Upgrading your brand requires more than upgrading your visuals
Have you ever felt like you have a lot of ideas for your brand but you don’t know where to start and how to drive conversions for your business?
Perhaps you have more than just ideas in your pocket. Maybe you have tried to plan out many comprehensive marketing campaigns and your campaigns attracted a lot of impressions and viewers. The thing is, it didn’t generate the conversions you were hoping for.
Or maybe you have invested a lot of money on ads in digital platforms and revamped your social media. You even took marketing courses and hired freelancers to elevate your game. However, for some reason, it feels like your brand still isn’t fully aligned with your goals and it’s not attracting the right customers.
What’s the missing piece?
When your business isn’t producing results, the common assumption is that upgrading your visuals would solve everything
If any of the examples above resonate with your experience, you’re not alone. Over the years, we have worked with entrepreneurs from all sorts of backgrounds and as we walk with them in the partnership, we often hear things like:
“We have changed our logo and website layout, but we don’t know if it really did anything to the business”
“I have invested in my website and social media platforms, and I even hired people to manage them, but I can’t see what I got from it.”
Usually, when entrepreneurs come to us with these struggles, they often think that the best solution is to rebrand. They feel that taking the business to the next level means upgrading the outlook of the brand. But is that really the core problem that’s stopping your brand from reaching its fullest potential?
What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy is the missing piece to get you the clarity you need
Yes, visuals are important. You definitely want to build a brand that you feel confident about. But beyond a brand that looks good, you want to build a brand that feels fully aligned with who you are and what your customers need.
Marty Neumeier, the director of CEO Branding for Liquid Agency, a branding agency in San Jose, defines a brand as “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization”, and that a brand is not a logo, identity, or product.
In other words, Marty is telling us that a brand isn’t just what we can see—it’s so much more than that. This is why it won’t work for you to just upgrade your visuals. If you feel like your brand right now isn’t aligned with your vision and customers, perhaps there are deeper things to look at beyond just the outlook of your brand.
You need a brand that is established on a solid strategy
When it comes to building a business that thrives, you need more than just good visuals for it to stand out in the market and grow sustainably in the long run. You need a brand that is cohesive and consistent at every touch point; a brand that translates the heart behind the business into every aspect of what you do inside and out. You need a brand that is established on a solid strategy.
You’re looking to understand more about brand strategy now and what you need to upgrade your brand because you want to know what will help you get closer to your goals. You want to take your business to the next level. Brand strategy is the missing piece that will you the clarity you need to take your business from where it is now to where you want it to be.
To put it simply, brand strategy is the bridge that connects you, your goals, and your customers.
With brand strategy, you are establishing a roadmap that will affect your entire brand experience. You’re taking the time to evaluate your customer journey, your onboarding process, and so much more because you want to build a business that lasts—because upgrading your brand requires more than upgrading your visuals.
Brand strategy workshop: How does it work?
Understand your goals
To work on your brand strategy, we dive into what we know as a brand strategy workshop. You can’t just use assumptions and personal preferences to develop brand, so we take the time to uncover all the insights we can that will help us get clear on your brand direction.
The first thing is you really want is to dig deep into where you want to go. You want to clearly define your goals and get to the heart of your business. Why does your business exist? What’s your origin story? Working on your brand strategy means taking the time to understand where you want to take the business and how to measure success. 
Get to know your super fans
But we don’t just stop at your goals, we also want to know who you ideal clients are. When we talk about ‘ideal clients’, we’re talking about your ‘super fans’. A super fan is someone who does not only buy your products and services, but it is someone who loves your brand unapologetically. They are enthusiastic about your brand to the point that they are willing to promote your brand to others, for free, through word-of-mouth marketing or referrals or any other means they can think of.
Super fans are loyal to your brand and these people should be a top priority in the process of developing your brand. You want to understand their needs, their wants, and their interests. You want to find a way to emotionally connect with them and build a lasting relationship because if you can attract your super fans, everyone else will follow.
Go deep into who you are as a brand
And finally, in a brand strategy workshop, you also want to dig deep into who you are as a brand. How do you want to be perceived by your customers? If you want to communicate that you’re offering a premium service, then you would want your business to look a certain way and be represented by certain messaging styles. We will discover these insights together through brand strategy workshop first before even designing anything that’s related to visuals.
What will happen if you have a solid brand strategy?
You have clarity and feel confident about your next steps
With brand strategy, you have clarity on what you need to do to bring your business forward. Previously, you probably would invest in everything that sounds good with the hope of building a brand. From buying online courses, reading books, buying templates, signing up to all social media platforms, to hiring freelancers. Now you don’t have to overwhelm yourself with these things anymore because you have a clear direction of what you need to do and where you need to go. Everything is focused on your goal and super fans.
