Guide
What is brand strategy?
Definition, importance, and examples
A brand strategy is the holistic marketing approach businesses use to build brand awareness and reach and connect with customers. It incorporates everything from brand voice, storytelling, mission, values, and messaging. A successful brand strategy helps brands define business goals and craft a plan to connect with consumers.
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What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy is the plan through which a business is able to define and identify itself favorably with consumers. Incorporating everything from storytelling, values, appearance, and mission, a holistic brand strategy is how a business communicates its promise to consumers. A successful brand strategy helps a business connect with consumers by establishing its own unique and memorable identity.
Why is brand strategy important?
A brand strategy is a long-term plan for a business to communicate its purpose, beyond just logo, name, and creative elements. A brand strategy is important because it helps a business stand out and connect with consumers to drive brand awareness and loyalty. Through a brand strategy, a business can establish its voice, share its story, and demonstrate its values. A brand’s values are important to consumers. According to a recent survey from Amazon Ads and Environics Research, 79% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase products or services from brands whose values align with their own.
What are the basics of brand strategy?
While a brand’s logo, name, and look are important to defining a business, a brand strategy goes beyond this visual creative into the brand’s intentional ideology. The elements of a successful brand strategy should include careful consideration of what differentiates the brand and the story it communicates with the consumer. These include:
- Purpose
- Mission
- Identity
- Values
- Voice
- Story
- Uniqueness
- Emotion
- Visual and written communication
Brand strategy framework
When beginning to build the framework for your brand strategy, start by considering some questions, for example:
What does my brand stand for?
- Who are we, and how do we communicate that with the consumer?
- What differentiates our brand? What makes us unique?
- What motivates our brand to create this product, and what motivates our consumers?
- How and where do we want to engage with our consumers?
- What is the story we want to be telling about our brand?
- What are our brand values, and why are they also important to our consumers?
How do you build a brand strategy?
Creating a successful brand strategy is a pivotal task for marketing professionals seeking to establish a strong and enduring market presence. The five key steps to a building a brand strategy include: 1) defining your brand, 2) understanding your audience, 3) developing your brand's visual style, 4) telling your brand story, and 5) being nimble and ready to pivot. By following these steps, marketing professionals can steer their brands towards greater recognition, customer loyalty, brand trust, and long-term success.
Step 1. Define your brand
Your brand vision should highlight the ideas and inspiration that led to the launch of your brand. A strong vision will emphasize your key points of differentiation from other brands and help build a personal and emotional connection with customers. It should reflect your business strategy and serve as a point of motivation for you and your employees as you lead your brand forward.
A mission statement differs from a brand vision in that it should define your business goals and purpose, as well as the approach and actions you’ll take to pursue those objectives. It should be written in a customer-centric way so audiences understand how it aligns with their needs and wants, and how your brand can serve them best.
Step 2. Understand your audience
When creating your brand strategy, you should dive deep to discover the needs of your customer base and the opportunities to reach new customers with your brand and products. It’s also important to research the existing offerings before blindly creating a new product or content, to make sure your brand isn’t wasting valuable time or resources on something that customers may not want.
You’ll need to understand who your audience is and what they desire. This will help you tailor your brand experience to meet their specific needs.
Step 3. Develop your brand’s visual style
A visual style guide is a reference document that outlines all visual elements related to your brand, and ensures consistency throughout any marketing collateral or ads you create. This consistency can help create a recognizable image for your business and brand experience that customers will be able to distinguish from other brands.
Font choice can affect how your brand is perceived by your customers. Consider your company values and mission when determining the fonts that best deliver that message for your brand, whether you want to inspire feelings of trust and safety or fun and excitement.
Visual assets can be used as a reflection of your brand across all of your online touchpoints with shoppers, and can help drive engagement with your brand and sales of your products. Again, consider the emotions and feelings you want to evoke with customers when creating these assets.
The colors you choose to represent your brand can communicate meaning and impact customer purchase decisions. When selecting colors for your brand, start with just three or four choices based on what you want your customers to feel when they see your brand or what impression you want to make.
Step 4. Tell your brand story
Whether it’s through your website, advertising, or social media presence, every brand strategy needs to tell a powerful story to connect with customers.
Consumers are savvy and socially minded, paying attention to both a brand’s promise and their actions behind it. Establishing customer loyalty means delivering on your brand’s promise. Technology has broken down barriers and connected people all around the world, giving consumers a more global worldview. They’re seeing the effects of climate change, and rethinking their habits and purchases. Many consumers are supporting social justice movements in the hopes of creating a more equitable society.
Consumers are also aware of the unique—and often outsize—influence that brands hold. As such, they’re looking all brands to do more. Many consumers around the world would like to see more empathy and humanity from brands, and are asking them to strike a balance between profit and meaningful contributions to society.
The ability to communicate values-based messaging, as well as product messaging, to customers in a timely manner helps establish a rapport with them. In turn, that brand engagement can help further create brand trust and a direct relationship that can evolve into brand preference and loyalty.
Step 5. Be nimble and ready to pivot
A brand should always be evolving with their customers, paying close attention to customer feedback along the way. Showing that commitment to customers can go a long way. Continuously measure the effectiveness of your brand strategy, and adjust as needed. Using customer feedback and brand metrics can help you identify areas for improvement. Keep an eye on market trends and innovative ways to tell your brand story, making sure your brand stays relevant and engaging.
Brand strategy examples
Blog
In 2014, James Fayal had the idea for a lighter, healthier, tea-based energy product and launched the beverage brand Zest Tea. With the help of Amazon Ads and educational resources from the learning console along the way, Fayal has grown Zest Tea into a nationally known brand that sells in thousands of brick-and-mortar stores and online. In 2020, he made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and has expanded the brand to include not just bagged tea, but also canned iced-tea energy drinks, CBD tea, sparkling tea, and more.
Blog
Inspired by her search for a doll that looked like her daughter, Melissa Orijin launched the toy brand Orijin Bees in 2018. Since then, Orijin Bees has evolved into a toy company that has inspired consumers across the U.S. Her brand, Orijin Bees, makes multicultural dolls with different complexions and hair textures, and has been highlighted by celebrities, Forbes, Oprah’s Favorite Things, and Amazon’s Toys We Love. With the help from Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator, Orijin’s desire to encourage her daughter helped break new ground in the toy industry.
How do you build your brand strategy on Amazon?
By creating an engaging brand presence on Amazon, you can reach customers where they’re already shopping and looking for inspiration for their next purchase.
Amazon is ready with the tools you need to create a foundation for your brand, from registering and protecting your brand, to optimizing your product pages, to advertising your products and creating free brand shopping experiences.
Creating a cohesive brand strategy can help you establish a connection with customers on Amazon and get them excited to shop with your brand, no matter where they are in their shopping journey: browsing for ideas, considering specific brands and products, or actually making a purchase.
Amazon Ads offers a range of free and paid self-service products that you can use to create a scalable brand strategy. You can use these solutions together to help shoppers learn more about your full product line and to tell your story in an intentional, compelling way.
To help you get started, we’ve put together a checklist that you can follow to take control of your brand experience on Amazon and to get your business ready for advertising.
If you have limited experience, contact us to request services managed by Amazon Ads. Budget minimums apply.