You may have stumbled upon this post because you have been searching for “what is brand strategy?” Well buckle up, buttercup, because we are going to dive in head first to understand what brand strategy is. We will also cover the fundamentals that you should get with any brand creation and what it means to get a “complete brand strategy” done by a brand strategist. Plus, the pros and cons of each.
Defining Brand Strategy
Brand Strategy is the entire foundation of your brand. This includes things like: your values, mission, ideal customer/client, heart story, psychology profiles, and the buyer journey. Without this background information and this foundation, your company can come across as weak and ungrounded. By using a complete brand strategy you will get a visual identity that feels totally true to your brand.
Watch the video to hear my take on why you need brand strategy and how that will carry over into the successful creation of your visual identity. See how the heart story and the mission of the brand play a part in the symbolism during the creation process.
The Basics of Brand Strategy:
The Basics are the very minimum that any brand should have before even starting a business. These are not complete brand strategy but are the bare minimum that you should get when creating a brand. When looking for a designer for your brand, this should be given that they already do. If not, please find someone else.
Mission Statement
The mission statement is a single statement of what the goal of your brand is. What do you envision for your brand? How are you going to help your ideal client solve the problem that your brand deals with? This is your why. A very basic that should be decided upon before creating a visual brand identity (logo).
Values
Your values are crucial to your brand strategy. By understanding your value we can draw upon creative symbolism and use psychological data to determine how your brand should “feel”. This is the very basics, however, if you choose to go deeper into brand strategy with a strategist, you will be able to really uncover what your values are. See the “going deeper” section below for more on this.
Ideal Client Avatar
Who is your ideal client or customer? What problems are they having that you are solving? Are they a specific gender, what are their shopping habits, and what kind of buyer are they? Are they the type of buyer that goes into a store and puts stuff in their basket, only to return them to the shelves before they leave? (if this feels specific – it’s because that’s me. Much to my husband’s dismay 🙃) Are they impulsive buyers? All of these details will help us be more clear on how we need to sell to these clients/customers.
Going Deeper into True Brand Strategy:
The Heart Story
The heart story is my biggest secret on how I uncover a brand mission and psychology profile (which we will go over next). Basically, with the heart story, we do a little meditation and look for a memory that is aligned with your purpose. I know, might sound cheesy… but it totally works. My clients always come away from this exercise fully surprised at how accurate it is and how much value and information can be pulled from this magical part of the brand strategy session.
Psychology Profile
After we do the heart story this is where we can really dive into the psychology of your brand. Based on what values are uncovered in the heart story, I will use it to uncover which of the 12 archetypes your brand fits in. This isn’t to say that we are putting your brand into a box (sometimes brands are a combination) but this helps us to see a data-driven path ahead of us. Brand Archetypes help us determine your brand voice. By using archetypes we can make sure that your brand is consistent and come up with a list of do’s and don’ts.
Color Psychology
Color Psychology is broken down into four seasons. For this analysis, we are looking at nature to see how each season’s personality matches its colors. For more details on how this works, check out my blog all about color psychology, and the corresponding blogs for each season: spring, summer, fall, and winter.
The Buyer Journey
After we have done all the internal work on your branding, we need to look specifically at your customers/clients and figure out what their journey to buying your product/ service looks like. How are they finding you and what steps are they taking to buy and become raving fans of your brand? After mapping out this we can better understand how the website should be laid out and what problems and solutions we may run into.
Problems & Solutions
Once we have the buyer journey mapped out we can better see what problems they may have at each step. For example, when coming to your website, are they having a problem clearly understanding which product/service they need? Maybe a solution here would be a quick quiz to know which product they should start with. For another business, maybe the problem is that they need clear directions to the store, whereas the solution would be a clickable link to google maps directions… These are the types of problems and solutions that we will map out to make sure that we are helping the client/customer get to the buying step as smoothly as possible.
Hopefully, this helped you better understand what is brand strategy! If you have more questions about brand strategy check out my Instagram where I am always giving more information on brand strategy and tips and tricks for your business. Plus, I would love to chat with you in the DM’s
Pros and Cons – choosing Basic or Full Brand Strategy
Either way by hiring a professional and looking at your brand strategy you are making a step forward in your business. But by hiring a brand strategist to do a complete brand strategy you are making an investment that will pay off much faster. These results often come with a higher ticket price though.
If you are just getting started and are on a super strict budget of less than $5k, you will want to look at a basic branding package to get you started until you can come back and afford a complete branding package. If you have $5k or more to invest, a complete brand package will pay off much faster and will have you all set!
If you are ready for a complete branding package, I would love to chat with you and see if we are a good fit. Schedule your complimentary consultation today!
