Few business strategies are as crucial and multifaceted as developing a powerful brand strategy. Beyond mere logos and slogans, a well-crafted brand strategy creates the base of a business’ identity and market positioning. It encompasses everything from defining core values and target audiences to devising compelling messaging that earns—and keeps—customer loyalty.
A brand is more than the overall look and voice, more than how website content portrays the business or how employees speak about it when they meet with customers. It’s more than your product and service offerings. It’s even more than your internal company culture.
A brand is all of that combined into a complex and ever-changing strategy that you control. We can help.
Giant Voices creates market leaders carefully and strategically, placing one brand building block upon another to create a holistic foundation on which our clients can grow.
Brand Identity
Honing a brand’s identity—its look, feel and voice—is a natural beginning of a powerful brand strategy, and many businesses prefer to approach branding by perfecting these external-facing aspects first.
Logo and color palette development are arguably some of the most fun and exciting processes for clients because they’re so fundamental to the rest of the brand. Plus, it’s an inspiring opportunity for those who don’t get to flex their creative muscles regularly.
For Giant Voices, a logo is never just a logo. It is the basis of a brand’s visual identity and sets the stage for graphic design style and color choices, which, in turn, influence the overall voice and messaging.
When we updated W.P & R.S. Mars Co. to Mars Supply, we also modernized the company’s branding and voice while remaining true to the bold red color that set Mars apart from the competition for over 100 years.
In close partnership with Mars’ leadership, Giant facilitated strategic exercises designed to get to the root of the company’s brand identity. From there, we developed a strong, modern logo and refreshed the company’s values and core focus, but that was just the beginning. This work spurred:
- A new company tagline
- Refreshed subsidiary brands
- Updated collateral
- Market expansion strategies
- Brand awareness campaigns
The new Mars logo was the tip of the iceberg in terms of the internal transformation that occurred in tandem. With strategic branding, Mars Supply has transformed itself into a modern industrial supply partner with a thriving online presence and a trusted, service-focused team.
Products & Services
The next brand building block to explore is a company’s products and services: what a business offers and how it communicates and promotes those offers is an important component of brand strategy.
Evaluating your offers against your brand and ideal target audiences will provide a clear indication of what fits, what doesn’t and what might be missing. What drives revenue and excites your team? Are there low-profit, high-effort offers you can remove from your lineup? Are your clients asking for products or services you don’t currently offer?
The sweet spot lies in aligning what your audience needs with what your business can deliver—and crafting messaging that supports your brand identity. Remember, you don’t have to be everything to everyone. If your team lacks expertise or bandwidth, build partnerships to fill the gaps.
Company Culture & Values
To take a brand even further, a business must look inward to develop its internal brand elements. Take time to evaluate company culture. Implement strategies to celebrate unique elements and adjust practices that are not serving the brand’s best interest. Solicit employee feedback and use key insights to course correct, when needed.
Company values are another essential internal element of a brand and should represent the core of a business. They’re the mantras your entire team upholds in their everyday work and a guide for gauging decisions on recruitment, hiring, employee development and retention, product development and overall business strategy.
Strong company values are key to driving business growth, so it’s important to ensure your values encapsulate not only what your business represents today, but also what you’re striving to be in the future.
Purpose
To perfect the next brand building block, you’ll need to draw upon all the work you’ve done prior. To find your WHY, the true reason your business exists, you’ll need to look back on your brand and its evolution.
Think about what makes your business unique. What gaps do you fill in the marketplace? What sets you apart from your competitors? What does your leadership bring to the table?
Then, push further. Think about your ideal target audience and what attracts them to your business. What keeps them coming back? How does your business solve a key problem in their lives?
As you evaluate what you offer and who you offer it to, you’ll uncover the insights that create your WHY. That’s your purpose. That’s why your team keeps coming back every day.
Communication Strategy
And now, the final building block. It’s finally time to develop a strategy for sharing your brand with the world. Refine your brand voice by revisiting your target audience.
How do your ideal customers prefer to consume information? Are they checking major news outlets, or do they prefer to get updates via social media? Are they visiting websites and sending emails or picking up the phone?
Understanding how your audience interacts with the world and what motivates them will inform where you communicate with them and what you need to say to inspire them to act. Think about how they’ll feel once you help solve a key problem in their lives and expand on that idea in your messaging.
It sounds simple in theory, but in reality, building a powerful brand strategy is an intense and in-depth process—but when you take the time to evaluate every aspect of branding, you’ll uncover insights that will help propel your business forward.