Think outcome before tactics

Taking your branding to the next level is a lot like building your business. It starts with inspiration, creativity, and a vision, but without a solid plan, it’s impossible to get your ideas off the ground. In branding, like in business, it’s crucial to establish clearly defined goals and objectives from the very beginning.

If a brand fails to plan its growth strategy, it should plan to fail its growth strategy.

Without a plan, we’re simply throwing ideas at the wall, blindly waiting to see which ones stick. There’s no consistency, no long-term perspective. And it often makes more work for us in the long run, as we are constantly having to rethink our branding through a frustrating process of trial and error.

Your brand is the heart and soul behind your business.

It’s what sets you apart from all others, it’s what tells your unique story to the world, and it’s what attracts your ideal customer. Branding is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business. You don’t want to leave that to trial and error.

Know what the end goal is.

At Verve Concepts, we always start each client project by establishing clearly defined goals, objectives, and metrics before we get into any kind of branding brainstorming. We guide our clients by asking them lots of thought-provoking questions to help them narrow in on what their vision is for their brand, and from there, we break it down into tangible steps to make that vision a reality.

When we know what the end goal is, it’s much easier to work backwards to determine which tangible steps we can take to get there.

Let’s say, for instance, that our long-term goal is to get 10 new clients per month, we can ask ourselves:

• How many leads do we need to get those 10 new clients per month?
• What other aspects need to be covered, such as organic keyword ranking and building better connections on social media etc.?

From these questions, we can work backwards to discover our mid-term goals like ad spend and the number of blogs that need to be published each month.

And from there, we can determine short-term goals, such as a fast-loading website, easy navigation structure, and optimized landing pages.

You’ve probably heard of Steven Covey’s famous phrase from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.”

That couldn’t be more accurate when it comes to branding. Unless we know exactly where we want to go, we won’t be able to find the best path to get there. It’s like driving to a destination without a GPS. We might actually get there eventually, but we’ll have wasted valuable time, resources, and energy along the way.

So, how do you get off to the best start with branding?

Let’s recap:

• Start by defining your end goals.
• Work backwards to determine your midterm goals.
• Using your midterm goals, work backwards to establish your short-term goals.
• Follow through!
• Hire some branding help.

What are your branding goals for your business? We’d love to hear from you.