How to Develop a Brand Strategy: A 5-Step Guide

Your brand is much more than just your logo or the colours you use on your website—it's the overall feeling people get when they interact with your business. That's why developing a coherent brand strategy is so important. It'll help you create a consistent experience for your customers and ensure that every touchpoint reinforces your desired image. Not sure where to start? Follow these five steps. 

Step One: Define Your Business Objectives 

Before you can start developing your brand strategy, you need to have a clear understanding of what your business is trying to achieve. What are your overarching goals? Once you know that, you can start to think about how your brand can help you achieve them. 

Step Two: Research Your Target Audience 

Who are you trying to reach with your branding? This step is all about understanding their needs, pain points, and how they make purchasing decisions. Only once you have a deep understanding of your target audience will you be able to start developing messaging and visuals that resonates with them. 

Step Three: Analyze Your Competitors 

You also need to understand how you stack up against the competition. What are they doing well? Where are they falling short? Identifying both their strengths and weaknesses will give you some valuable insights into where there might be opportunities for your brand to fill any gaps.  

Step Four: Create Your Brand Positioning Statement 

Now it's time to start putting all of that research into action by developing your brand positioning statement. This should be a concise sentence (or two) that encapsulates everything we've talked about so far—who you are, what you do, who you're doing it for, and what differentiates you from the competition. 

Once you have that statement, use it as a foundation for all of your future branding efforts. Everything from your colour scheme to the tone of voice you use in your copy should reflect this positioning statement. 

Step Five: Develop Visual and Written Brand Standards 

The final step is to document all of the decisions you've made about your brand in one place—this will be your "brand standards" guide. This doesn't need to be anything fancy; a simple Google Doc or PowerPoint presentation will suffice. But it should include things like messaging guidelines, an overview of your visual identity (logo usage, colours, typography, etc.), and any other elements that need to be consistent across all touch-points. 

That's it! By following these five steps, you'll have everything you need to develop a comprehensive brand strategy that will serve as a roadmap for all of future marketing efforts—ensuring that every touchpoint reinforces your desired image and helps move you closer to achieving your business objectives.  

Creating a strong brand is essential for any business that wants to thrive in today's competitive marketplace. By following these five steps, you'll be on your way to developing a comprehensive brand strategy that will ensure every customer interaction reinforces your desired image and helps move you closer towards the achievement of your business objectives .