A brand strategy is the foundation of a successful brand 

Your brand strategy does the heavy lifting and defines who you are, what you provide your audience, who that audience is and why you do what you do. These characteristics are not only the foundation of a well-developed brand but never leave someone confused as to what you’re offering them.

Questions to ask yourself when developing your brand strategy include:

• What is the mission of your business?
• Why do you do what you do?
• What are the values behind your business?
• Who are you wanting to connect with? Who is that dream client/s?
• What sets you apart from the competition?
• Speaking of competition, who are they? What do they do well?
• How do you share your purpose with your audience?
• How do you want to make your audience feel?

Yep, there’s some pretty hard-hitting questions there! This deep dive into why you actually exist is worth every second because your brand always comes back to how you make people feel about you and themselves.

Your brand strategy should give you a roadmap of how you’re going to execute the above questions and turn them into actions and objectives that can be measured. Those that are most successful at this are deeply connected at every level of the business. 

A strong brand strategy allows you to stand out from the competition because you have clearly defined your purpose and know how you’re going to get people to feel a certain way about you. When people have an emotional connection to a brand, they’re likely to become more loyal and stick with you. The more people you can do this with, the less you have to introduce yourself when a new customer comes along; your loyal fan base have done the selling for you! 

Now, don’t worry! If you’re an existing brand that hasn’t done this homework, it’s never too late to get yourself on the right track. Taking the time to get crystal clear on your brand’s strategy will undoubtedly find you identifying new ways to connect with your audience, tweaks to better align with your values and exciting new opportunities to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

Knowing your brand’s strategy will also impact other aspects of your business including future decision making, collaborations, goal setting and how to elevate the culture of your business. 

So, now that we know the role of a brand strategy, where does a visual brand strategy come in?

Your brand identity should bring your brand strategy to life!

 Knowing your purpose, the feelings you want to evoke and where you want to sit in the market, you’re able to harness these insights into visual assets. Just like every step of your brand strategy, your visual brand strategy should be all about creating memorable and emotion-evoking assets that tell the story of your strategy. 

Now, we’re not just talking about a logo here. From the colours you select, the fonts you roll with, whether the shapes you use are round or straight, to the combination of them all together, each element is a visual representation of your strategy that is driven to resonate with your people. 

Remember, every colour on the colour wheel and every font available in the archives each evoke thoughts and feelings. Harnessing a visual brand strategy is so much more than selecting colours and fonts that you think are “pretty” but diving deep into the natural emotions they release when your audience sets their eyes on them. 

Fortunately, we’ve done the research for you (we’re #BrandNerds like that) and you can find links to our thoughts on font psychology and the meaning behind the most popular brand colours. 

As you hear us say about so many branding activities, consistency is key, and your visual strategy is no different. You want to ensure that however a customer is engaging with your brand, it looks, feels, and sounds the same as it did for them the previous time… and the time before that. 

Inconsistencies in identity only leads to confusion and weakens your ability to become memorable and so seamlessly identifiable like the world’s most well-known brands. Part of your visual brand strategy should be developing brand guides that cover all the different elements of your visual identity so that whoever is working magic on your brand, can do so in a way that respects the visual identity.