4 Brand Strategy Questions to Refine Your Branding

Thinking strategically about your brand as a whole (meaning your visual identity as well as your brand voice, tone and mission) to create a cohesive brand is a crucial part of establishing any business. Without a thoughtful, planned out brand strategy the perception of. your business can come off as disorganized, inauthentic, confusing or worse, off-putting.

By dedicating some time and energy to thinking about your business’s brand you’ll be able to create a consistent guide for your brand which flows effortlessly between your website, social media, marketing and any other place your customers come into contact with your business.

So, to help you on your journey to create an aligned, “on-brand” brand for your business, here are 4 questions to dig into:

1. What is your Vision for your brand?

Think about why you started your business in the first place, who you aim to help and how you are providing something unique for them. Encompass the big-picture “save the world”type of goals as well as the humbler, self-focused goals such as “earn enough to replace my salary”.

I like to extend this beyond just your goals for the business but also what you hope your business will help others achieve. For example, creating job opportunities for less privileged populations, creating a community for an under-represented group or even providing education on a subject in a unique and compelling manner.

2. What is your brand’s Mission?

Think about what your business is seeking to accomplish and the tangible ways in which you work towards that goal. This can include things like the way you work with your customers, your own personal habits, the charitable donations your business makes and more.

Your mission is just as much about inspiring you and your team as it is about speaking to your dream customers, so make sure that everything rings really true to you and your business.

3. What are your brand’s Values?

What matters most to your brand and why? These can often be tied tightly with your own personal values, but try to hone in on a handful of values that ring true for you, your business and your dream customers.

It can also be helpful to think about what doesn’t matter to your brand and why those things don’t matter to provide contrast.

4. What are your brand’s Differentiators?

Think about what makes your brand, your business and you yourself different. These can be things that others have commented on, like your great public speaking, or things you’ve always secretly liked, like your ability to laugh at your own mistakes.

Try reaching beyond just your surface differences from your competition and explore the smaller, more nuanced things that make your business unique.

 When diving into a business’s branding I ask a fair number of questions to help my client’s dig deeper into their brand Vision,Mission, Values and Differentiators. By truly understanding the core of their business, and often my clients themselves, we can create truly aligned brand strategy and visual branding. By starting with these introspective questions, we can uncover the core of what their brand stands for and build their visual designs upon that, thus creating logos, fonts, colors ect… that feel totally authentic and in line with their business as a whole and speak to the customers they are aiming to help.

 Interested in diving into your brand strategy together? There’s an entire module on branding inside Work Your Website where you’ll not only strategically refresh your brand but also learn how to apply it correctly to your website for maximum impact!