Business,
Marketing,
Brand Development

Today we want to start a whole series of articles that’ll show you how you can easily create your brand strategy. Often marketing and advertising firms use many buzzwords and fancy language. They want to show you that creating your brand strategy is the most complicated thing in the world. But it isn’t, and we show you in 8 short articles how you can do it easily, step-by-step.

Our first step is about yourself. And in this case, it’s even appropriate. We’ll take a close look at your company and thanks to our direct-action items we create tangible results together.
 
Who are you?
This is the first question in our piecemeal branding blueprint and one of the most important. And it’s entirely different from the philosophical question “Who am I.” In opposite, it’s clear and has a direct impact on your branding as we’ll see in later lessons as well.

If your company character is consistent in all your brand presentations, marketing communication and promotions, the customer will start to build trust with your brand. If not, they begin to doubt your ability to keep your promises. Well, it will look like your changing your opinion every five minutes.

To get off the ground, we’d like you to clarify the following questions and write down your answers:

1. What’s yours why? Why did you start this business anyway?
2. What are your company values? What does your company stand for?

After those more profound investigations let’s take a look at something less abstract:

• What makes your company stand out? Why should I buy from you and not from your competitor?
• What is your company culture like? Is it conservative or playful? Dress code or home office?
• What are your goals? Think about what you want to contribute to your customer with your product?

If the answer to the last question is a quarterly figure, please think again.

Try to sum up the core of your findings in two or three sentences. You´ll have a clear image of who you are and want to be. This is your company’s mission statement and works as a good reminder of your upcoming logo design and branding work.

Now that you have some definite answers to the question of who you actually are and stand for, we built half of the foundation for your brand strategy. You are now able to communicate your brand message in a consistent and meaningful way. Wasn’t that hard, was it? Next week we take a closer look at your target audience and the meaning of it for your branding strategy.