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You’ve connected with your vision and mission and you’ve learned how you can stand out in your market. Now how do you communicate your business with your audience in a way that its’ brand is perceived as you want?
It’s time to craft the strategy for your brand.
This is part 3/4 of a series on developing your brand strategy. Read parts one and two linked below.
Part three of developing your brand strategy: craft your strategy.
I have to preface this with the fact that you do not define your brand; your client does.
A brand is all about our client’s perception and experience with our business. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t help create that perception. And that’s exactly what we are aiming to achieve with brand strategy.
Below I outline a few things to consider in the areas of client experience, messaging, identity, where we show up, and how that will become our strategy.
Remember as you go through the parts that consistency and cohesiveness are what will make for successful branding. So how can you develop and create that consistency?
Consistency builds recognition and trust.
Client experience
1. Determine what type of experience you want your client to have
2. Find each touchpoint in your business that you have with a client and what you can do to ensure that they have that type of experience. Maybe it is templating communications, sending a thank you note, etc.
3. In your services, what processes can you put in place to make sure that the expectations and/or deadlines you have set are met (I personally use checklists Asana along with templates in HoneyBook*)
4. How can you exceed your client’s expectations? This could look like adding in a bonus service or surprising them with a gift.
*Get 50% off your first year with code sarahschrader.
Messaging
1. Identify a tone of voice for your brand and start crafting swipe content in that tone, or collect words and phrases that can help you achieve it
2. Find ways to insert your personality and make it you. Remember we still want to integrate you and what makes your brand unique.
3. Build stories that you can use and repurpose around your brand. I’d recommend reading Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. He mentions in his book how are brains more easily pay attention to and comprehend stories.
4. Ok consistency too. Look at creating styles for your copy. Do you type out and or use the ampersand (&)? Do you include the www. before the website address or leave it off? These are subtle things but consistency or rather an inconsistency is noticeable.
Brand Identity
Your brand identity helps create a visual mark and recognition of your brand and includes anything that visually represents your brand and adds ownership.
Once you identify each of the items in your brand identity I recommend creating a brand style guide. It’s my #1 tool for a consistent brand identity.
Grab my free checklist for what to include in your style guide.
Or purchase my brand style guide template.
Where you show up and how
Choosing where to showcase your brand positioning – how you are different through your experience, messaging, and identity – is the last aspect to consider for your brand strategy.
This should include your website, of course, but may also include email marketing, social media, advertising, or even in-person events.
Where you choose to show up will be a mix of choosing a content style that you feel most confident and comfortable showing up in AND finding a way to bring that content style to where your client hangs out.
When you can bring the two together you’ve found the best place to be.
This can be a lot. But the final part of this series will be putting it all into action. Read that in next week’s blog post.
Do you want help to break this down even further into more actionable items?
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