Entrepreneurs may start their company-building efforts with products, services, or pain points for target groups. While these things are necessary, a strong brand strategy will transform the individual parts into a cohesive whole with a unique and authentic voice. Today’s consumers want to spend their money on brands with purpose and vision that aligns with their own. Once you understand how to find this for your startup, marketing effectively will become easier.

What Is a Brand Strategy?

Some misguided branded strategy focuses on identification elements like logo, company name, and slogan. While these are necessary parts of creating an authentic brand, they are merely tools for the overall effort. Instead, strategic planning must focus on your target audience’s experience as a whole. It is about finding your voice and making sure the right people hear it in the most positive way possible.

Why is this important? From an entrepreneurial perspective, creating a cohesive and effective voice of your brand leads to higher levels of success. This holds true whether you market to consumers or operate as a B2B company. Your voice, story, and brand personality help you stand out in a sea of others offering the same products or services.

What does a brand strategy consist of? A well-designed logo, other marketing graphics, slogan, and color palette provide materials to help your brand shine and share its authenticity and purpose with customers and clients. Of course, you also need offers of interest to your targets. With these as a foundation, you can build an authentic brand with greater ease.

These are merely the tools used to introduce a brand and its strategy to the target market. They do not define the company any more than saying someone has blonde hair and freckles defines an individual person. In some ways, creating a voice and brand identity is a lot like revealing personality. What fuels the company’s drive to exist and succeed?

The Main Purpose and Goals

The first thing that comes to mind when you consider brand goals may focus on how much market reach or money you want to make. Although natural to want to succeed, this impression will push away consumers faster than anything. To create a brand that matters and is worthy of following and recommending, you need a purpose and goals that align with theirs.

Shoppers are more informed than ever before, and they are willing to get to know the brands they buy from before they open their wallets. If you run a B2C company, focus on a purpose that plays to people’s emotions. Does your brand stand for affordable function or intentional positive changes for the world? Different market sectors respond to cheap, quality goods or those that kickback a large percentage to non-profit organizations, for example.

These questions will help you identify your brand purpose:

• What does your ideal customer value most?
• Do you have more than one market segment to target and attract?
• What potential emotional benefits do your products or services provide?
• Which causes, organizations, or charities align with your brand goals?

Connection to Your Audience

While purpose and goals should align with your specific audience, the connection that comes from having an authentic voice and an in-depth brand strategy takes things further. More than ever before, people want to get to know their favorite brands on a more personal level. They want to feel a connection in multiple ways.

Even for companies that market to other companies, emotion plays a huge role in forming essential connections. Individuals want to relate on a personal level to whoever or whatever they interact with. Organizations want to do the same thing, but they call it networking or collaboration. A manufacturing company looking for a new machine part will not care about making friends with the people on the shop floor. It will care about whether it can trust them to uphold the highest quality assurance standards.

The following three factors are just some ways that a brand can connect to its audience.

Products and Services Tailored Specifically to Their Needs – When a company asks for feedback from their customers and actually listens, they value the brand even more. It feels good to feel like the brands you buy from care about your satisfaction. Feedback forms, review sites, and focus groups are all great ways to demonstrate this.

Mission, Vision, or Goal Statements That Align with Their Values – People want their money going to causes they believe in. Some examples include Tom’s, the shoe brand that gives 1/3 of profits to various grassroots causes, Blk & Bold coffee that donates 5% to kid-focused organizations, and STATE bags, who gives one filled backpack to a deserving student with every purchase. These types of initiatives are both meaningful on their own and a great way to create an authentic brand strategy.

A Feeling of Belonging to a Unique Group – Cultivating a sense of belonging as part of your brand voice leads to long-term loyalty. The nostalgia-triggering authenticity of Coca-Cola, the nearly cult-like following of Mac, and the exclusivity of the Harley Owners’ Group (HOG) translate into a more meaningful and reliable experience.

A large part of creating this type of connection involves the creation of a brand story. This can include everything from biographies of the founders to fantastical plans for the far future. It may help to share information about employees and the C-Suite or management team to create a more personal connection. If you reveal a positive work culture, it may help ingratiate the brand to consumers who care about things like that. People want to buy from other people, not faceless corporations.

A Consistent Approach

No matter what direction you go in with your brand story, mission statement, or company voice, remain consistent at all times. This starts with the very basics of having a strong logo and color palette people recognize and relate to. Remember that colors and shapes trigger emotions and lead to meaning, so get a skilled graphic designer to help you develop these important identity materials. For online marketing purposes, choose a single NAP (name, address, phone) and use it everywhere your company shows up. Consistency leads to recognition more than anything else.

Build recognition and respect with reliable brand voice in all marketing:

• Social media posts, answers, and responses
• Website page content and copy
• Blog posts and off-site articles
• Video and audio content including podcasts
• Print media and off-line marketing
• Retail space or product/industry/niche conventions and shows

A consistent brand voice also provides the type of reputation that builds on itself until your spark of an entrepreneurial idea transforms into a successful business. Keep your mission statement, purpose, goals, and focus on audience connectivity at the forefront of all marketing strategies. Whether you post on social media randomly on an afternoon or launch a massive media campaign, your brand must shine through as the most important and engaging message.

The only time basic consistency fails to make sense is in specific instances of market volatility or when some type of negative event or press occurs. It is almost impossible to operate with 100% accuracy and efficiency at all times. Someone will leave a negative review, call your brand out on social media, or make claims that do not align with your identity or purpose. Changing societal interests and new developments in your industry or niche can also necessitate agile thinking and flexible approaches.

Responding to anything negative and making necessary changes to stay true to the most positive aspect of your brand identity is all about using your voice in mutually beneficial ways. You need to respond and make announcements with honesty, integrity, and a reminder of what your brand stands for as long as it aligns with the changing focus of consumers.

The Voice of Your Company

Brand voice has nothing to do with always using the same spokesperson in audio and video marketing campaigns. Instead, it indicates the overall personality, feeling, storytelling ability, and social approach that your company uses. At its core, you could label it as polished and professional, friendly and casual, or quirky and trendy. There are dozens of possibilities and thousands of different adjectives to choose from. The only thing that matters is that the voice of your company aligns with your brand strategy and the expectations and desires of your target consumer group.

Owners, Founders, and the C-Suite Set the Tone

Since consistency of voice matters, it makes sense for its development to start at the top and then cascade down and out through all layers of employment, marketing, and consumer relationships. Whether you start the company on your own or have a large team working together, you need to decide on what voice to use. 

Although you may run into difficulties with personality differences, these types of decisions about brand strategy must transcend the individual. Does it make sense to approach your target audience with a fresh and trendy voice, and highly trustworthy and professional one, or something more authoritative and educational? These determinations flow easily from the above-mentioned questions about purpose, mission, and goals.

A large part of this has to do with marketing strategy decisions. Some examples of effective and appropriate voice include:

• If you want to create a feeling of belonging to a special group, go with inclusive language that has an air of mystery and personalization.
• If you want to become an authority in a specific niche, get to the point quickly, make definitive statements rather than asking questions, and imbue all marketing and messages with valuable information.
• If you want to make your brand the fun and on-trend one to watch, use evocative and up-to-date catchphrases, a playful tone, and more graphics and emojis.

Employee or Contractor Brand Participation

The leaders may represent the brand and make major decisions about the voice of the company, but they cannot shoulder the burden of marketing language and consumer interaction on their own. Every employee, especially those with public-focused job descriptions, or independent contractor you use must understand and use the same thing.

As an entrepreneur who is undoubtedly responsible for the startup and its operations, it is primarily up to you to make sure that the workers understand what your company stands for, what it values, and how you want your audience to respond to it. Create a company culture and atmosphere that encourages employees to speak positively about their experience. This will also help consumers think of your company in a more positive light as workers’ rights and appropriate compensation is a huge issue in today’s world.

Encouraging Customers or Clients to Add Their Voice

Customers and clients are some of the most effective marketers you can get. However, they will only share information, reviews, and recommendations for your company using the right voice if you inspire them to do so. It all starts with having a strong and unique brand voice to begin with. If you can convey tone, meaning, and purpose effectively to people who buy from you, you have accomplished the primary goal of developing a brand strategy in the first place.

In a world where people value testimonials and suggestions from friends, family, influencers, and social media groups more than most other types of advertising, convincing people to spread the word about your brand works. You can do this in multiple ways.

• Share such a valuable and authoritative information that others will want to pass it on.
• Open friendly and mutually beneficial conversations with great personality and tone.
• Develop such a quirky or engaging voice that consumers find value in a sharing.

What Does It Mean to Be Authentic?

The simple definition of the word authentic points at synonyms like genuine, undisputed, real, and not copied. While some degree of inspiration is frequently found in other successful companies, the last thing you want to do is copy your brand from another source. You must remain true to your initial purpose and goals if you want your target audience to see your brand as authentic. This is especially true in the face of conflict or setbacks.

Trust is not only the cornerstone of entrepreneurial success. It is the foundation, the support beams, the roof that protects you from difficult times, and more. The one thing that can destroy your brand faster than any other is if its targeted consumer base loses trust.

• Young consumers have lower automatic trust levels than older ones.
• Larger corporations automatically receive less trust than ‘mom and pop shops.’
• Fewer people trust media and marketing than ever before.
• More consumers focus on recommendations and reviews than advertising.
• People are more in tune with fake reviews and testimonials these days.

Even some of the largest global brands have experienced reputation-damaging events. For example, Tylenol’s 1982 tampering scandal that led to multiple deaths required a strong and immediate response. A 2011 Dr Pepper ad claiming their new soda was “not for women” deviated from anything resembling a responsible brand strategy. These horrific experiences or bad decisions reinforced the need for flexibility when it comes to voice, tone, and authenticity. Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of the Tylenol brand, pulled all that product of the shelves. This profit-destroying decision clearly showed their dedication to the overall voice of J&J: a family-friendly company with “best for you” products and a high degree of social responsibility.

Conversely, some brands with exceptionally authentic voices include Starbucks, Old Spice, and Uber. The coffee superstar combines an expressive, passionate tone with a high degree of functional understanding. Old Spice has always focused on all types of masculinity with a new touch of slightly cheeky humor. Uber offers a simple, consistent, and conversational tone to everyone who uses this popular ride sharing app. All these things are reflected in the graphics, text, and technology that each brand uses. With every interaction, consumers get exactly what they expect and what they want from the company.

Almost every entrepreneurial effort begins with an idea for a product or service that solves the problem or provides a real benefit to a targeted customer group. Merely releasing a product into the market, however, is not enough to create the type of company that becomes a household name or gets recommended without recompense both on and off-line.

Development of a strong brand strategy allows you to discover and share your authentic voice with people who make the important buying decisions for themselves, their families, or their companies. This is not just an essential ingredient for success. It represents the type of unyielding foundation that the greatest brands in the world are built upon.