A strong brand is the anchor for any successful company. It’s what defines you, and what lays the foundations for everything you go on to achieve. As we say in this blog:

“A well-developed brand strategy will set the tone for everything your company does and says. It’s what you’ll refer back to whenever you make key business decisions, like raising investment or entering new markets, and it’s how you’ll shape the communications you put out into the world.”

To create your anchor, you need to get clear on a few key elements – from your vision to your messaging. This will help you create a brand that is authentically you and robust enough for your marketing to springboard from.

Here, we share four strategies for defining these elements, alongside some branding and positioning strategy examples from our own clients.

1. Pin down your values, vision, and mission 

Your values, vision and mission will underpin every part of your brand strategy and future marketing activity, so this is where you need to begin. The good thing is that you probably already know these inherently. They’re what drove you to start your company in the first place. The trickier part is trying to articulate them.

Values

These are the core beliefs that drive every decision you make. They’re not just the principles you want to apply; they’re the fundamentals that just are.

For instance, many brands have sustainability initiatives, but not all brands lead with sustainability first. The ones that do (such as Patagonia, for instance) make bold, cross-company choices that protect planet over profit.

For this reason, we recommend pinning down three core values. Choosing too many will just divide your attention.

Vision

This is your long-term aspiration. It doesn’t have to be entirely tangible – setting measurable goals for working towards your vision will come later.

Mission

This is how you connect your action to your vision. This should be more tangible and achievable, and should consider the what, how, and who of your business.

Branding example

The team at EarSwitch® knew that they’d developed something incredibly powerful: in-ear biometric control and sensor technology with the potential to save many, many lives.

But, what they didn’t know was how to create a coherent brand that encapsulated their ideas and aspirations. So, we stepped in to pin down their vision, mission, and values, before turning these into a fully-fledged, investor-ready brand.

Find out how: Becoming a key part of EarSwitch®’s funding strategy.

2. Figure out your value proposition

Before you can tell your target audience exactly why they should choose you, you need to figure it out internally. This means defining your value proposition – a clear statement that highlights what value you deliver.

To figure this out, consider questions like these:

• What hole would you leave in your audiences’ lives if you were to disappear tomorrow?
• Why do your audiences need you right now?
• How do you do things differently to your competitors, even if your products and services are similar at face value?
• How do you want customers to describe your brand when comparing it to competitors?
• What makes you best-placed to meet your customers’ needs?

Branding example

Oxa, formerly Oxbotica, was operating in a marketplace dominated by huge, multinational businesses with billions in investment. The team needed help communicating what set them apart: their ability to collaborate with their peers, rather than directly compete with them. So, we developed a clear, two-word value proposition, ‘Universal Autonomy’ – something that Oxa’s COO Keith called “a stroke of genius”.

He also highlights just how far a clear proposition can take a company:

“The positioning has been adopted by the whole organisation because everyone understands how it enables us to springboard into international markets and take us to new heights. We’ve been able to clearly communicate the company’s ultimate goal: to solve the autonomy problem. The impact that’s had on the team is massive.”

You can read the full case study here: Being distinct from global giants

3. Develop your brand identity

Once you’ve figured out the very roots of your brand, you can start to figure out how to express this. One very important place to begin is by defining the visual and messaging identity that you’ll lead with, online and in person. How you look and sound shapes perception, just like what you say and do, so it needs to reflect the values and proposition you’ve defined.

Visual identity

This is, in a nutshell, how you look and the feelings this evokes. It includes your colour palette, typography, image choices, and of course, your logo. These will act as the guidelines for any designed assets you create in the future, like your website, event banners, employee uniforms, letterheads, and social posts.

Messaging identity

This is the guiding principles for how you sound across your written and spoken messages. Your vision, mission, and value proposition statements will form the basis of this, but it’ll also include your company tagline, tone of voice, and the stylistic rules you’ll follow for consistency.

Branding example

RezKit didn’t want to look and sound like every other SaaS brand out there. The team wanted RezKit to feel adventurous and experiential, while making sure that its usability and SaaS USPs were clear throughout. So, we developed both a visual identity and messaging built around these concepts: using a sunset gradient colour palette, travel-themed imagery, clean typography, an optimistic tone, and jargon-free language.

And it worked!  

RezKit started getting recognised at industry events just two months after the new brand went live. You can read the full story here: Rebranding RezKit for industry & investor recognition.

4. Finetune your marketing strategy and plan

It’s time to start putting your brand out into the world – and a marketing strategy and delivery plan are going to help you do just that.

Your marketing strategy takes your internal identity and connects it to your wider commercial goals, be it recruiting loyal employees or getting acquired. Everything you’ve done up to this point lays the foundations for this strategy; now you just need to pull it all together:

• What marketing goals do you need to achieve to work towards your long-term commercial objectives?
• What type of marketing will get you there? Is it establishing your CEO as a thought leader with personal branding, or meeting a particular revenue target?
• What specific marketing infrastructure do you need to make this a reality? What tools, specialisms, and budget?
• What do you need to put out into the world monthly, quarterly, and yearly for your strategy to work?
• How will you measure your progress and optimise your performance?

It’s a lot to think about and execute, which is why we’ve created a tonne of resources to help you apply these principles. One of these is our marketing strategy template, designed to turn your positioning into sustainable, measurable results.

And if you still have questions? We’re a phone call away. Book a no-pressure chat with our lead strategist, Aby, to start turning your thoughts and ambitions into clarity.