Your brand is how the world sees your business. It’s your reputation and the ultimate differentiating factor. Getting your brand strategy right is critical to gaining and keeping customer attention.

The most important part of brand strategy is to define what your brand stands for: your purpose, core values, and brand positioning.

Your marketing strategy is a function of your brand strategy. The brand sets the long-term direction, and marketing outlines the shorter-term actions (which tactics you will use to communicate key messages with your customers). 

Marketing initiatives include campaigns, content, PR, and interactions with your target audience or customer. 

More than three-quarters of consumers (76%) say they would buy from a brand they feel connected to over a competitor. 

Building that connection with customers requires a clear brand strategy to define why you exist and a solid marketing strategy to communicate that purpose with your customers.

Effective integration of these three strategies requires that each informs the others in a top-down fashion: business strategy first, then brand, then marketing. 

Brand strategy cannot effectively communicate a brand with a muddled business strategy, the same way a marketing plan is useless without a brand strategy to set its direction. 

All three strategies rely on a deep understanding of the customer and a clear vision of the organization’s purpose.