Branding Strategies

Whether you're looking at brand repositioning or looking for the best brand strategy template, we're here to help you on the path to success.

Essentially a brand strategy should be the first document you put together to identify the purpose and vision behind your company. Understanding the brand positioning and brand awareness strategy can take a lot of time to put together, which is why many companies don't survive if they're not working on it.

In this guide, we're going to share everything you need to know about building a brand strategy, and we'll include our brand strategy template so you can start working on your brand marketing strategy straight away.

Want to test out our brand strategy template now?

Want to get started and try our brand strategy template now? Simply sign up to our 7 Day Free Trial and take our platform for a spin. You'll find the brand strategy template in 'Create A Course' ready for you to use. You might have loads of questions, so jump on our Live Chat feature on the bottom right of this screen and ask our US-based team anything you like to get your branding strategy started!

What is branding strategy?

Let's break it down, so we're on the right path together. To be clear, brand strategy is not another term for marketing, your logo or your product for example.

The brand is essentially the face of your business that emotionally connects to your customers, which will build them into becoming long-time fans.

Companies like Apple or Nike, for example, have built some of the most well-loved brands globally because they know who their brand is and who their customers are. While most companies don't have the same size budgets as Apple or Nike to boost their brands, you can learn a lot about how to perfect your brand goals by encompassing what these powerhouses have achieved.

Therefore, a brand strategy definition connects the target audience on an emotional level that affects all levels of the business. It's a long-term plan designed to achieve a series of goals encompassing the brand's mission and its vision for the customers.

So, it comes as no surprise when you hear the term 'being on brand'; it actually means connecting with the customers on the correct emotional level to attract and maintain loyal customers.

Why is brand strategy important?

There are multiple reasons why building a brand strategy is essential. When you nail the brand identity, it will be much easier to align with the marketing team strategy. Let's be clear that marketing and brand strategies are not the same thing. When you build your brand strategy, you'll keep the same consistency for all marketing campaigns to build a loyal audience who will instantly recognize your branding time and time again.

A brand strategy is also essential and requires various input from other stakeholders. When your business is totally aligned with the brand strategy, it is easier for the other teams to stay consistent and aligned.

A clear branding vision will also help you see what you need to improve on to grow your business. Always analyze campaigns and branding efforts to know if you're connecting with your current audience. You can then adjust the brand strategy as and when needed.

DEFINING YOUR BRAND

When you genuinely discover the reasoning behind why you're building a brand, you'll be able to bring the brand to life which will ultimately attract the right customers while building a community to help you grow your business.

You'll need to put a few practices in place to find your brand identity and brand values. Think about your brand purpose, vision, mission and values!

1. Brand purpose

If you don't know the purpose of creating a brand, will it succeed? Think about what is the reasoning behind the brand? Why does it exist? What are you trying to achieve? There must be more meaning behind it other than to make a profit. When you can nail down the why, it will make your employees feel valued and excited to come to work every day, which will build the company's reputation and work culture.

2. Brand vision

When thinking about the brand vision, you'll need to think about the ideas behind the brand that will guide its future. What does the future of the brand look like? When you nail the brand vision, it will tie in with all aspects, especially the business strategy. Essentially, you could build the entire company around the brand vision.

3. Brand mission

Don't confuse brand vision with the brand mission! The brand mission is designed to communicate the purpose and how it will help the audience. This is an action implemented principle which will give the customers an idea of what the business does and how it will help them.

4. Brand values

Don't forget to think about the brand values which shape every aspect of your business. As the central focus of the brand, the values should be designed to showcase how unique your company is through brand messaging, personality, and identity.

5. Competitor research

While you're defining the brand and who it is, you'll need to simultaneously make sure you conduct a thorough competitor analysis to know who you're competing against. Make sure you can clearly define your business's strengths and weaknesses, which could ultimately impact branding decisions.

You can assess your competitors through using a combination of SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEMRUSH, for example. You'll need to define what your competitors do better, especially regarding the brand building strategy.

BRINGING YOUR BRAND TO LIFE

Now that you've discovered your why, it's time to bring your brand to life by understanding its personality, tone, and voice. Truly understand who your audience is, who your competitors are, and what messaging you will be communicating to build the brand.

6. Brand personality, tone and voice

Let's bring your brand to life by identifying the personality, tone and voice!

When understanding the brand's true personality, you'll need to nail who you are. Is the brand edgy, or sophisticated? Is it young and modern or corporate and professional? While these are just a couple of examples, make sure you understand the brand's personality so you can make it shine throughout the business.

7. Understand who your audience is

As you give your brand personality, tone, and voice, you'll need to make sure you align it with your target audience. Think about your primary customer and how you can help them with your business. You might have the buyer personas in mind, allowing you to uncover more details about who they are, what emotions they are going through, and how you can connect with them through your brand strategy.

When you create a customer profile that dives into who the customer is and their lifestyle, you'll be able to identify who your audience is.

