Every business needs a brand strategy. Your brand is your internal compass, your north star. It defines why you exist and what you do and guides your marketing activity. Without one, marketing tactics run the risk of being unfocused and are therefore a waste of time and budget.
In this blog, we’ll look at brand strategy, what it is, why it’s important and how a freelance marketing consultant could help you define your brand to keep your marketing activities on track.
Your brand is the foundation around which your entire business and marketing activity is based. It impacts every aspect of a business and holds the needs and emotions of the consumer, as well as your business’s competitive environment, at its heart. It shapes how you present your products and services and sets out your price point.
What is brand strategy?
To clear up a common misconception, your brand is NOT your just your logo and strapline, or your products, website or in fact your name. It’s your business as a whole. It includes all the intangibles of your business such as your values, ethos, beliefs and personality. And how everything you offer is wrapped up in all of that.
It can be difficult to pin it down effectively, but starting at the very beginning is the best way to establish a compelling brand strategy from which everything else will evolve.
The first thing to do is to understand your ‘why’. So, we need to define your proposition:
- What is it you offer and why?
- What is your point of difference (to your competitors)?
- Define your key target audience (you may have more than one per product or service)
- And crucially, what is the value you bring to your customers?
Answer these simple questions and you’ll have the beginnings of your brand strategy.
Why it is important to have a cohesive brand strategy?
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.
Seth Godin 2015
Having a well-defined brand strategy not only allows your customers to form a deep connection with you, but it also allows your employees and stakeholders to also know, like and trust you. It sets out your culture and your way of doing business.
In order to establish a strong and recognisable brand, your strategy should be applied consistently across every touchpoint, allowing your business and practices to reflect the essence of your brand.
Keep the answers to the earlier questions in mind, allowing room for flexibility over time, and your marketing activities will remain focused, consistent and driven by the needs and wants of your audiences.
Brand strategy – how a freelance marketing consultant can help your business
Establishing and maintaining a strong brand strategy can be difficult when you haven’t got a marketing team. And let’s face it, which small businesses can justify a whole team just for the marketing side of the business?
That’s when working with a freelance marketing consultant can come into its own. Here are just some of the reasons why working with a marketing consultant like Simonside Marketing can be an amazing investment for your business.
A freelance marketing consultant can help you see the bigger picture.
We’ve all been there. You’re so focused on the success of your business that you become blinkered to the bigger picture. It’s easy to miss strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats because you’re so busy working in the business, not on it.
A freelance marketing consultant will bring a fresh perspective to the table. They will see the whole scene and identify opportunities that might otherwise float on by. They ask the often-overlooked questions and challenge the status quo. They’ll offer alternative ideas, fresh inspiration and really shake up the available resources to get the best out of your brand.
They’ll help you establish a brand proposition by nailing down the basics.
A freelance marketing consultant will get back to basics. They’ll work to understand who you are, what you do and how you add value to your audiences. They’ll voice the unspoken and weed out the very essence of your business.
They’ll look at your business from a consumer’s perspective and pinpoint the reasons why people buy your products and your services, then they’ll help you do more of what works while ditching the stuff that isn’t helpful.
They’ll hold you accountable.
Your marketing consultant will provide a great sounding board to provide objective advice about ideas and strategies that deviate from your brand. They’ll ensure you stay true to your brand and communicate effectively with the audiences who support and invest in your business.
They’ll keep you authentic.
They will advise you if you need a stronger visual brand identity in order to communicate your proposition in a more authentic way, helping you to stand out from the crowd to achieve your long-term goals.
By fully understanding your business, a freelance consultant can write an insightful creative brief and find the right graphic designer for the job, based on their sector experience, style and budget. They’ll even work with the designer throughout the creative process to ensure the concepts are on brief. Finally, the consultant will work with the client on the roll out of the brand across all communications and customer touch-points.
And who doesn’t want that?
If you’d like to learn more about working with a freelance marketing consultant and just how Simonside Marketing can help you develop a unique brand strategy, contact us today for a chat – we’d love to learn more about your business.
