10 Essential Steps to Build A Brand Marketing Strategy for Your Startup

Your brand is the unique identity that sets your business apart from the competition. The combination of elements, such as your logo, slogan, and color scheme, creates a visual representation of your company.

A well-defined brand helps customers easily recognize and remember your business, and it establishes trust and credibility in the marketplace.

Having a strong brand presence is crucial for any business. It can help improve your bottom line, attract new customers, and increase your marketing efforts' ROI. But creating a successful brand marketing strategy requires careful planning and execution.

Developing a strong brand marketing strategy might take time and effort, but it's essential for the success and growth of your business.

In this article, we’ll go through the 10 steps you need to take to create a lasting impression on your customers by building a brand marketing strategy that drives long-term success.

10 Steps to Build Brand Marketing Strategy for Your Startup

1. Define sales and marketing goals

Defining sales and marketing goals is the first step in building a brand marketing strategy because they will help guide the development of your brand building and determine how you will measure the success of your efforts.

Sales goals are typically focused on increasing revenue and improving the bottom line. They may include targets for the number of new customers, the value of sales, or the profitability of products and services.

On the other hand, marketing goals are often more focused on building awareness and engagement with your brand. They may include targets for the number of website visitors, social media followers, or email subscribers.

By setting clear, measurable goals for both sales and marketing, you can create a roadmap for your brand marketing efforts. This will help you stay focused and evaluate the effectiveness of your strategy over time.

Additionally, having defined goals can help you allocate resources and budget more effectively, ensuring that your brand marketing efforts are practical and impressive.

2. Conduct a competitor analysis

Doing a competitor analysis helps you understand the marketplace and the other businesses in your industry. By analyzing your competitors, you can gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses and identify opportunities and threats to your business.

To conduct a competitor analysis, you must research the other companies in your industry. This may include looking at their websites, social media accounts, marketing collaterals, and customer reviews. You should also gather information on their pricing, product offerings, target audience, and, most importantly — the distribution channel.

Neal Taparia, who runs the gaming site Cribbage Online, suggests using and buying your competitor's products where it makes sense. “We spend hours playing our competitors' games to understand what we like and don’t like. This helps us understand how we can differentiate.”

Once you have collected this information, identify areas where you are similar and areas where you are unique. You can then use this information to refine your brand positioning and messaging and develop a competitive advantage.

3. Define your USPs

You must understand what makes your business unique to create a solid brand presence. Focus on having a strong, unique selling point to stand out. This will help you develop a clear brand message and positioning that resonates with your customers. It will also help you consistently communicate your brand across your marketing channels — including your website, podcasting and live streaming, social media, and advertising.

When you understand your value proposition, you can focus your strategy on attracting your desired audience.

Here are the steps to define your brand USP:

• Conduct market research: This will provide critical insights into the target market, including what customers are looking for and what differentiates you from competitors.

• Identify unique attributes: What differentiates the brand from others in the market? What are its core values and key differentiators?

• Understand customer needs and pain points: What problems can customers have the brand solve? What are their key priorities when choosing a product or service?

• Create a compelling message: Use the information gathered from the first three steps to create a message to highlight the brand's USP. It should speak directly to their needs and pain points.

• Test and refine: After defining the USP, test it with the target audience to ensure it resonates with them and communicates the brand's value proposition. It may require refining based on feedback from customers.

Source: Shopify

An example of a well-defined value proposition is Shopify — the global commerce platform. Their headline and subheading highlight that they are the only platform customers need to sell online.

4. Define your target audience

Defining your target audience is essential since knowing who you are marketing to will help you tailor your messaging and positioning to resonate with your ideal customers.

To define your target audience, you will need to gather information about the characteristics of your ideal customers. This may include demographics, such as age, gender, income level, etc. It also includes psychographics such as interests, behaviors, and pain points. By understanding the needs and motivations of your target audience, you can develop a brand message and positioning that resonates with them.

You can use this information to identify the channels and tactics most likely to reach your ideal customers. This will help you create more effective marketing and branding campaigns to avoid wasting time and resources on efforts that are not likely to be successful.

