Brand strategy: What it is and how to create a strong framework

 A company's brand strategy used to be mostly based on in-person interactions. 

All are essential components of a larger brand marketing plan that depend on customers entering stores, such as Target's vivid red aisles, Best Buy's polo-clad employees, and Jimmy John's freakishly quick sandwiches. 

Digital brand strategies are now a top priority for marketing and communications professionals as more individuals use digital platforms to browse, buy, review, and gush.

Fortunately, there is one area where both teams may have a significant impact right now. It's their social media strategy, not a storefront. 

Social media is the main platform for audiences to interact with brands. Gaining more market share and retaining customers is possible with a social-first brand strategy. 

Here, we'll outline the basics of brand strategy. With templates to guide you through each phase, we've also provided advice on creating your own framework. 

Let's start now.

What is a brand strategy?

A brand strategy describes your approach to the effort involved in creating and preserving a positive brand reputation. These blueprints describe how various brand components interact to promote positive brand perception across channels. That includes your: 

• brand goals and values 
• Voice, tone, and brand personality 
• visual material 
• brand storytelling 

While your brand marketing strategy should work across all platforms, social media is where it really comes to life. Social media is used by people for a variety of purposes, including entertainment, information, support, and more. An organized brand strategy may make the most of these opportunities and produce interactions that build enduring bonds.

These relationships do more than just improve your financial situation. During a crisis, they can also be a potent source of social capital. 

Because of this, developing a brand marketing strategy requires collaboration between specialists in social media and communications. Together, the two teams may create a strategy that protects a brand's future for many years.

Why strategic brand management matters on social

Your brand strategy functions like a showroom on your social media platforms. 

Each new post is an opportunity to emphasize who and what are most important to your business. Together, they have the ability to influence how customers view your brand. 

Having a social media presence by itself does not provide these reputation-enhancing advantages. You must carefully consider the three pillars of strategic brand management in order to maximize the potential of social media:

• The voice, tone, and personality behind your brand is known as your brand persona. 
• Your brand's unique visuals make up your visual identity. 

Your methods for engaging and interacting with followers and potential fans.Together, these three pillars personalize your brand and create stronger connections with your consumers.

These connections may result in a supportive audience that actively supports latest products, announcements, and more in good times. Your company may survive difficult times by building a strong brand reputation. 

That encompasses more than just any difficulties your company might experience. In line with the 2022 Sprout Social IndexTM, 71% of customers believe it's essential for businesses to spread awareness of and take a position on sensitive topics.

Brands can manage their new position in global events and cultural moments with the aid of a framework for brand strategy that is documented.

What is a brand strategy framework?

Consistency is the key to successfully carrying out a brand strategy. We can't rely on chance to maintain consistency. 

You may benefit fully from a solid plan by using a brand strategy framework as handrails. A single, trustworthy reference point for decision-making can be provided to your team by documenting the specifics of your brand.

Of course, it's impossible to foresee every choice you'll make in terms of branding. In actuality, a manual-style approach to brand documentation may raise more questions than it does answers. Instead, giving your coworkers a framework might provide your company the groundwork it needs to communicate effectively with customers. 

This framework will be used throughout the entire company, but it should particularly boost the following strategies:

• Executive communications: The methods used by the executive group of your company to spread the message of your brand. 
• How you spread your brand's message within your organization through internal communications. 
• Public relations: The means by which you convey your brand's message to the general public. 
• Social media: How you reach out to your social audience with your brand message.

You may better target the market with a unified message by utilizing your brand to tie these techniques together holistically. By maintaining that consistency throughout a multichannel marketing campaign, you may gain the trust of your target market and increase goodwill for your company.

Your template for developing a holistic brand strategy framework

Now that you know the fundamentals, it's time to start working. You will have a basic structure after following this step-by-step manual, which you may build upon as you discover what works for your particular business. 

Step 1: Create your team. 

As they say, "The dream is made to operate in a team environment." 

An effective brand strategy cannot be developed by a single team member. You need a variety of viewpoints to fully comprehend your brand and where it fits into the market.

You should seek out two distinct teams of individuals for this assignment. A tiger team is the first thing you'll need. You will receive assistance from this small group of individuals with project management duties and the final deliverables. 

You'll also require candidates for your discovery groups. These are people outside of marketing who have views about your company and brand. You could take into account the following individuals for these groups:

• Senior leaders
• Company culture captains
• Brand designers
• Recent hires

It's time to send invitations once you've narrowed down those you want to include. Here is a template for outreach that you can use to start the project.

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m reaching out because we’re looking for participants for our upcoming brand discovery project. You’ve been identified by our team as an internal brand champion, and we’d love to have you involved.

The ask

We’ll be hosting a series of discovery sessions to develop a brand strategy framework unique to [Company Name]. Prior to your small group session, we’ll ask you to complete a brand questionnaire. During the hour-long session, we’ll discuss and build upon answers during a team brainstorm.

