Visual content plays a critical role in modern marketing strategies. In fact, in 2020 74% of marketers reported that they incorporate visual elements in more than 70% of their content. That’s a lot of creative horsepower. But creating visual content can be expensive — so producing videos, planning an on-location photoshoot, or hiring a new designer, for example, can be a real challenge for marketing and creative teams. 

Getting people to know and trust your brand requires more than a great logo. You need a focused brand strategy that defines what your brand believes in, who your customers are, and how you plan to engage with the world.

Once you’ve developed a strategy, you have to infuse your brand in all your marketing collateral, distribute it across every channel, and ensure it creates a consistent brand experience. Sound intimidating? It can be but it’s also entirely possible to design and execute a successful brand strategy when you break it down into manageable parts.

Whether you’re a new organization looking to make a mark or an established company going through a brand relaunch, many of the same principles and steps to a successful brand strategy apply. This guide includes the most important components of brand strategy and tips on how to get started.

Your brand is your company’s most important asset. It’s more than just words on a page or images on a screen ⏤ it’s how you communicate with and attract your audience. From your logo to every customer interaction, it’s the identity of your organization.  

To stand out in a competitive market, consumers need to easily understand who your company is and what you provide. Brand consistency helps consumers feel confident in their decision to become a customer because they know exactly what to expect from you with every interaction.

So, how do you ensure a consistent experience that builds brand loyalty? Develop strong brand guidelines.

Every brand evolves over time. One day, your brand will outgrow the look and feel you’ve used for years. The audience you speak to will change their behaviors. Your purpose will take on new meaning. And eventually, you’ll need to redesign the look and feel that worked so well, and relaunch your brand.

Just the idea of relaunching all your newly designed brand assets can feel overwhelming. How are you possibly going to coordinate all the changes and updates? Don’t worry, with the right tools and a strategic approach any brand can roll out new assets at a global scale.

Business environments today are tough. Things change fast. From a new competitor on the scene to shifting market conditions, technologies, and buyer dynamics, there’s a lot that’s simply out of our control. Because of this, organizations are putting more and more emphasis on the things they can control — like their brand. 

Brand management, once a practice reserved for the Coca-Colas and Nikes of the world, is now a commonplace practice for any organization looking to win the hearts, minds, and spend of their target audiences. And, just as you see with other business priorities, it helps to put a dedicated person in place — like a brand manager — to ensure it succeeds.

Your company’s brand is the culmination of every experience a person has with your organization. It tells the world who your company is, and what you do. It is a differentiator that identifies your products or services as distinct from others in your market. And the world’s strongest brands stand out by building and maintaining brand consistency.

A range of elements — both tangible and intangible — contribute to a consistent brand experience, including tone, voice, and visual design. And each of these elements are thoughtfully and strategically developed over time, using your brand assets.

There’s no denying that we live in a digital world. From the millions of websites and apps at our disposal to the internet-connected phone in our pockets, the evidence is all around us. According to the 2020 Global Digital Overview from We Are Social and Hootsuite, the average internet user now spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online every day. 

After the changes in behavior brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we rely on the web for just about everything. Whether we’re shopping, researching a new product, or communicating with a business, we often turn to the convenience, practicality, and safety of digital channels.

So, given the digital nature of today’s consumers, how should businesses approach branding? And, furthermore, what role does digital asset management (DAM) software, like the Widen Collective^®, play in a brand’s quest to win the attention, loyalty, and dollars of these buyers?

If you want to achieve success as a brand in this day and age, it’s time to fully embrace the reality that you’re in the experience business. Transactions are no longer a simple exchange of money for goods or services; consumers demand more. They expect you to win their affection and loyalty by delivering consistent, memorable experiences at each and every interaction.

Because of this, the digital assets and content you use to tell your story, educate your audiences, and represent your brand, are more important than ever. To thrive and grow in the experience economy, more and more successful brands turn to digital asset management (DAM) systems.

Every marketer knows that brand management is important, but not everyone agrees on the reasons why. That’s because the strength of your brand is dependent on customer perception, and influencing how you’re perceived by a market is extremely complicated. To build a brand that customers choose over competitors, you need to start with a clearly defined brand vision, organizational self-reflection, and company-wide discipline. 

You know how important it is for potential and existing customers to feel good about your brand. Their impression of your brand creates expectations around the quality and value of your offering, and what it will feel like to use your product or service. Create positive expectations and your customers buy from your brand before they think of others in your market — that’s branding 101.

To create that kind of impression, every business needs to tell a memorable story about who they are, what they stand for, and why that’s valuable. Once you’ve got this story down, you’ve got to tell it consistently across all touchpoints to foster a clear, reliable, and strong recall of your brand story and its value.

That’s where your brand style guide comes in. It bundles up all the information and resources your internal and external teams need to represent your brand. With clear instructions on how to use all your brand assets, you can create and maintain brand consistency.