what is brand discovery?
Brand discovery charts the course for your company’s future by answering key questions about your business: Who are we? What do we want to be? What do other people say or feel about us?
Deconstructing your goals and discovering your core values, defining the solutions you offer, and codifying how you measure success lead to answers for those first two questions. Then answer the third by finding out what other people say about you through market research, gathering feedback from prospective customers and the public, and internal focus groups. This also helps identify your organization’s perceived core strengths and weaknesses, both internally and externally.
With that research complete, you can create a winning brand strategy that aligns your goals with your marketing strategy. It guides the creation of your visual identity and how you’ll project a strong, trusted and authoritative brand identity. All this leads to future growth by attracting and retaining loyal customers and clients.
why is brand discovery important?
Undertaking what makes your brand distinctive and different is critical to putting your business in a position for success in the marketplace. Knowing your comparator brands and their position in the marketplace, figuring out what strengths you have that compare favorably, and then strategically positioning your business with a strong identity all set your company up for long-term success.
Your brand discovery serves as the foundation for your marketing strategy. It tells you how to present the company to your target audience, who your target audience is and where to reach them, and how to stand out from comparators.
the process for discovering your brand
There’s more than one way to undertake a brand discovery. It depends on what best suits your needs. Options include:
- Internal Surveys and Feedback: Even if you have a marketing department or committee working on your brand discovery, it’s valuable to collect perceptions from everyone on your team. What do they view as your strengths and values? How do they think your company differentiates itself from comparators? How do they use those thoughts when interacting with clients and customers? Knowing the overall internal perception of the company helps bring everyone together in presenting its identity.
- Comparator Research: Knowing the space you can own in the marketplace is key to making your company stand out among the options available to your target clients and customers. You can’t know that without knowing which spaces your competitors are occupying. What identity is the foundation of their marketing? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Can you gather data on their services or products to understand their reach? Knowing these key pieces of information can help pinpoint the space your company can take and own within your industry.
- Client and Customer Surveys, Feedback and Data: Diving into the data you already have on your client and customer database defines the audience you’re reaching. Do you want to deepen your reach into that audience, or are there other audiences to which you want to expand your reach? Who is following you on social media, and which pieces of content resonate the most and receive engagement? If you have client and customer emails, a survey with specific questions can give you solid data to inform your brand discovery.
discover the future of your brand
A thorough brand discovery process doesn’t just define who you are now. It says who you want to be in the future, setting a foundation for the future of your brand. Instead of leaping from image to image, shifting identities that try and capture different audiences but fail, and constantly shifting marketing strategies and campaigns, you know who you are.
You understand what you offer that makes you distinct and different. You understand the marketplace, where it’s going, and the space you can fill within it. You grasp the needs and perceptions of your ideal customers and clients now and into the future of your industry. Brand discovery is the foundation for the future of your brand.
incorporating results into your business
Successful marketing relies on the questions answered by a brand discovery process. It tells you what sets you apart, where your target customers or clients are seeking information, the message you want to send through all your marketing efforts.
Brand discovery is more than guidance for your marketing team, however. By defining clear purpose, values, goals and mission, you find the foundation for your company’s growth. This knowledge provides your sales team with the leads they need to reach new clients and customers. It gives your human resources department ways to evaluate whether prospective employees fit your company’s culture, and ultimately increases employee engagement.
At Inspire Agency, brand discovery is one of the first strategic actions we take for new clients. That’s because one of our core values is that each of our clients has a brand that is special, distinct, and has the ability to move others. The Inspire Way always begins with Inquire: learning as much as we can about our clients and their competitors through workshops, detailed audits, social media listening and marketing research.
Contact us to learn how we can take The Inspire Way and how we can lead a brand discovery process that creates Inspiring marketing and content strategies for your brand.