6 Steps to Building a Successful Brand Strategy

Being a small business owner can be overwhelming—it's hard to know where to start when building a brand. The following steps will help you create a successful strategy and stay on track with your business goals.

1 - Be Authentic

Marketing gets a bad rap when it comes to authenticity, and the key to success is finding the balance between professionalism and real talk. You want to pitch your business without sounding too much like an aggressive salesperson.

Create an authentic brand by considering the following questions:

• What are your values?

• What is unique about you as a small business owner?

• What makes your business stand out from the rest?

• What is your brand's personality? Humorous, serious, sincere, etc.?

• Who is your ideal audience? (See Step 2.)

Spend some time brainstorming answers to these questions and building on your responses. This process will help guide the rest of your business development and help you keep an authentic brand presence.

2 - Know Your Audience

As a small business owner, your number one concern is knowing your audience. Start by outlining your ideal audience segments based on their shared demographics: geographic, behavioral, needs, values, etc. The more detailed you can get about your different audience segments, the more you can genuinely picture your audience as real people and adjust your brand to cater to their needs.

An obvious but often overlooked method of getting to know your audience is talking to them! Seek out the people in your different audience segments and ask them questions about your business—how they make purchasing decisions, what influences these decisions, what kind of marketing appeals to them, etc. You can conduct this research independently or find resources online, such as SurveyMonkey, to create market research surveys based on your ideal customer demographics.

3 - Consistency is Key

It is impossible to create a brand without consistency, and a coherent brand image allows your customers to associate your brand with the visual elements of your identity. Nailing down details of your brand, such as fonts, colors, graphics, and photography style, can help ensure that you consistently represent your brand in every aspect of your business.

Brand guidelines are crucial in maintaining consistency in your brand. Creating these guidelines—or hiring a professional to develop them (see my section on outsourcing!)—helps ensure integrity in your brand identity.

4 - Keep it Simple

Avoid frustration by keeping your strategy simple from the start. Narrowing down your audience can help you determine what services or products to offer that will help fulfill their needs. Keeping your visual identity simple (e.g., 1-2 fonts, 4-6 colors, clean logo) prevents your brand from looking inconsistent or overly complicated. Creating clear and concise messaging allows your customers to know exactly what you're offering from the start.

Brand sprawl often happens when companies grow quickly without a clear strategy or guidelines. A simple approach—avoiding adding extra services, products, or sub-brands that don't make sense for your business or your audience—can help you avoid this common issue.

5 - Plan Ahead

Nothing can affect brand identity more quickly than working on the fly. Planning is your best friend in maintaining a clear brand and executing a successful strategy.

Before you launch your business, make sure to have your vision, mission, and visual identity developed. On top of that, creating an overall marketing and branding strategy—including a content calendar for your social media, blogs, and emails—will ensure a smooth launch with a clear brand intact.

6 - Outsource

Learning how to outsource is vital for your business growth. We try to do it all as small business owners—often to our detriment. Conducting a SWOT analysis can help you determine where you need additional support. As you find ways to outsource services to other professionals, this will give you the freedom to focus your time on what you do best.

ARVI Branding + Visual Identity, with over ten years of marketing and branding experience, is here to help take over the reins of your marketing and branding strategy, delivering a professional result while freeing up your time to focus on other business needs. To set up a free consult, sign up here.