The objective of the brand strategy is to ensure that the brand’s positioning and structure supports the business objectives while meeting the criteria for a successful brand.

All strategies answer three questions:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How should we get there?

Where are we now?

The brand strategy should start with a comprehensive overview of the brand’s current performance. Here’s what it should include. (To find out how to get this information, read our guide to brand research here.)

External analysis (data from outside your organisation: from your customers, your target market and your competitors):

1. Brand awareness (the proportion of your target market who have heard of you), both prompted and unprompted
2. Brand consideration (the proportion of your target market who would consider doing business with you)
3. Brand perception (what your target market think of you: how they would describe your values, your behaviour, your desirability, how aspirational they think you are, how likeable they think you are and so on)
4. All the above data for your main competitors
5. A chart on which you should plot your market share on one axis, and your consideration scores on the other axis. Include your competitors on this chart. This helps you to spot anything unusual that might need attention – for example, if you have high consideration scores, but low market share, that might tell you that although people wouldn’t reject you, the competition are doing something better than you (and you should try to identify what this is, so you can respond to this threat).
6. A summary of your target audience: their needs, wants and attitudes, plus their demographic data

Internal analysis (data from inside your organisation):

1. Your values, and how you demonstrate them.
2. Your history. What stories do people tell about your company?
3. What do employees think about your values? Do they know them? Can they give any examples of how your company has demonstrated these values? Do they think that these values apply to the way that the company treats them? (Ask a range of employees from a variety of departments, especially those who are likely to contact a customer.)
4. How your company and its products make people’s lives easier or better.
5. Your capabilities: what you’re good at, and where you’re not so good.

Where do we want to be?

Next, state your objectives for the strategy.

As always, these should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic (or relevant) and time-bound.

An example could be: to increase unprompted awareness to 45% of our stated target audience by 2023 and recognition of our brand values and purpose to be demonstrated in qualitative research by at least 50% of respondents by 2023.

How should we get there?

Then, state the strategies that you will employ to achieve these objectives. These strategies should include the following:

1. Brand positioning. You should either state your desired brand positioning, or state how and when you will develop a positioning. For example, you might say “We will engage a specialist brand development consultancy to create a positioning for our brand. We will complete this by Q4 2022.”

   For more information about how to develop a killer brand positioning, and the four criteria that a brand positioning must meet to be successful, read our article ‘How to develop a killer brand positioning’.

2. Brand architecture. If you have multiple brands, you should state how your brands fit together. There are several different structures that you could choose. For more information about this, see our article ‘What is brand architecture?’
3. Brand communications. Most advertising is aimed at selling a product. You should describe the communications campaign that will help your target audience to be aware of your brand’s values. Remember to include PR, sponsorship and social media activity in your plan. There’s a guide to help you to craft a great brand communications plan here.
4. Customer journey analysis. The best and most expensive brand advertising campaign can be entirely undermined by a poor customer experience that doesn’t reflect your values. You should review every step of the customer journey to make sure that everything reinforces your brand. Pay particularly close attention to the boring details, like any standard letters that the customer receives from your billings department, for example. These will often have a much bigger impact on your brand than your advertising or pack design. For help with this, read our article ‘How to conduct a customer journey analysis’.
5. Corporate visual identity. Make sure that your visual design – your logo, your colour palette and so on – reflects your brand positioning. You should recommend a review of your current visual identity by a design agency.
6. Staff training. Everyone in the company will be responsible for reinforcing the values of the brand. You should include plans to make sure that all your colleagues across every department understand what the brand stands for, and how their behaviour can affect the customer’s experience of the brand.

Making it happen – the action plan

Finally, complete the strategy by drafting an action plan that shows when you will deliver each of these activities, and how you will monitor their success.

It’s entirely normal for a brand executive to get help with this from a specialist brand agency. Please contact us to discuss how we can deliver a brand strategy that will make you shine.