7 Steps for Building a Small Business Brand Strategy

The Best Brand Strategy Includes These Elements

From individuals developing personal brands to professionals tasked with rebranding big names like Domino’s and Taco Bell, brand strategy is an ongoing project for companies of all sizes. As a small business or startup, where do you begin the process?

I recommend the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al and Laura Reis for a deep dive. But first, I’ll give you my abridged version with branding highlights for small and medium business marketing novices.

What Is Branding? Identity vs. Perception

Branding is used to distinguish a product or service and keep it in a customer’s mind. It can be divided into two areas:

• Brand Identity — An oversimplification of this is what people see and hear. Think name, logo, tagline, website, letterhead, or business cards. It’s what the brand wants customers to believe about its personality, reputation, and promise. Brand identity differentiates the brand from its competition.
• Brand Perception —This is what people feel and believe. It depends upon the customer’s brand experience and whether or not it fulfills the brand’s promise. Your customers control the brand perception, especially now in a social media-driven culture.

How can you marry brand identity with brand perception? The following steps will help you position yourself and meet customer expectations as you develop your brand strategy.

7 Steps for Building the Best Brand Strategy

1. Create Your Brand Identity

Pick your name, URL, and logo carefully. It’s essential to both the brand identity and perception. (This comes from a marketing guy who has twice formed companies in under 30 minutes because the clients needed my company information to initiate payments.) There are a lot of tools to help you do this, whether you use a marketing agency or online tools that allow you to design a logo, color palette, or typography.

2. Position Your Product

Create a strategy and identify a unique position that resonates with your target audience. For example, being the cheapest CPA or Attorney is never a good or sustainable brand position. Someone can always be lower in price. However, specializing in an industry or specific business can help you create your niche.

3. Focus on the Customer

Did you know that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable? Knowing your customers and meeting their expectations is critical.

If your mother or brother-in-law doesn’t like your branding, don’t worry about it unless they are in the primary target audience.

4. Professionalize Your Image

You don’t have to spend much time looking and acting professionally, but you must be innovative. Find the free, low-cost options, especially if you bootstrapped your new brand. Learn what you can do yourself and when to call in a pro. If you call in a pro, remember that nothing wastes time and money more than giving poor direction and not relating everything to the brand strategy, product positioning, and target audience.

5. Prioritize Your Tasks

When developing a brand strategy, remember that you don’t have the time or resources to do everything. Pick the channels, media, programs, and offers that make sense for your target audience. For example, social media is hot, but not all channels will suit all audiences. B2B strategy will differ from B2C strategy, and social media use varies by age, gender, daypart, and other demographics.

6. Test and Learn

Be open and willing to try different options. Test things to find out if they will work. When testing, always limit your costs and measure the results to decide whether to allocate more resources or move on. For example, if you spend five hours per week creating social media content but have low engagement and associated revenue, spend your time elsewhere.

7. Keep Fine-Tuning

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you ever become unhappy with your branding and, more importantly, the brand’s sales results, it can always be finessed, evolved, or changed. Sometimes, building a brand strategy costs a little time and money.

We think you’ll also like:

1. 6 Important Business Plan Mistakes to Avoid
2. Cash is King: Prepare Your Balance Sheet for a Business Sale
3. 19 Questions You Need to Ask to Build a Killer Marketing Strategy

[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following on-demand webinars (which you can listen to at your leisure, and each includes a comprehensive customer PowerPoint about the topic):

1. Turning an Idea or Product Into a Business
2. What Every Founder/Entrepreneur Must Know
3. Raising Capital: Negotiating with Potential Investors

This is an updated version of an article originally published July 2018 and updated on June 15, 2021. This article was most recently updated by the Financial Poise Editors.]

©2024. DailyDAC^TM, LLC d/b/a/ Financial Poise^TM. This article is subject to the disclaimers found here.