You can connect emotionally with your super fans and drive conversions
When you have an established brand strategy, you have a solid customer journey that can guide you on how you can connect with your super fans. You will know what you need to create a great brand experience for your super fans. You will know what kind of content will meet them where they are at and show them that you brand can really answer their needs. When what you do speaks to the hearts of your super fans, they will engage more with your brand and actually buy your products and services.
You have a brand that your business can grow upon
When you work on your brand strategy, you’re setting yourself up for growth that happens in the long run. This isn’t just about building a brand that that is thriving now, it’s about setting a foundation for your business to expand and to impact more customers in the future. Having a brand strategy set in place means you have a roadmap to help you take your business to the next level, one after another. As long as your products and services remain, and your ideal customers don’t change, you can use this strategy as a starting point for your new business goals.
5 things you can do to implement your brand strategy successfully
1. Do a brand audit
Because brand strategy is so much more than just developing visuals, you want to know where your brand currently is to know what gaps need to be filled as you implement your brand strategy. Brand audit is a way for you to evaluate your brand inside and out, to review every touch point across the whole brand experience. (Keep in mind that brand audit isn’t just something you do once, but it needs to be something that you do regularly!)
Here are some questions you can think about when you audit your brand:
- Customer service: How responsive is your team when a customer reaches out to you for inquiries? Does your team embody your brand values when dealing with customers?
- Website: Do you apply a consistent brand experience throughout? Is your website layout user friendly? Does your website show the journey you want your customers to go through? Does your website feel overwhelming or reassuring to your audience? Do you have an easy and clear onboarding process to follow?
- Brand message: Is the promise you are making to your audience aligned with the values that your super fans have? Is it relevant to your super fans? Is it persuasive enough? Have you been consistent in delivering that promise?
- Customer engagement: Have you been actively interacting with your audience? Have you ever asked for your customer’s feedback? Do your current audience and customers engage with your campaigns and programs? Do these marketing efforts speak to your target market?
- Touchpoints: How are your ads’ performances? Do they attract the right target market? How is your social media impacting your brand?
2. Focus on your super fans
There’s no such thing as a perfect implementation. Surely you will need to adjust as you go when you work on your brand and business. But one thing you need to remember: everything you do needs to connect with your super fans.
At the end of the day, you want to keep growing your business and reach more customers. You want to build your authority, your influence and share your purpose. It’s so much bigger than surviving now.
If you want to keep reaching your big brand goals, you want to always keep in mind who your super fans are and what they need. Every touch point in your brand experience needs to resonate with them so that you can build a lasting relationship with your customers.
3. Define your success measures
This is so important to have because your success measures will help you know whether you are moving closer to your goals. You want to track your progress based on these success measures.
Outline points that are tangible and real. Avoid writing down points like: “Getting more income”. Try to write how much income would you want to get in order for this strategy to be considered as a success.
Think about your big vision and breakdown this big vision into measurable and achievable milestones. Use this success measure to help you stay on track and to give you reasons to celebrate along the way.
4. Map out your action plan
It’s good to have a plan clearly laid out. It helps reduce the overwhelm and it gives you a guide to follow. When it comes to mapping out this action plan, always start with the question, “What’s the easiest next step?” because you don’t have to think far and high.
There are so many opportunities right there around you. Too often we focus on what we don’t already have. When it comes to building your brand, you don’t have to jump 100 steps ahead—you just need to take the best next step. (You got this!)
5. Work with a brand partner
You don’t have to figure out your brand and business on your own. It takes a lot of energy and effort to run a business… plus all the other things you need to juggle aside from being CEO. We totally understand.
With a brand partner, you have someone to share your ideas with and have them untangle those ideas into concrete action plan that is based on a solid brand strategy. As we have mentioned before, this isn’t just about designing something that looks good. This is about bringing your vision to life and with a brand partner, you can achieve so much more in your brand and business.
Ready to transform your brand?
After years of working with entrepreneurs, we made it our mission to encourage and empower service providers and coaches to become confident brand leaders. You are the reason why Platinum 99 exists!
Your visions and dreams for your brand matter, so we want to help you get the clarity you need to move forward with confidence. How can we do that? Through brand strategy.
Let’s unpack your brand’s key differentiators, find out who your ideal customers are, and analyse your competitive landscape. Let’s map out the clear path for you to reach your BIG brand goals!
