What is a Brand Vision?
Your brand’s vision should exist to clarify who you are as a business in your eyes and those of whom you’d like to do business with. It is the image your customers have of you and the structure that will guide where your business is going. Many companies who were once successful have crashed and burned because they did not have a clear brand vision.
Something as delicate as your brand’s vision can be clarified with just three questions.
1. What problem do you solve?
The first step to clarify your brand’s vision is to know what problem you are solving. Your brand cannot have a clear vision if you do not first establish how you are going to help potential clients. This may seem simple, but it is often overlooked. Brand’s that can clearly and quickly explain why buyers should do business with them will get more business than those who don’t. To the contrary, brands that skip this crucial step more often than not, get sucked into thinking it’s their products that define them. This can lead to a lack of creativity, innovation, unity, and adaptability, which will result in brand failure. If you seek to avoid these catastrophes, consider this: “what problem do you solve?”
2. Who is your target audience?
A great brand vision is more than a logo, color palette, or typography. When relied on, your brand vision will increase your perceived value on the open marketplace. It will provide much needed clarity for management, employees, and your customers. Your brand vision is what creates brand evangelists.
The second step in working toward a clear and powerful brand vision is to conduct brand research. Ask yourself, “ who is my target audience?”. The reality is that not everyone is a prospective customer, and if you spend all of your time on those who are not, you won’t make any money! When you try to attract everyone, you won’t connect with anyone. Now more than ever, people are looking for brands that share their same values. If your vision is too generic, it will be hard to attract those who would be willing to do business. A clear target audience will strengthen your identity, messaging, marketing, sales, product development, and so much more! Nearly everything that would make your company money revolves around how well you know your target audience.
You can begin your research by speaking with potential buyers, customers, prior clients, employees, partnered businesses, or even competitors. Your aim should be to find who wants what you sell and why. When we are building brands, we often go through similar questions with our clients to clarify their brand’s vision.
3. What sets you apart from the competition?
The last step to clarify your brand’s vision is to consider what differentiates your business from those in your industry. This is often called a unique value proposition. When a brand has created a unique value proposition, they experience many changes within their brand. A value proposition will gain you more real estate in the mind of a future customer by increasing your perceived value. Prospective customers will see your business as the exception to the “headaches” that have become an industry norm. Rather, brands that don’t explain to customers what sets them apart, will lose business.
Your company does not have to be completely original to create a unique value proposition. There are plenty of successful brands on the open market that share similar ideas. For example, think of all of the brands of fridges that you would run into if you were looking for an upgrade on your current kitchen appliance. Most, if not all, of the fridges that you would research would pretty much do the same thing: keep food cool. However, you will be informed about different lighting, noises, drawers, depths, and exclusive features to that particular fridge. When considering your unique value proposition, think about execution, this is where you will find the majority of what sets you apart from your competition.
How to create a unique value proposition:
- List all the problems that your target audience could encounter(this is different from the overall problem that you will look for to clarify your brand’s vision).
- Explain how your brand can help them to solve these problems differently than your customers(think execution).
- Show your customers how their life will be better with your brand.
If you position your brand as the answer to your customers problems, you will be left with a powerful value proposition. This will ultimately show customers why they so desperately need your brand over your competition and that is going to make you a lot of money!
Looking for an expert to help you clarify your brand’s vision? Contact a branding expert today!
One you have clarified your brand’s vision, one way you might consider executing your brand’s vision is through a public relations campaign. Depending on the size of your company, it might be prudent to offload your public relations responsibilities to an agency. If you need help looking for a PR agency, you might consider creating a Public Relations RFP, which is a document that overviews your business objectives. For more information on this document, we have linked a complete guide titled “What is an RFP?“. When you have a clear brand vision, a public relation campaign can serve as a powerful marketing tool.
