A great brand is built by design, not by default. The brands you know and love, the ones you’re loyal to and could recognize anywhere, are the result of a lot of careful thought and planning. To create a brand that catches the right people’s attention and helps you grow your business, you need to be strategic with your brand.

When developing your brand, it’s essential to have a plan in place for who you want to serve, how you want to serve them, and where you want to take your business. Like any other important area of your business, your branding will be most successful when it’s strategic. Here are a few ways to be more intentional with your brand.

Define Your Business Vision

Establishing your business vision is one of the most important steps you can take to be more strategic with your brand. Your business vision is what you imagine you want your business to become: the end game you want to see for what you’re building. Without an idea of where you want to take your business, creating a plan to get you there will be challenging.

Taking the time to think about the big picture for your business–the things you want to accomplish and how you want to make it all happen–will help you develop and define the steps to make your vision a reality. 

Start by asking yourself these five questions:

• Why did you start your business?
• Who do you want to serve?
• What legacy do you want to leave behind?
• How do you want to spend your time daily?
• Where do you see your business in five years?

If you’d like some help defining your business vision, get my Vision Guide. The Vision Guide is a 24-page fillable PDF planner, designed to help you determine your business vision and craft a purposeful mission statement.

Identify Your Ideal Customer

If you want to be more strategic with your brand, you’ll need to know exactly who you are trying to attract to your business. Your ideal customer is the person who will benefit most and get the most value from your products or services. 

Your ideal customer has unique values, desires, challenges, and goals. The more you can understand who they are and what’s important to them, the more successful you can create a brand that will appeal directly to them.

To get a clear idea of who your ideal customer is, it’s essential to take a close look at data such as who follows you, visits your website, and which people ultimately convert to customers. You might also want to do some homework on who your competition is engaging with and buying from them. 

Set Goals for Your Business

Remember that business vision I mentioned? You’ll need to create actionable steps to help you make it happen. 

Setting goals for your business will allow you to create a manageable and doable plan to get closer to your vision and turn your business dreams into reality. And if you want to be more strategic with your brand, you should be setting goals for what you want your brand to accomplish.

Many aspects of marketing and promoting your business are based on your branding, so to set and accomplish goals, your branding needs to align with your efforts.

Be More Intentional With Your Content

Raise your hand if you’ve seen a video on TikTok and felt a burning need to jump on the bandwagon (guilty, here.) The rapid coming and going of trends on social media can definitely be tempting, but if there isn’t a strategy behind the time and effort you put into that 30-second clip, it might not be worth your time.

Being more strategic with your brand calls for acting less out of the pressure to show up and more toward creating thoughtful content for your ideal customers. I encourage you to slow down and think about the content you are putting out there. 

Develop a Marketing Strategy

Marketing your business and selling your products or services is about much more than whipping up a website. To effectively communicate what your business has to offer and persuade the right people to engage with your business, you need to develop a well-planned marketing strategy.

When you look at your current sales and marketing efforts, are they effective? 

What is your plan for getting your content in front of new audiences? How will you nurture connections with people who want to engage with your business? Are you inviting them to work with you? These are essential questions to ask yourself to be strategic with your brand and develop a successful marketing plan. 

Create a Branding Guide

Earlier, I mentioned the brands you know and could recognize anywhere. Those brands are recognizable because they’re consistent: They’ve established a look and feel that is unique to them and that resonates with you. 

Creating consistent content is essential to be more strategic with your brand, and a branding guide can help you do that. It explicitly lays out the tone and look that exemplifies your business. That way, whether you’re developing content for your social media, website, or other areas of your business, you know it will be recognizable to your audience.

Even better, create a set of graphics (I love Canva!) to help you stay consistent everywhere you show up. That consistency will show your audience you are trustworthy, and reliable and leave a lasting impression on them.

Review Your Data

Data is often overlooked as part of being strategic with your brand, but it’s a really valuable resource. Your website analytics, social media insights, and sales figures can all help you get a very clear idea of where you’re being effective and successful in your business and where you can make improvements. 

Monitoring and tracking your data allows you to make informed and strategic decisions for your business based on facts. With regular review and analysis of your data, you can see where you need to focus efforts and decide where to spend your time and resources. For example, if your social media engagement is low, perhaps you need to revisit your brand messaging or visuals.

 

Ready to be more strategic with your branding and your business?

Our Ultimate Business Planner Pack has a valuable set of planners to ensure your business has a clear plan, an authentic brand, and content crafted for your ideal customers