Branding Plan
As a company that wants to continuously thrive, you need to make sure you find good and effective ways to market the products and/or services of your company. With that in mind, you need to immediately plan out the steps you need to take in order to have a successful market and sell what your company offers. Making a plan as to what you need to do will set attainable goals and help you keep track of your progress so far. Furthermore, it will also help you make sure you do precisely what steps are needed in order to achieve your goals.
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Aside from that, you need to make sure you establish your brand to your target demographic and make it known to potential customers. As you continue to make sure your business survives, making sure your brand becomes easy to recognize and well-known to the customers is essential to the process. With that in mind, a plan is important and helpful in advertising and keeping your brand alive. This article will help you plan for your brand as well as other important matters you should remember when you want to push your brand further.
What Is a Brand/Branding Plan?
As mentioned earlier, in order to ensure the survival of the company, it is important to assert and advertise your brand anywhere and anytime possible. However, you still need to choose specific strategies to use in doing so; otherwise, your effort will be futile. You need to have a thorough plan outlining which specific strategies should be done when so that it will be easier for you to execute them as well as measure your progress.
With that in mind, a brand or branding plan is a document that contains the strategies and tactics the company will use to do the direction they want to go for their brand as well as achieve the goals they have set. The brand plan is basically an umbrella that which encapsulates the marketing sales and product development plans. It puts into details what each aspect needs to perform in order to help the brand at the same time setting objectives that operations and finance need to support.
It is basically a plan that helps you utilize your brand’s limited resources to drive the biggest return. In this sense, a branding plan is a significant document that holds steps, actions, and procedures needed to accomplish in order to ensure the success of the brand. And since the brand is the most valuable asset of the company, a branding plan aligns, steers, and inspires all other functional areas of the company. Through this plan, the company has a guide on what steps to take, how and what the areas are supposed to do in order to support the branding efforts.
Elements of a Brand Plan
In order to make determine which strategies should be prioritized, you need to have a clear understanding of what you need in order to set and achieve the goals and objectives of the brand. Afterward, you can immediately start planning for the brand; this is when you start drafting a brand plan. However, it is important to remember that there are important aspects you need cover in your brand plan in order for it to be effective. With that, here are some of the most important elements of a brand plan you need to include:
1. Situation Analysis
A situational review is a deep-dive business review assessing where you currently are in the business or industry. In order to have an effective situational analysis you have to look at factors connected to your business such as the category, consumer, competitors, channels, and the brand. You have to determine what is driving your business as well as what is preventing you from fulfilling it. You also need to include the risks that may arise and the opportunities that has still to be tapped into.
2. Key Issues
After a summary is made from the situation analysis, you can determine what issues you are facing or about to face. With this in mind, key issues are basically the inhibitors that are preventing you from achieving the goals and objectives you already set. In this section, you will determine the inhibitors and the risks your brand is exposed to. At the same time, you will also need to include what effects these inhibitors and risks will cause your brand, how they can affect your growth, sales, etc.
3. Vision/Purpose/Goals
This section will contain of the branding plan contains the vision you have for the brand. You can only plan out the strategies you want to apply if you have a good reason behind it. In this case, the vision you have for your brand is basically where you want your brand to be after a certain period of time. You have to clearly define the purpose of your brand so that it will be easier for you to make a plan. In addition to that, you can also set measurable goals or objectives that will be what drives your plans as well as your strategies.
4. Strategies
In your branding plan, it is essential to include specific strategies and tactics, mostly marketing related, that you need to do in order to achieve the vision and goals you have for the brand. However, you need to remember that the strategies that should be included in your brand must be studied and tested. It is important that these strategies have ample data that supports their effectiveness; otherwise, resources will be wasted. In this case, it is important to remember that the strategies you use help you get to where you envisioned your brand to be on a certain period of time.
5. Execute
Since you have already identified and determined the strategies that you need to do in order to achieve you vision and goals, you need to be able to execute them according to the provisions or procedures of the said strategies. The way you execute your plan will be heavily influenced by the strategies you have included; this means that you have to be able to create a bond with your target customers in order to establish your brand’s reputation based on a distinct positioning and influence them to change how they feel, think, and act toward your brand.
6. Measure
In order to know if your efforts have borne the fruit you desire, you need to measure their effectiveness. Depending on how you want to measure your progress and growth as a brand, you need to assess whether there are significant changes brought about your shift in your old branding plan. You can conduct a survey, interviews, and so on in order to gather data you can measure and compare to your previous progress or growth. Measuring your progress will help you determine whether the strategies you have in place have been working or not.
Strategic Questions to Answer When Making a Branding Plan
In order to make an effective branding plan, you need to be aware of certain aspects and factors in your brand that can affect your overall growth. You need to know the current status and be aware with the current situation your brand is currently at. This will help you make better choices and make better decisions in order to help your brand grow even more or maybe penetrate new market, whatever you purpose may be. With that in mind, here are strategic questions you can use as guide when making a branding plan:
1. Where could we be?
This question refers to the vision/purpose/goals you have for your brand. You need to know and determine what you want to achieve in order to make moves that will help you get there. In order to answer this question effectively, you need to assess where you currently are and envision where you want your brand to go. In addition to that, you need to set a practical timeline of when you want achieve your goals. Doing this will ensure you set goals that are achievable and measurable. Answering this question will help you put specific vision and/or goals in your branding plan.
2. Where are we?
This pertains to your current situation. A thorough situational analysis will help you understand and be aware of where you are at in terms of growth and progress. When you started your brand you have already set goals and visions you need to achieve within a period of time, that will help you assess your current situation. In this case, you need to determine what has driven your brand to continue until such day, what inhibitors have prevented you to do certain things, the risks you have faced and may arise, and the opportunities you have yet to dive into.
3. Why are we here?
In order to answer this question, you need to figure out your current competitive position, the main strength your brand has, the connection your customers have with your brand, and the current business situation that your brand is facing. If you have figured out the mentioned aspects, you will have a better picture of why your brand is currently in the position it is now. Since you are aware of your current situation, you should also be aware why you are there. Figure out why you have grown so much from your first few months or why you have shown little progress so far.
4. How can we get there?
This is where your strategies and tactics come into the picture. However, in order to come up with suitable strategies, you need to think back to your vision. Your strategies will highly depend on the numbers, progress, etc. you want to achieve. You need to make sure that your strategies will help you pursue and get to the point where you want your brand to be; otherwise, the plan will have to be subjected to major improvements and changes. In addition to this, make sure that the strategies you use have been tested out prior to it being included in your branding plan.
5. What do we need to do?
This question is related to the fourth question. In order to accurately answer this question, you need to determine how to properly execute your strategies. This is where the testing of strategies comes in hand since it will give you of an overview of how the strategy can be effective, which means the most effective execution of such strategies have also been tested out. It is important to remember that although you tested the strategies, the market continuously changes and you need you make decisions to help you adapt. In addition to the strategies, how to measure their effectiveness as well as your overall progress should be included.
Conclusion
A branding plan is an essential document that will help you establish a connection with your customers. It can either make or break you brand. With that in mind, it is why it is important to study your market and plan accordingly. Although a branding plan will serve as your guide as you establish your brand in the market, make sure you are able to adapt to changes along the way. We hope you find the topics discussed in this article informative and useful.
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