Sara Harrod of No Name. Extra Brain shares how to make your brand work harder for you in 2023

Sara Harrod of No Name. Extra Brain shares her tips on how to make your brand work harder for you in 2023. No Name. Extra Brain, Brand & Marketing Consultancy helps small businesses across Wiltshire define, develop and grow through the power of brand strategy.

Many small businesses when thinking of branding, start with a logo and move on from there. This can often leave the critical step of developing a strategy for your brand missed entirely. 

A brand strategy articulates who you are, what you stand for and what makes you different and special in your market. It can be difficult to talk about yourself and your business, but to do so in a way that is clear and compelling to your target audience is even harder. I help businesses to overcome this challenge.  

Brand Strategy sets the foundations for your business, so you can go on to develop a beautiful brand design, successful messaging and effective marketing strategies.  All of which I can support my customers with, in different ways depending on their needs, whether that be one off strategy development or on an ongoing retained basis. 

Like with all areas of running a small business, you can choose whether you do it yourself, such as submitting your own tax return or updating your own social media, or you can outsource to the experts. Your brand and brand strategy are no different. 

But what should you include in your brand strategy if you choose to create it yourself? 

Here are my top 5 components, every well-crafted brand strategy should include:

1. Mission Statement 

In the simplest of terms your mission statement is just a sentence or two about the core purpose of your business and why it exists. For many companies an important element of existing is to make profit but this is not what we are talking about here. It should capture what problem your business is solving and for who. Keep it concise, balancing what you already do with what you want to work towards.

By having a clear and inspiring mission statement that feeds into your overall brand, it helps customers and employees understand who you are and get behind your company. 

2. Core Values

Company values are a way of articulating what you and your business care about most and sets out the standards to which you work to. Plans and strategies will change over time, but your values won’t. 

Customers like to know what sort of company they are buying from. Can they trust you? Do you believe in the same things? Is what is important to them, also important to you?

3. Band Attributes

Your brand attributes are the personality traits of your business. Are you loud or quietly confident? Are you timeless or modern? Are you urban or rural? Your attributes help build up the picture of your brand, so your customers can relate, empathise, and trust you. Over time they become part of your overall reputation and identity and makes your brand stronger.

4. Tone of Voice

Your tone of voice is how you talk to your customers and the type of language and tone you choose to use, to help convey your overall brand.  How you talk to your customers reflects the type of business that you are. Do you talk with authority or are you friendly and chatty? The right tone can help build trust and recognition amongst your target audience.

Although your tone may differ slightly between media, format and customer segmentation - overall your content should be consistent in tone of voice, across everything that you do. 

5. Brand Positioning

Are you a high-end, luxury product and therefore more expensive or are you a low cost, good value, commodity? Are you the local option or a global provider? How are you different to everyone else in your marketplace and what makes you special? 

Mapping out where your competitors are and understanding where you sit amongst them is an important exercise, to know what space you occupy in your market. This can help inform other business decisions such as your pricing structure, the products or services you choose to offer and your messaging. 

If you have read this far and thinking “I don’t have the time or the inclination to write my own” then get in touch ([email protected]). If, however, you’re now motivated to get stuck in, then my ‘Write your own brand strategy’ workbook full of practical and straightforward guidance with examples, templates and exercises to guide you through the process, maybe the solution for you. 

‘Write your own brand strategy’ is now available for pre-order. 

Visit www.nonameextrabrain.com to learn more about Sara.