Brand development is a strategic process for creating and distinguishing your company's image, products and services from your competitors. Development includes aligning your brand with your business objectives, communicating it to your target market, and updating or strengthening your brand as needed. Brand development is the process of creating and strengthening your professional services brand. As we help companies develop their brands, we divide the process into three phases.
Brand development is about building a reputation. It's basically about developing the personality of companies, not focused on promotion, but rather on connection. It's more strategic and long-term, more conceptual. This is how you, as a brand, distinguish yourself from your competitors, if all your products and prices were the same.
A brand strategy is the holistic approach based on the way in which a brand generates identification and favorability between customers and potential customers. A brand strategy encompasses several different brand elements, such as voice, storytelling, brand identity, brand values, and the general environment. A brand strategy is the holistic approach behind the way a brand shows itself to its customers (and potential customers). If your brand is the way you present your business to the world, your brand strategy is the framework that supports it.
Your target audience usually includes potential customers, potential employees, referral sources or other influential people and potential partnership opportunities, to name a few of the usual suspects. If you still need to develop a positioning strategy and a message for your brand, this will be an important step. That said, your brand development strategy must be aligned with your value proposition and mission statement. In addition to your visual identity, your tone of voice and your communication patterns are also important brand assets.
The atmosphere of a brand is the general feeling it emits on its website, social networks, product packaging, etc. The environment can be anything from fun to sarcastic, serious or funny, and it is an amalgamation of the ways in which the personality, values and aesthetics of a brand align. Too many entrepreneurs and established brands skip brand development because they think they can take advantage of the fit between product and market. Brand development is the process of creating a brand and developing an identity that represents your business and differentiates you from the competition.
Designs may vary depending on the type of company you are in, but these are generally the steps necessary to create brand images. Conduct buyer interviews to find out which influencers your customers follow, which brands they already like, and how they make decisions. That means having a brand marketing specialist perform a competitive analysis, mapping all of a company's direct and indirect competitors. Brand voice, brand design, brand values, brand history and brand environment are the key elements of a successful brand strategy.
This step in the brand development process involves aligning the brand with your marketing strategy so that everything fits as planned. Think, for example, of how few luxury brands use colors such as purple or teal in their visual identities, or how most DTC companies have exactly the same aesthetic.