8. Convert with the right messaging

When you get the brand messaging right, you'll be able to convert your audience into buyers when the messaging refers to the underlying value proposition. Any successful brand will understand its buyers so well that the messaging will reflect their intent. Think about how your content will be inspirational or motivational, for example, and how it will ultimately make your customers want to buy your product or use your service.

9. What tagline will be memorable?

When you think of a famous tagline, I'm sure Nike's 'Just do it' comes to mind? A tagline is usually a one-liner catchphrase that summarises your brand. You'll want to encompass everything about the brand's voice, identity, purpose, and core values all in one sentence that will be captivating and, most of all, memorable. Sounds difficult? But when you get it right, your brand will instantly become recognizable and memorable.

VISUAL IDENTITY

Your next task is to decide on how you'll convey the brand visually. This means you'll need to encompass everything about the brand in the logo, typography, color, imagery, and additional elements to bring the visual identity to life.

10. The all important logo

For example, when you think of Apple, you'll instantly think of the logo, right? While the brand strategy isn't just about the logo, it is one of the most critical aspects of building a brand strategy. Think about how you can bring all of the core brand values and voice into one logo.

Will you use a pictorial logo like Apple? Or will you go for a type-faced logo like FedEx? Maybe a mixed logo with copy and an image might be more suitable? The options are endless and could potentially take a lot of time with various stakeholders across the business to work on it together.

11. Think about the typography

The brand typography brings your copy to life, aligning with the messaging and your brand personality. It goes hand in hand with the design, brand voice, and marketing across all business channels. When you choose the typography for your brand, it will give it meaning and deliver the brand consistency for the visual identity.

12. Choose your colors

As with typography, you'll need to choose the colors to make your branding come alive. If you're unsure where to start with selecting the right colors for your brand strategy, you might like to look back at your previous branding and choose a couple of colors and build your color palette from there.

Think about using up to four complimentary tones to make your branding unique. You'll also need to think carefully about the colors you'll be using for hyperlinks and buttons throughout the site to keep consistency as well.

13. Imagery

You can't forget about brand imagery when building your brand strategy. While imagery will help develop the brand story and brand purpose, you'll want it to guide your customers to feel like they can see the brand in person. When you get the copyright to convey the brand messaging, this will help the customer gain an emotional connection with the brand imagery.

But, don't be fooled! You don't need one image to be at the forefront of your customers' minds regarding the brand. The brand image involves many aspects such as loyalty, trust, confidence, value, emotion, reputation, belief, and impression.

14. Why you should use our brand strategy template

Now you've got a clear picture of building your brand strategy, get started, and use our brand strategy template, which is free to use with our 7 Day Free Trial! If you're looking to present a slick brand strategy but don't have the time or creativity to design a course, drag and drop your content into our template created by our training experts!

Our instructional designers have thoughtfully put you at the center of making the most out of our course templates because we know how little time you have to build an engaging course. The last thing we want is for you to feel overwhelmed and put off a crucial part of your business strategy until the last minute. But hey, if it is the last minute, we can help you right now.

In the 7 Day Free Trial, test our out platform and see if it's the right fit to build your brand strategy. Chat to our US-based team on our Live Chat and ask as many questions as you like so we can help you build it.

You'll find the following lesson screens within the template you can easily customize and make your own:

• About us
• Our brand
• Target client research
• Competitor analysis
• Messaging strategy
• Branding assets
• Website
• Thank you
• Brand strategy quiz

You can add screens, move screens and customize your content to build a brand strategy you'll be proud of. Or, if you prefer, start a new course from scratch and add the screens as you go.

15. 30+ lesson screens to choose from

With 30+ lesson screen templates to choose from, you'll be able to bring your content to life by using them to create an interactive presentation. For example, our popular wheel lesson screen helps you distribute your content into bite-sized interactive pieces. You also might like to use our timeline screen to add in the brand journey.

Add in a quiz to break the content up as you'll see in our brand strategy template and make learning fun so that your team and stakeholders understand all aspects of the brand story and branding strategy.

There are plenty of ways to bring your content to life, you'll love using our lesson screen templates to help you see how easy it is to make it happen.

16. Get more than a brand strategy template

Coassemble offers much more than training templates to help make your life easier!

Our US-based training experts will help you build a training experience that will instantly make sense to everyone who needs to be involved in it. Drop our team a message in our Live Chat feature on this site, and they'll be able to answer any questions you might have about getting started with your training.

• You'll discover how to build a genuinely awesome training course that will knock the socks off your team and other stakeholders.
• You'll learn how to send your training program pro-actively so it doesn't get lost in a sea of spam.
• You'll also gain access to understanding how your team engaged with your training through our excellent analytics tool.
• You can ask for feedback from your team about how they found your training so you can continually improve and update it when needed.

17. Try Coassemble for FREE today!

Try out 7-day free trial here so you can see if Coassemble is what you've been looking for (we know it is!).

Test out our awesome lesson screen templates and have fun discovering how much you can get out of using our system to keep your training together.

Send our team a message on Live Chat so we can answer any questions you might have about getting started, and you'll realize that within 7 days, we'll turn you into the workplace hero!