Breaking Down Brand and Marketing Strategy
In a world where the word ‘strategy’ feels like more of a trend than something to be taken seriously, we’re diving deep into what it means to be strategic and how it can propel your brand online.
What is a Brand Strategy?
A brand strategy is the foundation for how your business communicates; how it will tell its story to the world. It defines who you are, why you exist, and how you want to be perceived.
Strategy turns research into something tangible. It’s more than just a logo or a tagline. It enables designers to craft an overall look and feel, including colour, typography, and graphic elements, with confidence. This then rolls out into marketing collateral and helps to craft how your story will be told to the world.
Without a clear strategy in place, you risk inconsistent messaging and may miss opportunities to build brand awareness, trust, and recognition in the market. A comprehensive brand strategy ensures that you are telling a cohesive and compelling story at every touchpoint, whether online or in-person.
A brand strategy is long-term, but is adaptable over time. Your vision, purpose, and core values may shift over time, and your brand story will naturally adapt.
Elements of a brand strategy
What makes a good brand strategy? It’s not about delivering a lengthy document or filling it with technical marketing jargon. It’s all about clarity and strategic depth, with actionable steps tailored to the unique needs of the client.
An effective brand strategy will cover all of the key elements that can influence how a brand is perceived. At a minimum, it should include vision and purpose, core values, target audience, brand positioning, brand voice, personality, and a comprehensive customer journey.
Let’s dive deeper into each section:
Brand Vision - what is the overarching vision for your brand now, and into the future? We like big picture thinking - you’re not just a small start-up brand looking to enter a new market, you’re a trusted and experienced brand that is dominating your market.
Brand Purpose - why does your brand exist? What is its purpose? This goes beyond the service or product and dives deeper into your why.
Core Values - these are the values your brand is built on (think collaboration, trust). These are the pillars of your brand and will help to define your messaging and how you communicate with your audience.
Key Target Audience - who is your target demographic? Think age, gender, interests, job types, lifestyle, etc. This can be broken down into primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences, which will help you navigate how you communicate, what platforms you choose to market on, and the path each audience might take.
Brand Positioning - this is where you look at your brand compared to any direct and indirect competitors, and position them and yourself. You want to ensure that your position adheres to your values and your vision, whilst also standing out against competitors.
Brand Voice and Personality - this is how you will communicate with your target audience. Your voice and personality will remain consistent across your marketing channels, dependent on your audience. For example, your overall personality will remain the same; however, if you have a Gen Z and a Baby Boomer audience on different platforms, we may tailor your voice slightly to connect with these two very different audiences.
Customer Journey - how will your customers find and engage with you, purchase your product/service, and then remain loyal to you? This is all about mapping out their journey, looking at the various platforms and channels you market on, and thinking about the ways you will continue to keep your audience engaged, even after they have become a customer or client.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is a plan to help promote your business’s services and products to the world. Its focus is on how you will reach your target audience and specific strategies you will use to do this. Your strategy should be specific to the marketing channels you are using (email, website, social media, etc).
Your marketing strategy can, and should be, adapted over time. Each year, we dive into our clients’ marketing strategies, updating their goals to reflect any shifts within the business, and ensuring that we’re capturing the right target audiences on the right channels.
Elements of a marketing strategy
Depending on how your business is engaged with an agency, your marketing strategy may include market research and analysis, key target audience, marketing goals and objectives, marketing channels and touchpoints, budget, content, and a social media strategy.
Market Research - what are your competitors doing, how are they reaching their target audience, what works well for them, and what doesn’t? Looking at your competitors is key as it helps us to identify opportunities for your brand in the market.
Market Analysis - this includes completing a SWOT analysis, looking at your strengths and weaknesses, and your threats and opportunities in your current market.
Key Target Audiences - This is similar to what we conduct in the brand strategy; however, we tailor your target audience to your specific marketing channels. You might be interested in marketing on both TikTok and Facebook, but your audiences will significantly differ, and therefore, your marketing strategy needs to be adaptable.
Marketing Objectives and Goals - what are you trying to achieve with your marketing? Think long-term and short-term goals, as well as overarching objectives.
Marketing Channels - Our golden rule is not to try to be across every single marketing channel or platform available, but ensure enough diversification across paid, owned, earned, and shared media to ensure that you have a touchpoint at each corner of the market (think email marketing, Google Ads, Instagram, and a good PR story).
Budget - This will have been agreed upon as part of the initial scope; however, we will look at how we will be breaking down the budget and how it’ll be split across your marketing channels and activities.
Content Pillars - the next part of a marketing strategy looks closely at the type of content and the pillars it falls under. Examples of content pillars include educate, entertain, and engage. You may also have specific content pillars like projects, culture, or services.
Content Types - If you’re working with us on both strategy and a content package, we deep dive into the type of content you should be using to help engage your target market. Content types will depend on how you are marketing and the platforms you’re using. Content types may include video, carousel posts, or static images.
As part of your marketing strategy, you may also receive a social media strategy within the same document. This dives deeper into your competitors on social media, performance across various channels, how we can tailor your content for specific channels, and the types of target audiences across different platforms. Social media strategies look at both organic and paid socials, like Meta Ads, TikTok and LinkedIn.
Do I need both?
A brand strategy is a long-term strategy that helps to shape your brand’s identity and story in the world. It’s your bible when it comes to brand, and helps you to build out your marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is a plan to promote your services or products, driving brand awareness and conversions. Businesses without a solid marketing plan are often directionless and struggle to convert audiences, usually because they aren’t targeting the right audience or are doing the same things as their competitors.
Ideally, you should have both. A marketing strategy works best when a brand strategy is in place, as it can help inform how you market yourself.
How can they work together?
A comprehensive brand strategy should come first, and will help to inform your marketing strategy. Knowing the why behind your brand before you tell your story to the world is key. Understanding that your brand story and your core values will help shape your marketing and communications.
Your brand strategy will help you decide on how to tell your story and promote your offerings on various channels. Your marketing strategy will define the right channels and messages to deliver to your target audience, as well as consider the customer journey and how you can communicate with your audience effectively, at every touchpoint.
Your strategic partner
If you need a solid brand or marketing strategy, Studio Blackardt has you covered. Our studio team are experienced across design, strategy, SEO, paid media, and social media, and can help you to develop a strong brand and marketing strategy.
