With the first month of the year nearly under your belt, now is the time to ensure your business makes the absolute most out of 2019. But this doesn’t mean slamming on the accelerator in a bid to increase productivity, it means stopping, examining and ensuring you have a robust brand communication strategy that is securely aligned to your business objectives.
The benefits of having a powerful brand communication strategy are far-reaching, but when it comes to drawing one up, there are no shortcuts…
The first question you need to think about is: ‘Where are you now?’
Understanding your starting point is crucial to building a successful brand communication strategy. Examining where you are and your strengths and weaknesses gives you the foresight to remedy them in the future, and this will be an important part of your overall strategy. Remember – knowledge is strength, and the more you examine your starting point the more leverage you’ll have to move forwards positively.
Secondly, what are your goals and how are you going to achieve them?
This encompasses both your short-term and long-term business objectives.
Your brand communication strategy must be securely aligned to any business objectives, and will identify the stepping-stones that lead to the desired outcome. Determining how you achieve your goals and ensuring you stick to the right path is key to a successful strategy, and any deviation or reverting to the ‘old ways’ will simply dilute the desired result.
Thirdly, know your audience.
Understanding your target market inside out is fundamental to creating a successful brand communication strategy, and any shortcuts will undermine the end result. What you need to achieve is a strategy that gets noticed – in other words, one that successfully competes with the tidal wave of messaging your audience is already receiving. To do this, you need to identify your audience and understand what drives their decision-making. What inspires them? What are they interested in? How do they want to be spoken to? From this deeper level of understanding you can create the type of messaging that will get noticed by the right people… and motivate them to do what you want them to do.
Fourthly, who is going to help you achieve it?
There’s no doubt that when it comes to creating a brand communication strategy, it’s important to ensure the entire team are on board with it. Not only does this help to achieve the business’ goals, it also brings the team together and motivates them to work towards a common objective. Keeping your team involved will help them stay on task, give them a shared sense of purpose and ultimately prevent individuals from losing sight of the business’ aims.
And last but by no means least – measure, measure, measure!
Whilst helping your business achieve its goals is the fundamental purpose of a brand communication strategy, it’s also important to measure results accurately and regularly. Your strategy will incorporate this, giving you the tools and knowhow to understand whether you’re proceeding as planned, or deviating from the path. Getting a sense of how your communications are performing is essential to understanding your business’ capabilities and forging new paths based on your strengths and weaknesses.
If you would like to create a powerful brand communication strategy that’s aligned to your business goals, get in touch.