The total time commitment will be about 2-3 hours over the course of three months.

If you’re interested in participating, please respond to this email no later than [Date]. We will follow up with the brand questionnaire and details on your discovery session.

Best,

[Name]

Step 2: Host discovery sessions

It's time to gather your insights once you have received approval from important contributors. Plan discovery meetings to uncover the unique qualities that make your brand stand out. 

For the best results, keep these discussions on topic. If there are numerous interested participants, arrange several small group meetings rather than one big one. Everyone will get a chance to express their viewpoint. 

You'll go over a brand discovery questionnaire during these meetings. Sending out a meeting agenda with thorough prep work instructions is another method to make the most of your time together.

To help with the preparation, include a copy of your brand questionnaire. You can be as straightforward or creative with these inquiries as you like. Follow your team's lead in whatever you believe will provide the best outcomes. 

The following inquiries should be taken into account as you draft your final questionnaire:

• What currently does our brand well? 
• What strengths do our competitors have? 
• What distinguishes our company from the competition? 
• What does our brand now lack? Why are we having trouble communicating? 
• Whom would our brand choose if it were an actor? 
• What would you say our brand personality is like? 
• Which feelings would you relate to our brand?

Encourage group members to challenge or expand on each other's responses during the discovery sessions. Use a whiteboard tool like Miro or Google Jamboard to take notes so you can organize discussion topics by similarity after the meeting.

Step 3: Document your findings

The time has come to translate the raw data from your discovery sessions into the first version of your framework. 

This revision of your framework ought to emphasize the following four points:

• Your brand's stance: Explain the "what" and "why" of your company (your purpose, personality, value props, etc.) 
• Values: Describe the tenets that act as your culture's north star. 
• Messaging guidelines: Describe the language and tone of your brand in action (your tagline, messaging pillars, etc.) 
• Visual guidelines: Describe the artistic threads that bind your visual materials together (including fonts, typography, colors, design elements, mascots, etc.)

It's tempting to try and complete this phase with a thorough, finished structure, but this is an iterative process for a reason. Frameworks for brand strategy are dynamic documents that require participation from various stakeholders. Don't be scared to continue if you catch yourself letting perfection stand in the way of development.

Step 4: Create a crisis plan 

It may be challenging to view the situation as anything other than extremely stressful when a crisis occurs. Crises can, however, also present a chance to grow your brand, as demonstrated by recent crisis communication instances. 

Suppose Slack's service went off in 2022. They managed to escape the scenario uninjured despite the fact that the problem put an end to workdays everywhere. In fact, they gained more admirers because of their crisis-long commitment to brand-consistent customer service.

As a second layer to your brand strategy framework, developing a crisis plan can help you get ready to handle challenging situations as wisely as possible. Even while you might not be able to plan for specific crises, you can create a procedure that will help the correct people get mobilized in case one occurs. 

By assembling a crisis response team, you can enhance your plan with a fundamental structure for crisis communication. The following roles need to be assigned to and approved for:

• Leader of the crisis communication team 
• Coordinator for crisis communication 
• Final decision-maker Legal advisor 

Depending on the circumstances of the crisis, you could want additional assistance from various teams within your business. To add another level of planning, use this thorough crisis communications plan template.

Step 5: Circulate for review

It's time to present your framework to your tiger team for comments at this point. 

You can use the following email template to distribute your initial brand strategy document:

Hi everyone,

The first iteration of our brand strategy framework is attached and ready for review.

This framework is designed to help leaders across our business build and maintain our brand across channels. Here are some specific areas of feedback I’d like you all to address as you review this document:

• Is anything missing or unclear?
• Does the format of this document make sense for its intended use?
• Is there anything that we can improve?

Please share your feedback with me via email by [Date]. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best,

[Name]

Step 6: Monitor your progress

Continual check-ins will help you remember your new structure after you've implemented feedback. 

Getting back together with your tiger team and keeping tabs on important activities is easy with a quarterly brand roundtable. Take use of this time to talk about how goals are coming along, brand victories, and upcoming possibilities.

Measuring brand perception goals can be challenging. Using data from a social listening service is one approach to inject quantitative metrics into the conversation.

The perception and sentiment surrounding your brand are analyzed over time using social listening techniques, which offer insightful information. The social listening tool from Sprout allows you to keep tabs on how your share of voice compares to that of your main rivals. 

Pro-tip: Your executive team still has a big part to play in your brand strategy even if they can't make it to regular check-ins. To educate leaders on executive communications that are brand-friendly, host a first coaching session. Then, send them an email with the revelations that came up during roundtables.

It’s time to build your own brand strategy

A fantastic career option is developing a brand strategy framework for your company. Along with other crucial leadership abilities like project management, teamwork, and strategic thinking, it's an opportunity to showcase your artistic talents. 

Visit our brand storytelling article to find out more about how social insights help create successful brands. It includes advice on developing a data-driven brand narrative as well as several examples from actual organizations.