This is the final step in my brand strategy process, and arguably most important in this series. Why so? This step is about how your new brand is going to stack up against the competitors in your particular industry. It’s a competitive world out there!
It doesn’t matter what field you are in whether you are a blogger, starting your own real estate agency, or a wellness coach. Going into a brand knowing the competition is the best way to gain an advantage for your company. It is a way to analyze your competition and learn from their design strategies and even design flaws. It all comes down to research.
The way I do this is I collaborate with my clients on whom their top competitors are, or even whom they want to compete with in their industry. They may just be starting out, but want to compete with a larger company in their field some day or be looking solely at local markets. My advice is to do a few of both. I typically start with 3-4 top competitors. I take this list and I look at the logo, product (if they have one), website, and social media of each.
Things I look for in my analysis:
What are their competitors’s strengths?
It could mean things like bright colors, strong photographic imagery, bold typography etc. Anything that is identifying the brand and getting a positive response.
What are their competitors’s flaws?
Is there any disconnect in their design? I look for things that aren’t working. For example, is the logo too hard to make out at a small scale, are there too many separate elements, or is the brand not looking cohesive enough?
What are the trends of the competitors?
What is the competition doing that seems to be repeating across the industry? More importantly, how can we DISRUPT that to draw attention to their brand. This is what gives your brand the edge.
Once I’ve completed the research, I take all these into mind and put it together in a short presentation that I walk my clients through. For each page of the presentation, I’ll include screen shots and descriptions of the information I’ve found. I find that this really helps spell out characteristics of these brands in an easy to understand way for the client.
Finally, I end with a page that maps out the strategy I plan on taking to set the brand a part. It will map out for example, if there is a particular color scheme I intend to go with, typography that I think would make the brand stand out more, or photographic textures I think the brand can benefit from.
And there you have it. The final workshop I do for my clients. At this point I have all I need to get started on the design process because now the proper STRATEGY is in place!
There you go! That’s the final part of my series for establishing a strategy first process for my clients. If you like how I work, feel to contact me. I’d love to go over your ideas!
