A 10-step brand development strategy – Part 2
Now you’ve got the first five fundamentals nailed, you are on your way to understand the brand building strategy. It should be a long and detailed process leaving many questions to be answered. Part two will complete your knowledge.
6. Develop your name, logo and tagline. For many companies, a name change is not required, however, if you are a new company or are burdened with a name that no longer suits your positioning, a name change may be in order. Even if you don’t change your company name, a new logo and tagline may make sense to better support your brand positioning. Remember, your name, logo and tagline are not your brand. They are ways to communicate or symbolise your brand. You must live it to make it real. Don’t make the mistake of showing the new logo around internally to get a consensus. The name, logo and tagline are not for you. They are for your marketplace and should be judged on how well they communicate.
7. Develop your content marketing strategy. We could have called this step “develop your marketing strategy.” But no. Instead we call for a content marketing strategy. Why? Content marketing is particularly well suited to professional services companys in the Internet age. It does all things traditional marketing does but far more efficiently. It uses educational content to attract, nurture and qualify prospects. Remember your brand strength is driven by both reputation and visibility. Increasing visibility alone, without strengthening your reputation, is rarely successful. That’s why traditional “awareness-building” advertising or sponsorships so often yield disappointing results. On the other hand, content marketing increases both visibility and reputation at the same time. It is also the perfect way to make your brand relevant to your target audiences. Case closed.
8. Develop your website. Your website is your single most important brand development tool. It is the place where your audiences learn what you do, how you do it and who your clients are. Prospective clients are not likely to choose your company solely based on your website. But they may well rule you out if your site sends the wrong message. Further, your website will be home to your valuable content. That content will become the focus of your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts so your prospects, potential employees, and referral sources will find and learn about you. Online content is central to any brand development strategy. These days, professional services websites come in two varieties. The first is a branding site. Such a site tells your story and conveys who you are, who you serve, and what you do. In short it conveys your brand message. The other variety does the above and also generates and nurtures potential new clients. We call these High-Performance Websites. AdBrand aren’t web developers – we believe we should focus on what we’re best at – we whole heartedly recommend www.funlovindigitals.com for website and SEO development. They are the experts and a truly great team.
9. Build your marketing toolkit. The next step in the process is to build out the remainder of your marketing toolkit. This might include “sales sheets” describing core service offerings. In addition, there may be a brief “pitch deck” highlighting the company, key offerings or an e-brochure. These are rarely printed pieces anymore. Increasingly this marketing toolkit also includes videos. Popular video topics include company overviews, case studies or “meet the partner” videos. Key services offerings are also very useful. If prepared appropriately, these tools serve not only a business development but are also important for brand development.
10. Implement, track, and adjust. This final step in the brand development process may be one of the most important. Obviously, a winning brand development strategy doesn’t do much good if it is never implemented. You might be surprised at how often that happens. A solid strategy is developed and started with all the good intentions the company can muster. Then reality intervenes. People get busy with client work and brand development tasks get put off… then forgotten. That’s why tracking is so important. We strongly recommend tracking both the implementation of the plan as well as results. Did the strategy get implemented as planned? What happened with the objective measures, such as search traffic and web visitors? How many new leads, employee applications and partnering opportunities were generated? Only by tracking the entire process can you make sure you are drawing the right conclusions and making the right adjustments. Now you know the strategy, it’s time to implement. If you’d rather a specialist branding, design, marketing agency in Dubai develop it with you then contact AdBrand and we’ll work together.
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