Brand Strategy

Establish your brand with an overview of factors unique and core to your brand and your business. Telling the story of your brand, what it stands for, and how it has evolved is an important part of defining your brand and its values, as well as building trust with your community.

Your brand story (or narrative) will provide context for and give meaning to the visual elements you go on to develop to represent your brand, creating a cohesive brand image.

Brand Name

State your brand’s name and explain its origins. Why was that name chosen for the business? Did it change from something else? What do you hope people think of when they hear the name of your brand?

Brand Purpose

Brand purpose is your brand’s reason for being – beyond making money. It should connect with customers on an emotional level and helps customers choose brands that align with their beliefs.

Brand Promise

A brand promise is the value or experience your customers can expect to receive when they interact with your company. Elaborate on your brand’s promise in this section. 

Brand Values

We all act according to our values, and companies should as well, so it’s important to take the time to define your brand values so they can easily be understood by your employees, customers, partners, and the market. In this section, explain what your brand values are, why they were chosen, and how they should be embodied throughout all branding. 

Brand Personality

An attractive, funny, or even provocative personality can be a huge asset for a brand. Describing the key character traits your brand embodies instantly makes it easier for designers, writers, and other creative contributors to ensure that the message they’re communicating on any channel remains on-brand and dials up the appropriate personality trait.

Brand Voice Example

Defines the style or personality to be used for internal and external communication. This can include websites, social media, corporate press releases, advertising, product and user manuals. There are many benefits to having a strong coherent brand voice. The primary benefit is that it connects with your customers on an emotional level. If customers feel like they identify with your company they are more likely to return in the future.

YouDoCMS encapsulates in a word the formula for small business success i.e. You Do. The decision to keep going, keep serving, and keep growing is at the heart of what our customers do everyday to succeed. And what we do to support them.

Create order.

That is the essence of our brand. And it’s a guiding principle of our brand voice. When we communicate clearly and directly, with authenticity and sincerity, we create order. By saying what we mean without trying to be overly clever, gimmicky, or cute, order is achieved.

Brand promise

We help you get organized so you deliver great service and grow your business.

These attributes express our brand. Use them to guide your writing.

Understanding

Keap speaks as a friend with a voice that’s warm, relaxed, and rooted in everyday life.Direct
Death to jargon. Our language is straightforward, inviting, and easy to follow.Inspiring
Like our customers, Keap is alive with the creative energy of building something new, and that spirit infuses how we communicate.Simple
Our product is simple and easy to use. Our language reflects that.

The Keap voice is:
 
Conversational
Read your copy out loud. Does it sound stiff or too formal? Rewrite it until it doesn’t.
 
Human
It’s okay to strike an emotional chord (when appropriate)
 
Clear
Use words everyone is likely to know.
 
Understanding
Empathy for customers should shine through.
 
Direct
Respect customers’ time and don’t be vague. Say what you mean.

The Keap voice is not:

Faddish or overly hip
We serve business owners who aren’t as concerned with how cool we are as much as the value we’ll bring them.
 
Pushy or overbearing
Customers have other options. They will leave if they feel pressured or rushed to make a decision.
 
Pretentious or condescending
We never speak to our customers in a grandiose or overblown manner. We never “talk down” to anyone.
 
Self-referential
It’s not about us or “what we can do…” We are not the hero in the story, the customer is. Our product is a helpful tool. Our team is in place to help customers achieve their goals.
 
Jokey or slapstick for its own sake
Use humor judiciously and only when it’s appropriate. If you’re going to use humor, think more original and dry like Wes Anderson, and less broad like Jim Carrey.

Mission Statement

Define the goals and values you would like to associate with your brand. This can be philosophical for example in Google's case the famous phrase "don't be evil" or it can be straightforward as in the example from Atlassian "play, as a team". In the case of YouDoCMS we want to simplify the creation and deployment of websites for small businesses using static sites hosted in the cloud. Therefore our values are "simplicity, value for money and need for speed".

My mission (and I chose to accept it) is to reverse the decline of the desktop application as an option for the creation and deployment of websites. "The app is back".

Target Audience

The marketing 80/20 rule (named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto) suggests that 80% of your business revenue comes from 20% of your marketing efforts. Therefore it makes sense to prioritise your brand strategy to maximise the impact of your brand on the audience which represents the majority of your revenue.

When defining your brand strategy, voice and mission statement consider how this relates to your target audience. Which market sectors are you trying to address and on what platforms will you be communicating. Is your communication primarily digital on desktop or mobile. How important is print and are you using display advertising to communicate your brand. 

Use analytics and good old fashioned customer feedback when developing your brand to remain flexible to maximise the connection between your business (represented by your brand) and your prospects and customers.