Your brand is the thread that ties your entire business together. It starts with your high level vision and values, extends into your positioning and offering, and gets expressed in your messaging and visuals.
And for that brand to be effective you need to weave it into all aspects of your business. This means it’s not enough to express it through your marketing materials, content, and products. To deliver on your brand consistently it needs to be central to how your business operates.
In other words, the people inside doing the actual work need to understand what the brand stands for and see how they should uphold it on a day-to-day basis.
They need to see how they’re contributing to the overall vision and mission of the brand. They need to understand the importance of the brand’s values. They need to know what makes the brand unique so that they can help deliver value in ways that strengthen your position.
By embedding those ideals to build trust with the team internally it allows the business to express itself consistently and build trust with customers externally.
It takes conscious effort, but once you start looking it’s easy to spot opportunities to weave your brand strategy into the different facets of your operation.
To get started, here are 8 ways to make actionable use of your brand strategy within your operations and team.
8 Ways To Make Your Brand Strategy Actionable Within Your Business
1. Hiring
Define a set of criteria or a rubric to evaluate potential hires in terms of how their skills and attitude align with brand values.
Use the criteria as a consistent measure to compare and contrast candidates between folks involved in the interviewing process.
2. Onboarding & Training
Set clear expectations around how the business operates and what’s expected from team members. Use brand values to reinforce the level of care expected both with customers and with fellow team members. Show how your positioning influences the specific ways the business operates and how it sets your brand apart from the competition.
Create a system where company values serve as a reference point to evaluate and discuss personnel issues in a fair, objective way.
3. Employee Reviews
As part of regular employee check-ins, tie a portion of performance evaluation back to brand values. Recognize individuals that excel in upholding brand values and who serve customer benefits effectively.
For individual development, define goals that have a clear connection with larger business objectives. Show how those goals contribute to the overall brand mission.
4. Standard Operating Procedures
Create and evaluate procedures with an eye for upholding key customer benefits or deepening competitive differentiators.
For customer-facing procedures, look for opportunities to insert moments of surprise and delight that elevate the overall brand experience. For internal procedures, integrate tactics that allow team members to recognize one another when their actions align with core brand ideals.
5. Customer Support
Ensure all team representatives understand the customer benefits that need to be upheld.
Emphasize the brand character and tone of voice that everyone should embody when communicating with customers. Note specific language or phrases that should or shouldn’t be used within the brand.
6. Culture Guidelines
Provide everyone on the team with easy access to the fundamental elements of your brand strategy and hold group discussions to clarify any confusion around meaning and execution.
When possible allow the team to contribute ideas around ways to make the culture stronger or more specific to provide a sense of ownership around how the brand operates.
7. Company Direction
Have regular team meetings (e.g. weekly or monthly) to recognize ways that the company has excelled (or fallen short) on satisfying company values. If there was an issue, use it constructively as an example on how the company can better serve those ideals.
On a semi-regular basis (e.g. quarterly), review the ways that the business has made progress toward the overall mission, and larger goals of the brand. Review the current positioning of the brand within the greater landscape so that team members maintain focus on what makes the brand unique.
8. Innovation
Use your mission, positioning, and knowledge of your capabilities to fuel ideation within the team. Let team members who service your customers suggest ways to deepen or expand how the brand connects with customers and delivers unique value.
Attach any new product and service ideas to the brand goals and core customer needs that they service.
Great Brands Are Strong Inside And Out
It’s easy to focus on all the external expressions of your brand strategy. Your website, content, and offerings are always top of mind because they’re how your customers engage with your brand.
But your team are the people that make it all happen. So elevating your brand strategy from something they simply read about to something that has a role in their actual work, creates much deeper alignment.
When your entire team is on the same page and moving toward a shared vision and mission, it makes everyone feel more connected and satisfied with their contributions. It allows you to maximize the skills and talent of the people who push everything forward.
That’s a solid recipe for long term success and growth.
Get Help Defining and Implementing Your Brand Strategy
If you’re ready to build stronger connections with your customers, reach out for a free consultation. We’ll help you transform your best business thinking into an actionable, shareable, growth-oriented guide. Click below to learn more about the Brand Guidebook process.
