Brand Strategy Planning
Today we're going to go over brand strategy annual planning. It's not business planning for your entire organization, it’s focused specifically on your brand.
or simply follow along below.
So as you've heard me say, time and time again, brand is at the top. Everything else cascades from it. In this case, it's the same with planning.
In fact, I have a freebie that is structured to show you how to lay out your actual brand strategy plan if you’d like to follow along:
Purpose
As we go through the overview of the planning approach, think of the visual of a decision tree. Start from the top, work down into the details. At the tippy top is the purpose, these are key elements of your brand framework - the idea of your brand purpose, or your “why.” This is why your brand exists, and why it was created in the first place.
Vision + Mission
From there you're going to have your vision and your mission. Vision and mission are not included in my standard brand framework, but are important elements for planning purposes. The vision is going to be focused on your business and where you want it to be in five to ten years, and your mission is what you're going to do today to deliver against your brand objectives.
In a high level strategy planning, we're going to have your purpose, your ‘why’, your vision, and your mission. I am not recommending that you create these as you are annual planning. If this is something you don't have yet, it's okay, fill them in the best you can for planning purposes, but circle back around to fine-tune. I think a lot of times what happens when you start to do these plans, you realize that you have more pieces of the puzzle that you need to work on and build from - you want to nail your purpose, vision, and mission.
Positioning
Now we're gonna talk about your positioning. This is something that, hopefully you already have. If you don't, Jones + Co. can help you out on that. Positioning is the area of the mind that you occupy for the consumer. So, it is the idea that comes to mind when they see you or think about your brand. For example, Coca Cola is about happiness. Disney World is about magic. That's positioning in its simplest form. It’s a lot more complicated or layered than just those one word examples, but they will suffice for today as we focus on annual brand planning.
Underneath the positioning, though, that's where we're going to start to get into the brand planning. Within your positioning are four or five elements that you should nail down again. Put your stake in the ground and make some hard decisions. That’s what planning is all about. Will you waver from this plan? Possibly, but I'm telling you if you do the work now, your 2021 brand plan will be that much more easy to follow.
Promise
After positioning is your promise. This is what you promise to deliver at every touchpoint of your customers' brand experience. So think about what thing can you deliver it every touchpoint. What it is that you can guarantee that you're going to make happen? It doesn't have to be a tangible thing. If you're in the service business, this might be authenticity. This might be inspiration.
Brand Story
Then, we put in your brand story. This is the narrative that brings your positioning to life. This is the emotive story of your brand. It should be beautiful. For the purposes of your annual brand plan, it should be just a snippet of it that gives us the essence of your brand.
Innovation
Next up is, and this is an important part not in my normal brand framework - is the innovation bucket. This is the driving force behind the life of your brand. How you’re going to continue to show up again and again. You may be thinking that this is a bit out there, but the innovation elements allows you to focus your growth for 2021 - whether that be product line extension or a new service offering. Maybe it's really just focusing on brand awareness, but it is explaining in this set plan how you will tackle innovation.
Trigger
Next up is your trigger. A trigger, purchase moment or moment of meaning, would be found in your customer journey. It's that moment. It's that insight, it's that tension, it's something that happens that your consumer or customer sees, feels, reads, touches that motivates them to buy. This is when they hand you their email address, this is when they pick up the phone. This is when they shoot you an email. This is when they say I really need this for myself, or my business, or my kids.
Experience
Then we've got your experience. How do you summarize your experience? What type of experience is it? This is important because your strategies need to deliver on that experience and enhance it.
Goal
Are you tracking? It helps to have the download in front of you. Beneath the brand elements comes the goal. One big goal, is best. Keeps us focused, but keep in mind that if it is one big goal—it is going to be big—to you. The goal should be big enough to house a few strategy buckets. Underneath, you’ll find tactics. Again, think of this as a decision tree: big stuff on top, then the nitty gritty—all of which you can detail to move forward with your annual plan. The goal should be in itself, something that you want to achieve in the year that you can quantify. And that be might be quantified by growth, it might be quantified by profit, revenue, any KPI (key performance indicator).
Shifts
Then below that is your shifts. I call them shifts because they are not necessarily issues or problems (although they could be) but they are solves for tensions, but they are an area of your brand experience, the way your customers behave. Maybe the customers are not buying because of X Y & Z. The shifts are born from insights, they’re issues you want to resolve or improve. A shift is about optimizing your consumer customers or your consumers are behaving. So, for instance, if it's loyalty, perhaps your customer is only purchasing one and not repeating - and that's also going to be tied back to that goal of what you're looking for, what is your key performance indicator, or KPI?
Strategies
From those insights, write a few questions that you want to answer - these are your strategies. So for instance, one of those questions might be: How do we improve brand loyalty in 2021? How do we launch, or roll out a new service or offering to a customer base that hasn't asked for it?
Tactics
Then, finally, the action. Underneath the strategies of brand awareness, you're going to detail out your tactics on how you're going to deliver to that brand awareness. So, how are you going to execute the above strategies, and what channels will you use? This is where you're going to get into a little bit more detail about whether or not you’re going to use PR, social media, website, digital, email. This is really the nuts and bolts of the brand strategy plan.
These questions are what Jones & Co. is all about.
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