Branding is no longer about logos, colors or fonts; it’s about shaping perceptions to make a business more appealing. And the best way to do that is with a branding framework.
A branding strategy framework is the compass that guides your marketing strategies. The what, how and why of your strategic direction will align with your target audience’s needs to drive results.
Target Audience Identification
The first step of a branding framework is to identify your target audience. This entails conducting user research to identify the target market for your goods or services. You can examine the user demographics on your website and social media platforms. Using tools like Google Analytics, you may identify your audience based on characteristics like country, language spoken, age, and more.
Businesses can better judge everything from product development to marketing efforts by identifying a specific target market. A higher ROI and a more effective use of resources result from this.
You can develop a customer persona—a fictional representation of a possible customer—with your target audience definition. You’ll be able to comprehend their requirements, motives, and problems. This is essential to branding because it helps you communicate your unique value proposition. It also ensures your brand voice and messaging align with your customers’ wants.
Time Savings
Marketing is a complex process. It requires creative thinking, taking data into consideration and project management skills. As a marketer, you also have to keep up with the latest trends in your industry and be able to respond quickly to changes.
Using a StoryBrand marketing agency lets you focus on the most important tasks. It helps you save time by limiting “redos” and eliminating errors. Moreover, it will enable you to communicate the marketing strategy with your team members.
Creating a framework is a good idea when it comes to branding. It provides a home for templates, guides, tools and assets that all marketers in your company will need. It will also make transferring work from one person to another easier. It will also help you create a consistent style and ensure that your company follows the approved verbiage. This will ultimately save you time and money. Moreover, it will improve your marketing to grow and increase revenue faster.
Positioning
In a world where consumers who feel emotionally connected to brands have 306% higher lifetime value than those who don’t, building a brand with a nice logo and a few good marketing tactics is no longer enough. Instead, brand strategies need to be aligned with business goals and internal culture, as well as the needs of the target audience.
Positioning as part of the branding framework helps ensure that strategic brand messaging and identity elements match those goals and culture. It’s important to use discovery sessions with team members to extract the meaning and purpose behind the brand and identify key emotions that are associated with it.
This positioning work can also help uncover personality traits and attributes that the brand should portray, such as a fun, quirky, approachable, or authoritative personality. The positioning strategy should be clear, concise, and aligned with the brand’s values and goals. The framework should include a brand positioning matrix to show where competitors fit in the market and how to differentiate from them.
Message Development
A key component of communications planning is developing key messages. These overarching statements provide a common language for multiple partners to speak with one voice and increase the effectiveness of SBCC efforts. They provide consistency, ensure that information is presented logically and shape the perceptions that audiences will take away from your communications.
Message development involves digging deep into ideas and language to develop the most impactful means of communicating with your market. Using qualitative research, we test the potential of messaging to modify audience attitudes and behaviors before investing time and resources into advertising executions.
Effective messages should pass the RIBS test (relevant, inevitable, believable and simple) for maximum impact. This may be as simple in an emergency as disseminating early, empathetic messaging about simple, doable protective actions. This messaging would evolve throughout an emergency to reflect local perceptions and behaviors contributing to or exacerbating the crisis.
Brand Identity
A brand identity is a recognizable image your company projects, including its logo, color palette and messaging. It can also include physical elements like the look and feel of your packaging. Successful brands can distinguish themselves in the minds of consumers, even when they’re selling similar products or services. Think Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Krispy Kreme or McDonald’s vs. Burger King.
A brand management model breaks down a company’s identity into four important components: awareness, perceived quality, association and loyalty. Maintaining a consistent identity across all marketing and customer-facing touchpoints is key to building these vital metrics
