Brand development is one of those branding factors that never really goes away. It’s a priority when you’re first putting your brand together and trying to figure out how you can best convey the value of the products and services you offer. But in our constantly changing world of more competitors, more distribution channels, and more employees. The only solution to get yourself up to speed is through MORE effective brand development.
That’s why we’ve put together this handy guide on how you can, well, DEVELOP a brand development strategy that will help you maintain your strong brand identity and win against any challenges your way!
Suggested reading: Knowing the common problems that your brand development strategy is meant to solve is, safe to say, ideal! Find out what that looks like with our blog, 5 Challenges Your Brand Development Strategies Should Solve!
Step 1: Assess your brand assets
Your brand assets are the building blocks of your brand. So your first port of call should evaluate how helpful they are in getting you towards your goals of effectively adding to and building a brand identity. This comes down to figuring out:
- Brand asset value: Basically, analysing how crucial your brand assets are towards helping you a) create a brand identity that’s both unique and accurate and b) align your brand with your target audience. On a more practical level, this also includes assessing their ROI and how much they warrant your budget being spent on them.
Also, the value of your brand assets can be enhanced by making them more accessible. That means keeping them all in one place so that you and everyone in your team know where they are, which is made all the better if you have permission-based access to guarantee those specific people can work with particular assets. Doing so means valuable time and money don’t have to get wasted on duplicating or searching for any of them!
- How brand assets are used: Though you, as a brand manager, play a significant part in the decision-making around investments, it is your teams that have to work with them daily. So figure out how your teams use your assets, templates, downloads, etc., etc., particularly those used most or least often! — is key to telling which should be prioritised and how in your brand development process.
It’s worth us calling out how helpful brand management software can be when it comes to this whole step. The right BMS platform will have some super beneficial features like
- A digital asset management (DAM) system: A DAM is a powerhouse of a repository system that helps you store, centralise, manage, AND update all of your brand assets within one reliable platform.
- Reporting and analysis: Most BMS systems have a function that reports on the granular details of how your assets are performing. Meaning which is being used, how, how often, and by whom are critical to impacting how your brand development strategy should revolve around said assets going forward.
Step 2: Prioritise your team’s workflows
Remember what we said about the importance of paying attention to how your teams work in influencing your brand development strategy? Of course, you do. It was only 100 words ago! Well, we’re mentioning the point again because it is just that important to prioritise. Streamlining your teams’ workflows and processes will automatically streamline how effective your branding is.
We know that keeping track of your team’s tasks is easier said than done. But here’s the kicker: Unless you make sure that you and your team members stick to your brand development strategy, all your ideas and plans go right out the window.
Luckily enough, a digital solution like a BMS platform aids in this department yet again. But only if it has specific functions like:
- Approval workflows: This feature grants you total visibility over what your teams are up to without having to do the grunt work of constantly checking in on them, effectively saving you time and resources. On top of that, it grants you control over what’s going on without letting your employees feel like they’re being crowded over. You get to accurately assess how your existing processes, assets, and tasks are performing so you can decide what should be replicated/optimised for your future brand development strategy.
Digital & Print templates: While optimising your brand development, templates can help make your employees’ lives far easier while enabling consistent branding. They take away the risk of any of your assets ending up at odds with each other and your broader brand personality. Plus, you can edit them based on any changes in brand development you come up with and not worry about anyone missing out on said updates, as they’ll be within the one system and available to all simultaneously!
Step 3: Align your teams with your broader branding goals
If your internal teams aren’t on the same page about what your brand stands for and how it presents itself, even your best brand development strategies will go down the drain — and go down fast. Having your team on the same page also helps maintain brand consistency and solidify your brand positioning. That comes from having:
- Comprehensive branding guidelines: Any organisation will have some “branding bible” already in place. Still, common hurdles like employees missing out on updates to these guidelines or not being able to access them can quickly become a pain. Editable guidelines can be amended based on your brand development plans, guaranteeing that teams will only ever be accessing the most up-to-date information.
- Brand asset showcasing: By actively showcasing top-tier examples of brand assets and campaigns that your employees have done, you get to foster a real sense of positivity and collaboration and prevent them from reinventing the wheel by showing them best practices.
Step 4: Clean up your MarTech tool stack
The range and variety of MarTech tools available are never-ending. There’s always some new application or software platform to take up that promises to take your brand development strategy to the next level. You might even think using every tool under the sun will help you in the long run.
Unfortunately, that’s not at all the case. Using too many digital solutions leads to clutter, and where there is clutter, there will be inefficiencies.
That’s not to say that digital solutions aren’t the way forward because they absolutely are in getting your brand development up to speed. It’s just a matter of cleaning up your tool stack so that you’re only utilising the most cost-efficient and growth-enabling solutions possible.
- Brand management software: We’ve briefly covered some critical features that a BMS platform can provide to help your brand development. In this case, we’re discussing the benefits of just having the platform. Because a BMS system offers a whole host of overarching capabilities, you effectively get multiple solutions in one investment.
- Top-tier integrations: Speaking of MarTech tools and applications, there will inevitably be some that you won’t want to part with because of their value to your brand development. To retain their benefit and capitalise on the value that a BMS platform will bring, look for one that prioritises seamless integration. That way, you’ll get to efficiently clean up your MarTech tool stack and even stand to enhance the capabilities of those same core apps!
Suggested reading: Brand consistency is the end-all, be-all of your branding and — with the right solution — not that impossible to achieve! Read our blog Why Maintaining Brand Consistency is Easier Than Ever to learn more.
Win your branding with brand management software
All in all, brand management software poses a ton of benefits in helping you create a brand development strategy that only keeps you winning. That’s why we developed our solution, Brandworkz. Our platform allows you to design, create, manage, and update your brand, marketing assets, and processes in one place.
Here is a little taste of what you will get from Brandworkz:
- Customisable templates that allow for low-level changes without needing approval.
- Tracking, auditing, and approval functions around all of your assets.
- Renewed brand consistency across the board, no matter how many developments and updates you choose.
So to start winning your branding goals and objectives today, book a demo with us!
