What is a brand strategy?

This is crucial and starts at the very heart of discussions. You need to know where you want to be.  A difficult question to deliver a focused answer. This article explains what a brand strategy is.

An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets, but what exactly does “branding” mean? Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.

Are you an innovator in your industry? Or the experienced, reliable one? Is your product the high-cost, high-quality option, or the low-cost, high-value option? You can’t be both, and you can’t be all things to all people. Who you are should be based to some extent on who your target customers want and need you to be.

Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering on your brand messages. Where you advertise, and distribution channels are also part of your brand strategy. Remember, what you communicate visually and verbally is part of your brand strategy, too.

Consistency: Strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company’s products or services that allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. The most obvious example of this is Coke vs. a generic soda. Because Coca-Cola has built a powerful brand equity, it can charge more for its product – customers pay that higher price.

Another great example is Nike.  Their brand equity is priceless.  It’s not just the pair of trainers you buy, but how many trainers you buy per year, the other apparel you purchase to be ‘on brand’ the loyalty you have to their products – we advertise them, this is the dream in building brand equity.

You may have been in business for sometime, have an existing company that might be performing well, or indeed needing a facelift – this is quite common indeed. Look at the construction industry many of the big developers have invested heavily into their branding, those that have succeed.  Those that haven’t aren’t winning the contracts they used to.

If you are ready to build a brand strategy then contact AdBrand and we can work together to present your business in a refreshed, confident and strategically focused direction.

Thank you for reading and if you have time click through to see our work.

Adam Ridgway
Chief Creative Director
AdBrand