In many companies, business and brand strategy march to different beats. They are two schools of thought. One is all about hitting financial goals; revenue, profit, market share (your business)—while the other is about winning over the hearts and minds of customers, building loyalty, and delivering experiences that matter (your brand). It’s like two sides of the same coin, each critical to growth, but not always working in sync.
The disconnect often comes down to a lack of shared vision. Without it, business leaders focus on hitting financial targets, marketing teams chase customer engagement, sales teams push to hit their numbers, and HR is busy attracting talent. They might all think they’re heading in the same direction, but in reality, they’re pulling in different ways.
Alignment is the secret sauce
True alignment starts at the very top. Getting leadership clear on all the ways the business plans to deliver value across the board: to customers, employees, stakeholders, and communities. When you are aligned on the value you can create and your vision is crystal clear, aligning your business and brand strategy becomes much simpler.
Getting your leadership on the same page
There’s huge value in bringing your leadership team together to talk about how you create value and for whom. Give them a platform such as a facilitated workshop to discuss opportunities through the lens of brand, product, customer, and market strategies, all the way to how you engage your employees and communities. These conversations help unify and align the business and brand strategy, transforming them into a powerful, aligned force.
Di Marca calls it the Brand Bullseye Framework.
Here’s what the leadership team needs to answer together:
- What is our shared vision, what are we striving to become?
- What is our purpose and why are you special?
- What are our short and long-term goals?
- What are our revenue and growth targets?
- Are you focused on selling products or services, innovating new ones, building existing markets or entering new ones?
- Have you defined your market profile, target customers and what motivates them to buy?
- What does success look like in the future?
- Who are we competing with, and where are you positioned in the marketplace?
- Who’s your target audience, and what do they care about?
- Is the business structured in a way to achieve our goals?
- Do we have the best resources and processes in place to succeed?
Answering these business questions first ensures your leadership team has alignment on where you’re heading before the brand strategy is developed and marketing execution starts.
Your brand strategy defines what your business stands for
Defining a clear business vision and objectives allows your brand strategy to answer critical questions that will arise during its development:
- How will you differentiate?
- What’s your unique value proposition? Why should people care about you?
- What are the reasons to believe the value proposition?
- What are the key emotional and rational messages you consistently use to become memorable?
- How should your brand sound, look, and act like consistently?
- What are the beliefs and guiding principles around how you to exist in the world?
- What is the single idea that anchors our brand strategy and aligns it to our business objectives?
- How do we create a slogan (tagline) that sums up in a few words what your brand promises and wants to be remembered for?
A strong brand is good for business, it creates value and contributes to your bottom line
Your brand’s primary role is to bring your business vision, purpose and objectives to life across every touchpoint throughout the organisation people can come into contact with. How it is expressed affects how your employees and customers think and feel about your product or services. Your brand also influences why customers choose your product or service over another.
These conversations and workshops with your leadership team are critical to making sure your business and brand strategy work together to unlock new ways to differentiate your brand and deliver business success. With this alignment, you’ll create more value with less friction to fuel business growth, no matter what the market and economy is like.
If you’d like to understand more about Di Marca’s Brand Bullseye Framework, we’d love to chat.
