More than just imagery or a logo, a brand encompasses your company’s digital assets and physical products, as well as the intangible. You might say that your brand is the experience customers have with every touchpoint of your business. You must communicate your company’s brand to your target audiences to differentiate it from competitors. It’s important that any potential customer, in any retail market, experience your messaging in a way that’s meaningful to them — yet cohesive across all channels. This delicate balance requires a strong brand strategy.
What is a brand strategy?
A brand strategy is a blueprint for the expression of your brand as it aligns with specific goals. Your brand strategy should serve as a plan for everything your business does: its purpose and goals, how it communicates with the target audience, and how it visually expresses itself.
Developing a comprehensive brand strategy includes many key components, starting with purpose and audience. It also takes into account market positioning, messaging strategy, visual branding, and content marketing.
Establish your brand’s purpose
Simon Sinek’s concept of The Golden Circle is a helpful, simple way to think about your brand’s purpose. The Golden Circle, part of Sinek’s TED Talk “Start with Why,” breaks purpose down into three parts: Why, How, and What. Why does your organization exist? How can it achieve success? What does your business do? Once you know why your brand exists, you can begin to convey your value to your target audience, as well as to your retailers’ customers.
Target audience personas
The narrower your target audience is, the more effort and resources you can spend growing that smaller audience. Your brand probably has a strong sense of who you want to target in terms of demographic and psychographics. As you refine your personas, keep in mind that where they shop for your products locally may influence how you communicate with them. You might actually create personas built around physical location or the size and type of retailers where they tend to shop — for example, big box retailers vs. neighborhood stores. Understanding those communities and retail locations can help you design more effective marketing campaigns.
How to develop a localized brand strategy
The retailers who carry your products play a role in your brand strategy, actively or passively. Their purpose and audience are perhaps more narrowly focused than yours. They have direct contact with customers in their local markets, which you can use to your benefit. Let’s look at how to tailor your brand strategy for local audiences, via your retailers.
Localized social media posts and pages are typically more successful than their non-localized counterparts. A study by Nieman Journalism lab found that geo-targeted social media posts were six times more successful than posts shared globally. Localizing your content goes beyond translating content into different languages. It means connecting with retailers to build customer loyalty and trust.
If your social media content doesn’t perform as well as you want, develop a strategy for supplying high quality brand content to your retailers. They are likely to welcome the help, especially small businesses who are strapped for time and resources. Great content using quality visuals and your brand standards, distributed through the channels of local retailers, benefits you both. It has a better chance of engaging customers, and it strengthens your brand reputation.
Use ThumbStopper for effective local marketing
Once you have your brand strategy and local target audience defined, let an expert deploy your content — across social networks and retailers. ThumbStopper’s segmentation services manage content flow to hundreds, even thousands, of retailers that carry your inventory. Content gets delivered straight to the feeds of potential customers, expertly timed for the greatest visibility. You and your retailers both win.
Now that you know more about how to create a brand strategy for local retail marketing, learn more about ThumbStopper’s services for brands today.
