Creating a Brand Strategy That Sets You Apart

By Adam Stoker

Have you thought about your business’s brand lately? Unless you’ve done much work on it recently, it’s worth revisiting. Your brand is a critical part of your business, especially when it comes to attracting prospective customers and maintaining current clients—which means it’s crucial to get it right. It should resonate with your target audience and, above all else, drive results.

A brand is more than logos and colors. It is the sum of all the experiences that people have with your organization. So, how can you take our brand strategy process and apply it to your own organization? We’re giving you an inside look at how to revamp your brand!

Look at your current brand.

You can’t start if you don’t know where you are. Begin by conducting a brand audit. Go through your existing marketing elements, brand information, and website content. Get your executive team together, and go over your goals for the future. Discuss who you are in the eyes of your target audiences and your competitors. Conduct focus groups and surveys, and find out what people are saying about you on social media.

Create customer personas.

Once you’ve gathered all the information you need to begin, analyze what you discovered. Create three detailed customer personas: your primary audience, your secondary audience, and a tertiary audience. You may have more than three. The goal is to be specific and narrow in order to minimize spreading your marketing dollars too thin. Dig deep: give them names, personalities, hobbies, beliefs, personal lives, jobs, and families. Identify their traits, what they like, and how they make buying decisions. Knowing exactly who they are makes it easier to market to them. Nail down who you are.

What’s your “why”? When creating an effective brand, you must be able to define why you do what you do. Your “why” statement is the soul of your brand. Once you’ve established your “why,” turn your attention to how to connect with your audience. What features do you offer and what are the emotional benefits? In other words, what pains are you alleviating for them? List these out and focus on the benefits when choosing your marketing messages. Decide on a brand personality that correlates with your benefits. Are you trustworthy? Funny? Knowledgeable? A mix of all three? Choose several personality traits you can employ when writing content and advertising.

Give it a makeover.

Does your logo say what you want it to say about your brand? If not, put together some mood boards to find relevant colors, styles, and ideas to create a company “look and feel.” Pinterest is a great resource for this! If creating a logo is outside of your skill set, look around for talented designers who can bring your vision and brand identity to life. The visual identity you establish should communicate who you are to the personas that you established in the previous steps.

Reveal your new look.

The final step in re-imagining your brand is to share it with the world. This can be tricky and needs to be planned carefully. Start by setting goals. Then, sit down and identify the marketing tactics and channels that will help you accomplish them. These could include traditional media, social media, digital ads, newsletters, public relations, and beyond. Prioritize these efforts and accomplish them as budget and bandwidth allow. The most important thing is to stay consistent in your message and design. This process can be long and arduous, but stick with it, and work through the challenges. Doing so will build strong connections and raving fans.

Adam Stoker is the president and CEO of Relic+EKR. He graduated from Brigham Young University’s nationally-ranked advertising program and has been working in advertising for fifteen years. Adam builds businesses, people, and products through his leadership. His role includes overseeing the vision of the company, creating relationships with employees and clients, and identifying growth opportunities. In 2020, he successfully led Relic in acquiring EKR, an agency that specializes in digital marketing and web development. Adam is the host of the Destination Marketing Podcast and author of Touchpoints: A Destination Marketer’s Guide to Brand Evaluation and Enhancement. Adam is listed in the 40 Under 40 from Utah Business and Utah Valley Business magazines.