In this presentation, I'll cover: The six elements of brand strategy: 1. Perspective 2. Customers 3. Competitors 4. Pleasure and Pain 5. Customer Journey Mapping 6. Buyer Personas Download the guide with all 47 brand questions here: http://j.mp/47brandQs Read the full blog: http://j.mp/47BrandQs I write about Growth Hacking and Lifestyle Hacking regularly at http://tomergarzberg.com StrongmanDigital: http://www.smdm.com.au Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomerGarzberg Quora: https://www.quora.com/Tomer-Garzberg Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/styleonman

2. I was six years old when it happened. I stepped off a plane with my
parents and sister, a one way ticket that landed us on Sydney soil. A
new culture, a new city, a new language. It was a new beginning,
though being a fresh-faced kid, I yearned for the comforts I grew up
with. Despite the complexities of accustomising to a new life, halfway
around the world, I looked to the things that portrayed consistency. One
of those things was Sesame Street. Sure, watching a furry sack with
plastic eyes and a hand shoved up the backside is great at any age,
but what intrigued me was how ‘at home’ I felt watching it. The
bilingualism of the brand was transferred from my old life to the new.
The brand transcended age groups and continents, and for that reason,
its trust was as welcoming as it was everlasting.
“

3. Building a brand
strategy ?
Cover these six
elements.

4. Perspective
This is your opportunity to describe the brand as you see it. Your end company
goals will define your approach to communicating how your brand fits into the
world. While there are plenty of intangibilities that make top brands what they
are, being able to articulate these will help you nail it as time moves forward.
When dealing with perspective questions, try not to think too much about the
competition, rather, on the type of brand you’d like to be perceived as. The aim
here is to outline your vision, your team, and value.

5. Customers
Without these, you might as well not be in business. Although the customer is
not always right, it’s important to understand your target market intimately,
and not aim to be everything to everyone. You’ll always find a segment of the
market spectrum that is a greater audience to you than others, and this is who
you should ultimately market to, as well as pivot to become more appealing.
If you’re able to find some census data, market research or white papers on
your target demography, this will help you to define who they actually are and
if your brand strategy aligns with their needs. Alternatively, set up an
incentivised survey and leverage your existing email database (if you have
one).

6. Competitors
Competitor analysis should be used as a guide to your position in the market,
and not a roadmap to business success. If you care too much about what your
competitors are doing, you’ll always be playing catch up. That’s bad because
you’ll never get a chance to dominate or differentiate, and that will always
hold your brand back in the pack.
With this in mind, it’s still important to track your competitors and how they
position themselves in the market.

7. Pleasure and Pain
It’s nice to be able to capture the ‘essence’ of what makes your brand
appealing, trustworthy, and something to buy in to. This comes down to
identifying your market’s pain point, and the way in which you leverage that to
deliver pleasure (or, the AHA! moment).
The end result is, you want your brand to be associated with alleviating a
problem for your target audience. When you think of Mercedes-Benz, you
think ‘elegant’, when you think of Instagram, you think ‘image sharing’, when
you think of James Bond, you think ‘suave badass’, when you think of Kanye
West, you think… erm, not much, but he has ‘good music’. That’s what you’re
aiming for – association.

8. Customer Journey Mapping
Understanding how your audience learns about you, finds you, uses/purchases
your brand and relates to you after their conversion is super important. The
clearest way you can do this is to create a mind map of the customer journey
with your brand. The secret here is to iron out any convolutedness in the
process. If it exists, fix it.
Customers should find you easily, be able to convert without friction, and they
should feel like winners throughout their lifecycle with your brand (which as a
bonus, helps with repeat conversions and drives evangelism upwards). You can
present these as an infographic for greater clarity.

9. Buyer Personas
A buyer persona details the ‘average’ audience/customer for your brand. It
takes all the data you know about your customers, and summarises it as a
semi-fictional character. Think of it as a ‘human’ representation of the most
prolific characteristics of your usership.
The benefit to creating a buyer persona is that it will clearly define who you’re
marketing to: the majority gender, their goals, motivations and behaviours. By
concentrating on marketing to your buyer persona personality, you’re targeting
the better portion of your target audience niche.

10. Screw Rigidity, Become Fluid
Your brand strategy will guide everything you do internally and externally
with your brand, however it’s important to understand that the world keeps
evolving around us. Your brand should do that too. Keeping an eye on the
pressures of your industry, customers and market shifts is critical, and you
must allow change into your brand if you’re going to in it for the long run.

11. FREE! Download 47 Blunt Brand Building Questions

12. I write about Growth and Lifestyle hacking regularly at
TomerGarzberg.com. Here’s some more blogs you might like: