Why Your Business Needs a Brand Strategy Before a Logo

Do you know that brands have less than 10 seconds to make a first impression in front of customers?

It is natural to think that your brand needs a logo, but having a logo comes after building a robust brand strategy. Before rushing into logo design and selecting which colours will be prominent for your brand, you should first understand what branding is.

Branding is the whole identity of your business. It is the characteristic through which you can present your business to your customers. Branding helps your customers understand what you value, what you stand for, and what your mission and vision are. Your brand will need a logo, which will become the face of the entire business, but before that, you need a robust branding strategy.

You can think of your brand strategy as the blueprint, and your logo as one of the visible features of your brand. Without the blueprint, you cannot jump into benefits, features and services. Blueprint is the entire plan for the brand. It is not only a starting point; it is the entire foundation on which many of your marketing, advertising, and growth tactics will depend.

In this article, we will understand why brand strategy is more important than having a logo in the beginning.

What is Brand Strategy?

It is necessary to develop a robust brand strategy before you immerse yourself in the visual aspects of branding. Your branding strategy will include a blueprint that highlights how a company should position itself in the market. Your brand strategy includes the strategies through which you can communicate your values to the customers and engage with the audience.

Brand strategy will need extensive research, decision-making and analysis for establishing a clear direction to deliver your brand’s message and identity to the audience. For example, the brand strategy of Nike revolves around athleticism and empowerment.

Nike includes the themes of empowerment and athleticism evident in all of their messaging and partnerships. The company communicates their branding efforts using transformative marketing materials with the tagline – “Just Do It”.

Importance of Strategic Branding

Standing Out in a Saturated Market

To stand out in the saturated market, where many businesses are selling the same thing to the same pool of customers, you will need a robust branding strategy. 

To create an identity for yourself and show differentiation 

If your brand is facing a similar challenge in the marketplace, you will need a well-defined strategy to help your brand establish a unique identity and position in the market. Your brand strategy will help you distinguish between who you are, what fundamental decisions drive your business, your differentiating factor and why your audience should choose you over your competitors. 

Customers will Trust Your Brand if They Know You

Another reason you need a brand strategy before you need a logo is to gain customers’ trust through cohesion.

Do you remember the brands like Nike, Apple and Starbucks? Why do you remember them? You should know that their success is not because of their great logo. It is about delivering consistent messaging and maintaining coherent expression across every touch point.

You will need to establish your preferences and visual directions. Your messaging guidelines and brand voice should be consistent across every channel and platform. It’s important to train the staff in a manner that they understand how to represent your brand. By maintaining consistency, you can build recognition, which consequently will develop trust among customers. 

Robust Brand Strategy Can Evoke Emotional Response in Potential Customers

A robust brand strategy will help you create an emotional connection with the audience. Transactions are not enough in today’s world; it is important that you have a genuine relationship with your customers. Through this, customers can become your loyal advocates after just being a one-time buyer.

To achieve this, you need to understand the core values of your customer and develop a bond with them. Your brand messaging should focus on including key benefits of the products and not features. You should address customers’ pain points. Strategic branding will evoke an emotional response in customers. Hence, you are not only selling products. You are creating an experience for your customers that goes beyond basic transactions.

To Sum Up

If you are just stepping into the business world, you will need to understand branding and brand strategy development so that you can look forward to long-term success. As opposed to that, if you are looking to scale your existing brand, just remember that corporate visuals and creative ad copies are not enough to develop a relationship with your customers.

A robust brand strategy includes different aspects of your brand expression, starting from your logo design to your website. Customer service and product development are also a part of your brand strategy. To get assistance in your brand strategy development, you can contact our marketers at VerveBranbding, a leading logo design company in India.