How strategic branding supports sustainable growth
Originally published on RLC Roots via Substack. Subscribe to be the first to see our newest posts.
Branding insights and strategic thinking to help you attract the right people
What is branding?
When we take away all the complex language and confusing terminology, your brand is your business reputation.
It’s how people feel when they interact with you or your business. What comes up when they talk to other people about your business. What they are sharing about your business online. How they feel when they unbox your products. Not just the things they express to you, but the thoughts that are shared when you’re not in the room.
If you have a business in any stage, you have a brand to maintain. You can either choose to ignore it or make intentional decisions that help you tell the right story throughout every aspect of your brand. That is branding—it’s the art of crafting how you’re brand is showing up in the world; it’s a combination of every purposeful decision you’ve made to make the right impression.
Why does branding matter?
Setting strong brand foundations helps you prepare for sustainable growth and allows you to stand out while working in alignment with your mission, vision, and values.
Established brands have entire teams that help them maintain their customer experience, website, internal communications, company culture, social media profiles, and more. They understand that each touchpoint matters—you can learn a lot from observing them.
Instead of making branding decisions based on what you like, strategic branding efforts improve the likeliness of connecting with your audience. I’m not talking about hopping on the latest trend to expand your reach, that’s a marketing strategy. I’m talking about creating moments that resonate, inspire, and attract the right people.
Every touchpoint should be considered because each impact how you are perceived by the public and who you’re attracting.
The Importance of Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is the aspect of branding that guides the direction of each touchpoint. This includes your logo, visual identity, personality, brand strategy (what I call your brand foundation or roots), and more. Here are a few questions to consider that scratch the surface:
- How does your brand talk (messaging, voice, and tone)?
- How do you style yourself (photos, icons, logos, fonts, colors, and more)?
- Where do you spend most of your time and where is your audience spending their time (online, social media, or in-person)?
From these three questions alone, you start to see how many factors impact your brand identity. And it’s okay if you don’t have a team to help you manage everything, think about what’s most important for your ideal audience and focus your efforts there first.
Aligned, strategic branding…
- Improves brand recognition and memorability.
- Helps you grow your confidence as you share your business with the world.
- Saves you time (no more hours spent finessing colors in Canva).
- Repels the wrong people and attracts the right ones; sometimes event inspiring champions of your brand.
- Builds trust and brand loyalty.
- Strengthens your first impression and helps you stand out in your market.
When your brand identity is aligned, both internally and externally, you can prepare to grow towards your goals as a business or organization. You might be thinking to yourself… this makes sense, but I don’t know where to start.
Let’s dig into that together.
Preparing for Growth
If you’ve been building something you believe in for years, you’ve got a pretty good idea as to who you are, what you do, and where you’re trying to go.
Does the rest of your team have an understanding of the same vision? What about your ideal audience? Or your key stakeholders?
If there are gaps, there’s an opportunity to strengthen your brand foundations (roots).
Or maybe you’re just getting started and you haven’t given yourself time to ask the tough questions that come along when you’re defining your brand roots. You’ve been so busy learning about how to get a business started that you’ve lost sight of what matters most.
Wherever you are in your business journey, if your foundation feels unstable, you should focus on your brand strategy. Taking the time to nurture your roots allows you to prepare for the future.
Digging deep to identify your brand roots
The core aspects of your brand roots include your mission, vision, and core values. These are the driving factors that keep your foundations strong and united, which is why you should give them some extra attention.
You can always come back to refine them at any point along your business journey—as long as your brand isn’t in a moment of crisis and crumbling down. It’s good to come back to these from time to time in case your goals shift.
When defining these parts of your brand, you should have a good understanding of your brand positioning (broadly defining who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why). Your brand positioning works to support your mission, vision, and values so it’s important to consider them both.
Invite key stakeholders or team members to have a conversation about what matters most as you evolve and grow. Look at customer / client reviews or testimonials. See if there are any connecting threads that start to appear.
Craft one or two clear sentences in a clear statement that embodies your underlying mission (core purpose at present). This may be an easy process or it may take days to work through. Write everything that comes to mind and edit down as you go. Then move onto your vision statement (focus on the future). Your vision identifies your longterm business / organization goals—it’s good to dream big.
Once those are written, you can define the core values that unite your team and the work you do together. Consider words that align with your audience as well as your internal teams. These may be inspired by your founder or by your board.
These three components of your brand can make a HUGE impact. Give them the time they deserve. And if you’re struggling to work through this on your own, consider partnering with a branding expert.
Quick Recap:
- Preparing your brand foundations allows you to build with intention and prepare for sustainable growth.
- Your branding is important to consider throughout every stage of business.
- Many factors impact your brand, but you don’t have to consider them all at once (especially when you’re starting with a small team or on your own). Focus on the ones that make the most sense for you and your audience first.
- Your mission, vision, and values are core aspects of your brand—don’t forget to define them.
