it is important to perform a careful analysis to determine principal barriers that you may come in contact with. These barriers are also known as market conditions that can keep your product or service from achieving success.
For example they could include the following:
Competition

Timing

Financing

Location

Lack of Demand

In order to be prepared to face these obstacles or barriers it is important to spend time doing a careful analysis of your product or service. This analysis will assist you not only in the development of your brand, but also in the positioning of your product or service.
A careful and thorough analysis will assist you in answering the following questions:
Do you have a niche market? What problem does your product or service solve or need?

How should you determine the price of your product or service?

Who are your potential customers and where can you find them?

Who are your biggest competitors? What can you do better than them?

How should you advertise? Where will you find your target market? Will you use new media or traditional media?

Now that you have your questions where do you start your market analysis research? Starting your research is actually easier than you think, but it will take time. You will need to dedicate hours to this research in order for it to be useful and effective.

Let's start by visiting some very popular Internet websites that you can use for your market research:
Is there a great demand for your product or service? Find out by using Overture's keyword suggestion tool. By typing in key terms you can see how often your product or service is searched for on the Internet.
Who are your competitors? Investigate them online by using the Profusion Tool. This search tools enables you to drill down to your search topic and even has the ability to notify you when your competitor change or updates their website.
Keep informed on current market conditions and trends in your vertical market by subscribing to trade publications, news alerts, and electronic newsletters. There are several directories available, but you can get started with the few listed below:
EzineLocator

NewsDirectory

KnowThis Publication Directory

Google News Alerts

Who makes up your target market? What are their statistics and economic position? Where are they located? You can find this information by viewing industry surveys and research documents. Get started by using the following resources:
Annual Survey of Small and Medium Size Business

NUA Internet Surveys

Forrester Research

National Association for the Self Employed

National Foundation of Women Business Owners

Fortune Small Business

National Federation of Independent Business

Use the resources and questions above to analyze your market and discover any brand barriers you may come up against. I have no doubt that you will find at least one barrier. When you've located that barrier develop a plan to crush it and move it out of your way so that you can move forward towards success in marketing your business.

5- Continuity: Creating An Image Greater Than The Parts


Let's face it. Every industry loves it's own proprietary language and the world of marketing communications is no different. Today, marketing and advertising is all about branding, but in its early days it was known as positioning and a key element in the effort to establish a marketing identity - regardless of what you call it - is something called continuity. What exactly is that? It's the strategy and process of coordinating all the elements of a marketing message to achieve a consistent, memorable, overall look and feel for a company, service, or product.

 Sounds impressive, doesn't it? It's really all about making sure that everything you do as a company has a coordinated look and feel about it. Graphically, that means creating a standard logo, selecting a corporate color (or colors), a particular typeface, even a photo or illustration style. Content-wise, it means determining key points for your marketing messages that clearly, concisely, and compellingly elucidate your unique selling proposition (there's another one of those industry terms that falls in and out of fashion on a regular basis).


This is not as simple as it sounds. It requires an unfaltering, dedicated effort up and down your marketing chain to avoid going "off message". Time and time again I have seen engineering departments grab logos and typestyles and use them with haphazard abandon on everything from data sheets to PowerPoint presentations. I've seen sales people ignore mandates from the home office and routinely put out their own marketing pieces with not a shred of semblance to the carefully crafted look painstakingly created by their own marketing department. The result is always the same - a dilution of the company's identity and often a related drop in market share in response to the lack of an effective, unified marketing message. That, in turn, requires a needless squandering of precious marketing resources to reestablish the company's former brand awareness in the marketplace.
It doesn't have to be that way. A little discipline and a lot of vigilance can head off these potential image drainers and nip them in the bud before they become a real problem. By paying attention to continuity, your company can reap a multitude of benefits - heightened market visibility, enviable awareness among potential customers, and a more effective use of your marketing budget, yielding the biggest bang for your buck. Overall, a keen eye toward continuity helps you achieve levels of image and branding efficiency unavailable to practitioners of hit-or-miss marketing with little or no image consistency between messages and media.


6- It starts with your corporate identity.

I never cease to be amazed at how casually some companies treat their identity. There's no shortage of firms that use two, three, even four versions of their logo on a regular basis, with no particular rhyme or reason. The same goes for corporate colors - often a victim of one or more employee's personal taste ("I HATE that color, I'm going to use green instead...I think it looks better"). This dilution of image is made even easier by the proliferation of PowerPoint and other tools used by more and more employees. If this is happening to your company, I have three words of advice: STOP IT. NOW.
The longer this practice is allowed to continue, the more it will cost your company. In time, money, image awareness and, ultimately, in market share.
How do you combat this insidious problem? By establishing company-wide standards and maintaining them. Issue a simple style sheet that everyone can understand and follow and then enforce it. That means establishing a corporate color (or colors), a particular typestyle (especially one that is duplicated in computer fonts) and creating a logo that works well in 4-color (the process colors used by printers to print in full color), 2-color (usually black and a particular shade of a color from the Pantone Matching System, identified by a PMS number), and black and white printing. If you create high and low resolution files in these three versions and make them available to the people most likely to need them, you will go a long way toward unifying your image out in the marketplace.

7- And follows through in your message.

Now that you've got your company look under control, it's time to work on your message. This often starts with a mission - or for the more esoteric entrepreneur, a vision - statement. Sure, many of these typically contain a lot of over-heated rhetoric designed to make the board of directors warm and fuzzy, but they CAN be valuable. While others may be long on hyperbolic language and short on real meaning, work to make yours meaningful, concise, actionable, and unique. Be ruthless. Is this who we really are? Is this what we really want to be? Does this really set us apart? Once you've honed your statement to accurately reflect what your company is and what it stands for, it will enable you to create a meaningful slogan or tagline to be used in your marketing messages. Avoid the trite and contrived. "The Leader in (blank)" has been done before. Trust me.