For example, Nike is clear that its products cater to athletes and sports lovers. This shows across its website, social media, and various advertising campaigns.

5. Clearly define your brand messaging

To define your brand messaging for your brand marketing strategy, it’s first important to understand your value proposition and what sets it apart from competitors.

Your brand messaging should be a concise and compelling statement that summarizes the core benefits of your brand and its products or services. This messaging should be consistent across all marketing channels and touchpoints and align with your brand's overall tone and personality.

It should also reflect your target audience and their needs and wants. By defining your brand messaging and incorporating it into your marketing efforts, you can effectively communicate the value of your brand to potential customers and differentiate yourself from competitors.

A brand that does this well is Apple. Throughout its communication, it’s clear its products are sleek, innovative, and sophisticated.

6. Scope out your marketing channels

When scoping out relevant marketing channels for your brand marketing strategy, you must consider where your target audience is most likely to be found and what channels they are most likely to engage with.

This will vary depending on your industry and target audience, but some common marketing channels include social media, email marketing, blogs, and events or sponsorships.

It’s also important to consider the strengths and limitations of each channel and how it will fit into your overall marketing strategy. By handpicking the right marketing channels, you can connect with your audience in a way that resonates with them.

7. Determine your marketing budget

Knowing your budget is key to creating your brand marketing strategy. This is because it helps you determine what marketing activities are workable and how to allocate your resources practically.

Without a clear understanding of your budget, it’s easy to overspend or make decisions that are not financially feasible. By setting a budget and sticking to it, you can avoid financial pitfalls and ensure your marketing efforts are sustainable in the long run.

Additionally, having a clear budget can help you prioritize your marketing activities and make trade-offs when necessary. You can create a practical and financially aligned brand marketing strategy by being mindful of your budget.

8. Develop your strategy

After defining business goals and understanding the brand’s USP and target audience, brand message, and budget, you can focus on creating a brand strategy.

This strategy should outline the specific tactics and actions that you will take to achieve your business goals and effectively communicate your brand message to your target audience.

It can include creating a brand identity and visual aesthetic, developing a content marketing plan and distribution tactics, and creating a social media presence.

Start by having a brainstorming meeting with your team to create a comprehensive brand strategy. This will help you streamline your marketing efforts and achieve a common goal. This can help you make the most of your resources and achieve the desired results for your brand. You can also use workflow diagram software to chart people and processes and visually track your strategy's performance.

For example, Spotify’s end-of-the-year campaign — Spotify Wrapped, uses data mining to share their audience’s top favorites. In 2022, they took it a step ahead and created shareable stories to create a buzz on social media. This led to incredible amounts of user-generated content across Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

9. Create content

Quality content creation is crucial for a brand marketing strategy because it helps to establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry and builds trust and credibility with your target audience.

You can attract and engage potential customers, foster relationships with them, and ultimately drive conversions by providing valuable, informative, and entertaining content.

Some of the most popular content formats that brands can use include:

• Blog posts

• Videos

• Social media posts

• Podcasts

• Webinars

• eBooks

By using a mix of these formats, you can reach a wider audience and deliver your content in a way that drives engagement on each channel.

10. Use brand tracking data

Brand tracking is a valuable tool for marketing professionals, as it provides important insights into a brand's performance and how consumers perceive it.

By regularly tracking key metrics, such as brand awareness, perception, and associations, companies can identify areas where their brand is performing well and where it may need improvement.

This information can then support and refine the brand marketing strategy, ensuring it’s powerful and aligned with the organization's overall goals.

In addition, tools like Latana that offer brand tracking data can measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, providing valuable feedback on what is working and what may need to be adjusted.

Final Thoughts

Your startup’s success heavily depends on the audience’s perception of your brand.

So, creating a brand marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience and makes your business memorable is imperative. This will help you attract new customers and increase revenue.

However, none of this will be effective if you don’t track key brand metrics regularly. By tracking these metrics, you can gain insights into your brand's performance and make informed decisions about improving your marketing efforts.