The Five Main Components of a Strategic Brand Communications Plan

Does your brand have a plan? How will your brand communicate with its audience? Who is its audience? What message do you want to deliver? A strategic brand communications plan is an integral part of any branding effort. Integrating a strategic plan into your marketing efforts assures that you are reaching the right audience at the right time to drive results for your brand. It’s an analytical approach to creative efforts. Like any good strategy, a strategic brand communications plan should begin with research. While you might be able to guess the general audience for your products or services, you may be surprised to find additional market segments to tap into. Once you’ve completed research, it’s time to get down to the strategy. The following five components are the backbone of a brand communications strategy, and will inform the rest of your plan.

Identify the Audience: To WHOM do we need to communicate?

What is the audience for your products or services? Perhaps there are multiple audiences. Identifying your audience is the first step in your strategy.

Determine Goals and Objectives: WHY communicate? WHAT do we want to achieve?

Too often, brands communicate for the sake of communicating. Your communication efforts should always be in support of a larger organizational goal. If you own a burger stand, your goal might be to increase sales by 20 percent. Never lose sight of the goal when communicating.

Develop Key Messages: WHAT do we need to communicate?

Develop clear and concise messaging that communicates to your audience what you do and how you do it in simple, easily digestible copy.

Develop Tactical Plan: HOW will we communicate, to whom and when?

The tactical plan is the blueprint for your communications plan. A tactical plan should include a linear strategy for reaching your goals. Strategies and ground level tactics support goals. Creating an outline that shows how tactics support strategies, and strategies support goals, is a best practice for strategic brand communications planning.

Identify Measures of Evaluation: HOW will we know if we are successful?

Metrics are important. Whether or not you’ve reached your organizational goal should be fairly easy to determine (did sales increase by 20 percent?), but applying metrics to determine if your communications tactics and strategies were ultimately successful – and what role they played in reaching (or not reaching) your organizational goals can be more difficult. There are, however, various options for capturing these data, especially in digital communications. Whenever possible, apply outcome metrics instead of output metrics.

Think about these five basic components of a strategic brand communications plan and apply them to your organization. Are you communicating effectively? We can help! Fill out the form to the right to reach out.

San Diego Website Design by Jacob Tyler

Content is King: Inbound Marketing and the New Consumer

The world of marketing and advertising has changed. You’re more likely to fast-forward through TV commercials on your DVR rather than watch them. You’ve probably clicked that little “x” on the digital ad that popped up on your screen while you were trying to read a recipe for gluten-free kale burgers. You’ve switched the dial on your car radio during commercial breaks – only to learn that seemingly every station has commercial breaks at the same time – and couldn’t escape listening unless you wanted to jump out of your car onto the freeway. And if you have a phone, which I assume you do, you may have gotten a call from someone named “Kevin” calling from Mumbai offering low prices on prescription drugs. I know I have.

What these marketing tactics have in common is that they are coming directly to you – and not at your request. These tactics aren’t new, of course, but they are becoming increasingly outdated. In the digital age, consumers are taking a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” stance on marketing. Today’s consumer doesn’t need to be inundated with direct marketing, because there are a plethora of options for almost any product or service, just a few clicks away.  Consumers are still consuming, and as the economy continues to shake awake from a long slumber, marketers are employing new tactics to reach their intended audiences. One of the more popular tactics is “inbound marketing.”

In short, inbound marketing draws consumers to your company, service or product, instead of the other way around. Inbound marketing can attract consumers who know what they are looking for and convert them into customers by creating relevant, engaging and useful content on blogs, info products or social media. Content that makes your company, product or services stand out from the clutter. Content that doesn’t include a “hard sell,” but positions your brand as a friendly, helpful and educational go-to for a particular market.

The following article from Entrepreneur – The 8 Fundamentals for a Successful Inbound-Marketing Strategy – is a good primer on inbound marketing. If you’d like to learn more about how inbound marketing can enhance your brand strategy, fill out the form to the right and let’s talk!

San Diego Ad Agency Jacob Tyler

Talk to Me Goose: The Importance of the Marketing-IT Relationship in the Digital Age

A long time ago, in an office far, far away, marketing and IT departments inhabited very different worlds. In one corner, you had the marketers – the swashbuckling, right-brained Don Draper’s and P.T. Barnum’s of the world. In the other corner, you had the IT wizards – the hermit-like, code-speaking masters of the server room. These stereotypes are just that – stereotypes, and increasingly outdated ones. The emergence of the digital age has thrust the marketer and the IT pro into a relationship of necessity – and harmony.

The digital age has, in many ways, democratized the market. Brands now have open access to potential customers. They can communicate and engage with audiences in a way not physically possible just 25 years ago. Techniques like inbound marketing – attracting customers to your brand via compelling content in blogs, videos, social media and other outlets – are proving to be incredibly effective in marketing and customer engagement. Social media is ubiquitous, and digital advertising continues to evolve to provide measurable results. The commonality across these marketing platforms? Technology.

In his pioneering 1964 work “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,” communication theorist Marshall McLuhan posited, “The medium is the message.” His 50-year old theory that a message and its medium are essentially a singularity has never proven truer than it does today. A message without a medium is only a thought. A medium without a message is a ghost ship.

In order to successfully market a brand in the digital age, marketing and IT departments must work in concert, combining medium with message to create effective communications that nurture brands. This doesn’t mean just checking in with each other every once in awhile to make sure all systems are operational.  Successful marketing-IT partnerships should resemble a circular loop, with communal brainstorming, continuous monitoring and feedback, and timely course corrections.

Think of the marketing – IT relationship like Maverick and Goose from the movie Top Gun. Maverick (the marketer) is the pilot, flying on his creative instincts, making gutsy (but not always smart) moves, trying to out-do the other guy. Goose (the IT pro) is the navigator. He ensures the engines and instruments are working properly. He monitors the jet’s position and makes sure that Maverick doesn’t crash into a mountain. Maverick is the artist, Goose the engineer. Without one and other, they’d both be helpless. But together? That’s when magic happens.

So get creative with your brand and make your mark. But don’t forget your navigator. Your brand will end up crashed into a mountain without him.

Marketing in San Diego | Jacob Tyler