A good tagline will inform every message that follows. It will help flavor copy written for your sales literature, web site, advertising, even internal messaging. It will make generating consistent, focused text easier because it will help set the tone and form the basis of the message. And that message, aided by the consistent visual combination of logo, color, and typestyle - wielded with ruthless discipline -- all combine to create a powerful, memorable marketing impression.



That, my friends, is the power of continuity. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." He was wrong. Consistency, otherwise known as continuity, is the most potent weapon of great marketing minds.



_______________________________________________________________

James D. Schakenbach is President/Managing Partner of SCT Group Inc., a high technology marketing communications agency.

Brand Packaging: Are You Reflecting the Right Company Image?

Branding is your identity in the marketplace, is yours saying what it should? Your company image is all about the appearance of your packaging. What is your company image saying to the marketplace?


It's important to realize that packaging always either has a negative or positive influence on the purchaser. A negative impression can detour a potential customer, just as a positive reaction can influence a customer to buy. A time to pay special attention to your packaging is when you are in the launch of a "new" brand. If you've already built a strong brand that others recognize often people may not pay as close attention to the packaging.
How can you package your brand so that it is an integral part of your business and represents a strong identity? Keep in mind that I am not speaking of packaging has only a box that contains a product, but as a vehicle that reflects your company's brand and image. Packaging can be judged and represented by the following common business tools:
1-business cards and stationery
2-web site
3-answering system
4-email address

What image are you putting across with these business tools that you use everyday? What are they saying about your company? Take a few moments and lets look at each one of these.

What are your business cards and stationery saying? Are they saying we are strong, we are confident, and we can succeed in helping you? Or does it reflect an image that says we are flimsy, our dynamics are minimal, and we will try but we cannot guarantee continuity?
What does your web site say about your company? Does it reflect professionalism, clarity, and show them that you respect and care about them? Or does your web site confuse viewers, project an untrustworthy image of your company and ultimately drive potential customers away?
What does your answering system and call return policy say about your company? Does it say we are here to help, eager for you business and will do what it takes? Or is it putting across the message that you are too busy to cater to new clientele, don't care about their needs, and wish they would just quit calling?
What does your email address say about your company? Does it suggest your role in the company, is it easy to remember, and does it something about you and your business? Or does it project a meaningless or generic emptiness? If you are using the email address hotbabe4u@hotmail.com for your business dealings................it's time to change!!!!!
As you can see all these things speak volumes about your image and they either strengthen or weaken your brand. Your image is all in the packaging. Would potential clients take a second look or is your message getting lost? If you thought these things were not worth the investment or didn't matter, you were wrong. Clients and customers will make assessments of your company based on these things and while not always conscious, that customer appraisal says much about your business, your attitude and your priorities.

What Role Does Your Logo Play in Your Branding Strategy?

When I speak about branding it's not uncommon for people to mistake their logo as their "branding". Your logo is only one piece of your branding strategy. Your logo is a symbol that can provide consumers with instant and powerful brand recognition of your business and the services or products that you offer.
Before beginning the process of logo creation be sure that you have developed your brand strategy. Why? Your logo is like a small ad for your company, without the strategy behind it a logo can put across the wrong message and in return weaken your strategy. You want to keep your brand message consistent to help increase consumer recognition.
How do you know when you are ready to move to the process of having your logo created?
The mission of your logo is to portray the values and goals of your company. Make sure that these are clearly established before venturing out to find a logo designer.

Be clear about the message you want your brand to convey so that your logo can clearly reflect that message. You must have a strong association between your brand and your logo. Remember it is only one piece of your branding strategy.

Your logo should reflect professionalism and growth no matter how small your company is.

If you are designing your logo in-house to save money be sure to market-test your efforts.

Make sure that the logo you select is not dated but can be used effectively year after year. Keep in mind it is how consumers will recognize your company.

The conclusion of the role your logo plays in your branding strategy can be summed up in the following statement.
Confident branding and a strong branding strategy uses design to communicate a message that attracts the target audience that you want to attract - a message that creates confidence in your brand while differentiating between you and your competitors. Does your logo fulfill this mission? If your answer is no it may be time to consider strengthening your brand strategy and looking at a new logo to re-position your company.
How To Write a Slogan that Sticks

When you think of slogans, what comes to mind? What brand can you recite a slogan for immediately?
Take for example the following slogans that have made their way into the memory of thousands:
Just Do It - Nike

This Buds for You - Budweiser

Have it Your Way! - Burger King

We Bring Good Things to Light - GE

We'll Leave the Light on For Ya! - Motel 6

Zoom! Zoom! - Mazda

Use the six components below to test your slogan and make sure it has what it takes to make it stick.

Make it Memorable

Your slogan must be memorable. Make it easy to remember, something they want to brand in their memory and possibly even repeat to others. Take for example the above slogans, when you first heard them what was it that made them stick with you?
Key Benefits

Your slogan must contain a key benefit of the product or service. Give them a reason to remember it.
Differentiate Your Brand

It must differentiate your brand. Does it bring out the character of the product or services that sets it apart from your competitors?
Solidify the Brand

It must recall the brand name otherwise who cares who remembers it. The brand can be depicted in the words you use or in the image of your logo.
Rhythm and Rhyme

Create rhythm and rhyme. Does it rhyme? Does it have a ring to it? The rhythm of the tagline will help to stick in the memories of those that read it or hear it.
Warm and Fuzzy Effect

Make it warm and fuzzy. Does your slogan leave people feeling warm and fuzzy? Does it bring a smile to their face or perhaps even a little chuckle? A slogan is more likely to stick in the minds of others if it imparts a positive feeling or emotion.