Strategic Branding, at least my definition, is not meant to be a Madison Avenue sounding buzzword that only high priced professionals can execute, but in fact very much the opposite. It is a concept that everyone can and should use as a basis for everything they do in their business. Especially online. To get down to the essence, strategic branding refers to consistently communicating the meeting point of the reason for the businesses’ existence and the reason someone would want to give that business money for what it offers.

It is the essential starting point for any marketing. Otherwise the alternative is what I refer to as the spaghetti approach. If you’ve ever had the experience of making overdone, wet spaghetti, you know it’s very starchy and sticky. If you were to throw some of it against a wall, some of it would stick and some would slide off.

Silly as that might sound, it is the approach most businesses, especially small ones take with their messaging. Mine was included in that list for a long, frustrating time.

The spaghetti approach virtually guarantees a lot of hard work, effort, and hope.

Here’s the Bad News if  You Don’t Want to Deal with Strategic Branding

Working hard, putting in effort, and hoping doesn’t mean anything relevant unless it’s getting you closer to where you want to go. This was painful lesson for me and I still see it a lot in the businesses I interact with.

Without a clear focus of  knowing where you want to go at the forefront of every decision you make on your web presence, every bit of effort, every communication is a gamble. Strategic branding is about asking the questions with every choice you make:

• Is it or is or not helping someone get a better sense of you and your company?
• Is it moving them one step closer to taking another step or of purchasing from you?
• How do you know?

Here’s the Good News if You Do

It’s very possible to get very clear on what you’re about, where you want to go, and why. It’s very possible to consistently and clearly communicate that meeting point where you know why you exist and why someone would want to buy from you in everything you do.

I know because with the help of other people who had already done it giving me very clear guidance and feedback, I was able to start saving the spaghetti for eating. At this point I consistently focus what I say or do on reinforcing the end result our clients want – thinking about and implementing ways to help their web presences increase the likelihood visitors will take an action they want them to take.

I will be writing more about this very shortly.

The even better news is that the information I needed to begin implementing strategic branding  wasn’t especially difficult, expensive or time consuming. It is the first thing I go through with every new client we take on. It makes the investment far more worth it in the long run since we aren’t just “trying stuff out” to see what may or may not work.