When a writer starts to write a story, he begins with a blank page. He has an idea in mind, and now it's time for him to put it down to paper. He starts by outlining the setting, sketching his characters, and then dividing his story into scenes. This allows him to look at his story the way he wants to present it, and every time he feels like he's losing track or identifies a plot hole, he refers back to the initial idea he had while writing the script. This is exactly what a brand strategy canvas is for your business.
The process is very similar when it comes to setting up a business. The founders are storytellers, and their brand is the story. A Brand Strategy Canvas is a guiding tool for businesses to stay internally aligned for improved execution. Usually, businesses have a personalized marketing strategy, and building a brand strategy canvas is passed off as unnecessary unless a problem arises. The first step after having your business model in place is to create your brand strategy canvas with the help of an expert who can help layout clear directions for your brand and use that to develop result-oriented strategies.
What is a brand strategy canvas?
A brand strategy canvas is a tool that helps you develop a tangible, structured, and relevant Brand Positioning Statement, Brand Personality, and Brand Essence for your business. It also includes market research and connects these with your company values and key messaging for your brand.
Why do we need a brand strategy canvas?
The purpose of brand strategy canvas is to capture your brand story on a single page. It can be shared internally for all team members to promote, describe, and measure your brand. It works well with other canvases like value proposition, customer persona, and many such brand evaluation methods.
How should a brand strategy canvas look like?
An efficient strategy canvas should address the following points:
1. Customer Insights
Your brand strategy canvas should always start with your customers. First, conduct effective market research and then address how people perceive your product or services and what need it fulfills to convince them to purchase. Understand who they are, how they think of the space, what they value, and what about you benefits them the most.
2. Market Research
Understand where your niche is in the market, who else is in it, and how you can approach it uniquely or in a better way than your competition. Try looking for similar concepts/companies that have collapsed.
Think, what made them close? How are you approaching the problem differently? Has the customer, industry, complementary services/goods, or technology changed significantly?
Once you have answers to these thought-provoking questions, consider your market research to be complete. Based on these answers, you can start developing your personalized marketing strategy.
3. Rational Benefits
What are the tangible benefits of your services or products? Do they save time, money, human resources, or reduce risk? Which benefit is unique or most important to the customer?
Answers to all these questions are nothing but rational benefits you offer to your customer.
4. Emotional Benefits
Saving money is great, but if it makes you a better person or makes you feel better about yourself, that's an interesting hook to consider. So, think about - what's the hook for customers in buying your product? Are they solving a societal issue? Are they helping someone in need by doing so?
Remember, any slight edge or improvement, or excitement that you give customers, is a benefit.
5. Brand Essence
Brand essence is to let your audience know who you are and why you exist. It's your story. Consider what the core idea or defining concept of the brand is.
It doesn't have to be a slogan crafted for impressing people and sounding right. Try to keep it as real as possible because that's the thing that can help you stand out from the crowd.
Final Thoughts
Coming up with a personalized marketing strategy along with a brand strategy canvas can be time-consuming. But once you go through the entire process, you'll have a clearer idea of your brand - who it is for, what it represents, and how it would help people. Once you start thinking with this mindset, your brand wouldn't fail at any point in time, and it will all be worth it.
ConceptCape goes one step further and makes this tiresome process of developing a personalized brand strategy canvas easy and organic for you.
Sounds interesting? Reach out now! (link to contact page)
New to branding?
We have tried to answer all the basic questions about brand strategy below to help you out.
1. What is a brand strategy?
Brand strategy is nothing but a long-term plan to fulfill your long-term goals. Having an effective brand strategy can help customers identify and trust your brand.
2. What is a brand strategy framework?
Brand Strategy framework uses your target audience's buying factors to clearly define and identify who they are, what they do, why they do it, and what makes them unique compared to others.
3. What is the purpose of brand strategy?
The purpose of brand strategy is to help identify why you do what you do and why your business exists. A brand strategy helps your business stand out from the crowd and set a pathway for everyone else who will work with the brand.
4. What are the elements of brand strategy?
Brand Purpose, Brand Vision, Brand Values, Brand Personality, Brand Voice, Target Audience, Market Analysis, and Awareness Goals are the nine elements that are fundamental for forming an effective brand strategy.
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