Branding Strategy: What It Is and Why Your Business Needs it

You're an entrepreneur, a startup, as most of us are today, and you're naturally wondering, why you would need to work on your branding, and even more on the strategy of your branding. You may think that it must come naturally as your product should naturally convince people or even more than only your sales team will make the difference.

Sorry, but it doesn't work this way. Let's dive in!

So, what the heck is a branding strategy?

Creating a brand is tough, and we may ignore it. You know Apple, Coca-Cola, and Amazon as giants and the companies with the best branding. You directly pictured their logo, color palette, and if you're a pro, some of their brilliant advertising campaigns. But do you remember how they started? Small!

To achieve this level of success you need a super strong branding strategy. It will help you from the early beginning of your startup or business to directly set the tone and the direction of the relation you want to have with your audience.

When a (good) branding agency (like ours) does a branding strategy they:

• Study the marketing strategy/positioning of your competitors.
• Create a mapping of your competitors to have a clear overview of the market.
• Position you intelligently on the market.
• Create your positioning (slogan) weighing every word.
• Set your target audience.
• Set the Artistic direction of your brand (with a mood board)
• And us, we add a clear roadmap of all the things to do to grow efficiently (SEO, Social Media posts, Advertising, etc.) On a clear calendar.

Is it becoming a bit clearer?

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In other words, your Brand Strategy will help you connect instantly with your audience to impact sales.

The goal of the brand strategy is to define your DNA, your brand values, and your positioning to create consistency in your communication. You want every element to follow a specific pattern, so your consumers recognize your brand every time they're in contact with your product.

For that, at The Bract Agency, we follow a specific methodology. We know that a good-looking logo, website, or brochure can seem appealing. But... we also know that your brand identity, to stand out, must translate into who you are. And that's what makes our work directly impactful.

If you are aware of the competition, you must know that you're not the only one on the market. (Which is a shame because we're sure that your product is the best!) The only way to succeed is to express who you are because, guess what, you're the only one on the planet! (Crazy, right?)

We work to reveal the entrepreneur behind the product and how your brand should exist. We seek truth and authenticity because we know and validate: that it is the ultimate way to engage your audience in the long term.

It obviously starts with a clear diagnosis of your brand!

To get closer to you, our strategist starts by listing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats from your market. We don't skip any information. By having a clear overview of your brand, we can orient our work in a specific direction. 

We focus on your strengths and take into consideration seriously the threats to your market. We don't want to hide your weaknesses because it is what makes you different and authentic. For example, you could easily say in your marketing messages: "We're not the best at everything, but what we do, we do it perfectly." This way, you appear human, and everything rewards human behavior, even Google. 

After knowing you better, we establish a precise diagnosis, almost like a doctor would prescribe medicine to its patient. Your company may need a specific treatment. Our analytical skills give us the power to recommend exactly what kind of branding would suit your company and resolve your challenges. 

What's a branding positioning and how will it help you?

Your positioning is a simple sentence that summarizes your brand essence. If you've heard Simon Sinek: "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it," you may be familiar with this concept.

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Your positioning is the « why » of your company. The «Why do you wake in the morning? » «Why did you create this product? » «What do you want to change? ». It should be logical and authentic, and most importantly, it should come naturally.

Please don't overdo it, don't overanalyze the meaning of everything. People don't have time for genuine intellectual concepts, and the truth is, that "simple" ideas are sometimes the most complex ones. Just do it, from Nike doesn't make you think about Socrates? Or are we the only overthinker here? 

Your positioning will guide your communication and create absolute consistency in your production. Then only can we define your brand personality: the kind of relationship you want to keep with your consumers, and your brand values: friendly VS authority, low or high end, modern VS classic, etc. We make sure that your positioning is sustainable, credible, distinctive, and attractive.

How to make sure we're targeting the right audience?

In every field, if we miss our target, we don't properly execute our operation. In branding, it's precisely the same. 

At first, you may quickly develop a list of potential clients until things get blurry. If you want to succeed in your targeting, you have to be precise, like pixel-perfect accurate.

We know how significant the investment you're making is; that's why we focus on your target as if it were our own. Our goal at the Bract Agency is to reconnect people. That's why our targeting is as developed as possible and relevant to your industry: high-tech, Ai, and Biotech, nothing resists our strategist.

We don't want to target the wrong people and bother them with your services. While your actual audience, waiting for your product, could have directly been targeted. We are as precise as possible: what do they do, when, what do they eat in the morning, when do they leave for work, do they live in a big apartment or small one, are more of a dog or cat person? And no, we're not spies, we're just naturally curious about people!

We base our analysis on the study we made during our Audit, and we get as close as we can to your dream client.

Ok, but when do we get creative?

As you may understand, a branding strategy is a lot of thinking, but the goal is to get the most accurate design execution, and for that, we come up with a creative strategy. We combine strategic and artistic thinking. The heart and the brain meet. We love to be as creative as possible, but we know we're not doing art, but marketing. Our objective is to create a specific atmosphere. Your target will understand your brand as quickly as possible and will remember you.

How do you work on the Creative Strategy?

The good news, everything is mathematical!

If you thought that creating a brand or working on some design would be just like aiming at a target without a target, well, you've met very bad agencies or marketers!

Everything has a meaning and a meaning we didn't develop yesterday!

Colors have a clear meaning:

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Typographies reflect a specific atmosphere:

Some images will convey a different message, etc.

And that's why we're so confident in our recommendations, it's because we know we didn't invent the wheel! We just know how to make it work perfectly!

Concretely, our Strategic Planner brings this "scientific" data to the Art Director. Together they craft the look and feel of your brand. As a team, they work on the best possible graphic design to distinguish your company and reveal its unique character. The artistic director bases his work on his knowledge and cultural references. He starts to imagine the tone of the branding by creating a clear mood board that we validate with you.

But depending on your industry, we carefully select which creative director we involve in your project. The Art Director determines the color palettes, typography, imagery, and the overall visual, sound, and olfactory atmosphere to create the brand book. We don't skip anything.

How creative can I be in my branding?

We live in a world where it feels like everything has already been done, or worse, that trends set strict guidelines and rules. That's why being creative is a process. Creativity can also be defined as mixing ideas and concepts, merging two worlds, and involving cultural references. But before thinking about the most original design, we make sure to be easily understandable and efficient.

So to conclude: yes, just like everyone, you need to work on your brand strategy!

At the Bract Agency, we love to do it! More than anything, and thanks to the care we bring and the affection we have for our clients (yes, finally, we said it, we like you guys!) we can offer tremendous work that really makes a difference. Feel free to contact us, because again, this is a job, and shouldn't be improvised. It'll be a pleasure to guide you!

Thanks for reading, and have a great day, or night, or early morning, whatever, enjoy!