Brand strategy 101: How to build one in 2025

Brand strategy is crucial for a brand's identity and success in today's competitive landscape. Think about brands that have become generic terms for a type of product—Kleenex as tissues, Xerox as a photocopy, and Google as looking for answers online. Companies like these have compelling brand stories to achieve this recognition. 

Brand recognition indicates your company has a reputation for its tone, logo, messaging, and even its culture. But, if your brand is unrecognizable within its market or unfocused, your brand strategy might need some work.

This brand strategy guide will equip you with everything you need to create an impactful brand strategy. We will define the concept, cover key elements, and discuss how to build a brand strategy and measure results. 

Brand strategy is a comprehensive plan defining how a business positions itself in the market, communicates value, and builds lasting customer relationships.

It encompasses your brand’s purpose, values, target audience, positioning, messaging, and visual identity to create a consistent and memorable brand experience.

A successful brand strategy organizes your brand essence and brand identity into a plan to build customer loyalty and differentiate your business from competitors.

Without a clear brand strategy, you're like a ship without a compass—drifting aimlessly in a sea of competition. A solid strategy guides your brand’s direction and creates loyalty, trust, and long-term growth. 

A clear, consistent brand vision is essential when developing a brand strategy. Brand marketers craft strategies to help businesses build customer loyalty, boost sales, and increase awareness.

The benefits of brand strategy are plentiful, offering businesses many reasons to focus on developing a strong strategy.

The top benefits include:

What are the parts of a strong brand strategy? Let’s dive into the essential brand strategy elements. 

Brand purpose is the key motivation behind your business. Beyond making a profit, brand purpose drives you and your employees daily. Your purpose should be one of the first things your business establishes. It informs your brand guidelines, including voice, target audience, values, and mission.

A brand vision, sometimes called brand mission, is what your brand aspires to achieve. It is a company’s North Star that guides its every decision. A vision or mission statement ensures employees and stakeholders understand your business’ direction. It goes far beyond revenue goals or increasing market share and focuses on lasting change. This powerful reason for being drives you and your brand forward in all decisions.

Core values are the guiding principles that influence your brand’s actions and decisions. You can think of them as pillars on which your brand stands. Typically, businesses should have four to five core values. These values can vary extensively depending on your specific business model and offerings. 

Identifying your target audience is critical to developing an effective brand strategy. Market segmentation can be helpful. Understand your audience by doing market research to learn what customers want.

Your target audience will influence how you try and connect to them. For example, a company with an audience of consumers between 20 and 30 would address them differently than 75+ year-olds.

Brand positioning is all about carving out your unique space in the market. A brand positioning statement answers questions like, “Who are you?”, “What makes you different?”, “Why should customers trust you?” Brand positioning sets a business apart from competitors by helping customers remember who you are and how they feel about you. 

Brand messaging encompasses the brand voice, tone, and language a business uses to represent itself in the market. This branding element is critical to forming connections with customers. Create a memorable brand voice that can be utilized consistently across marketing channels.

A brand image consists of logos, colors, fonts, and design elements that make it visually recognizable. When hearing a brand's name, consumers often think of these elements. Use your brand’s visual elements strategically to create a cohesive brand experience. 

Keep reading to learn how to build a brand strategy that works. We break down 7 actionable steps.

Why does your brand exist beyond making money? This is your brand’s purpose. To build a brand purpose, consider how you want to make a difference in the world.

Unlike everyday assumptions that carry little risk, misunderstanding your target market can derail your entire brand strategy.

Market research is your first step in identifying your target audience. Our quick-start Target Market Demographic Survey Template can help you get to know your target market, including their age, gender, location, and socioeconomic status. The Market Research Survey Template can help you further analyze their challenges, motivations, and desires.

Understanding what others are doing in your industry and finding your unique value proposition is vital. Conducting competitive research can help you determine why buyers choose other similar brands, their appeal, and how you can capitalize on their weaknesses to differentiate your brand. Start with our Competitor Research Template to find your unique place in the market. 

Now it’s time for the fun part—identifying your brand personality. Determine the voice, tone, and character your brand will project in its communications.

Keep in mind that this is not a one-and-done process. It’s an iterative process in which you’ll tweak the brand personality as the company matures. A Brand Personality Survey Template can help you test customers’ perception of your brand, allowing you to realign your brand with your purpose and audience as needed.

Consider how your logo, colors, and design will tell your story. Choose visual elements that support the feeling you want customers to have when thinking about your brand. Then, test it!

Logo testing places different designs in front of your target audience to gauge their reaction. Testing can highlight improvement areas and give you concrete data to support a decision as big as your brand’s visual identity. Try our Logo Testing Survey Template to support the creation of your visual identity.

Your brand’s messaging is how your brand speaks about its identity, mission, and value proposition.

Think of it this way. It’s the difference between saying that you “champion employee excellence with robust education incentives and employee development programs” and “provide a yearly stipend.” The first statement is passionate about employee development, while the latter is just a line item on an employee benefits list. 

Refine your messaging using a Messaging Testing Survey Template. This survey template can help you verify whether your messaging resonates with your target audience.

Above all, being consistent across channels is crucial for an effective brand strategy. Inconsistent messaging can confuse employees and customers, leaving them wondering where the brand they know and love went.

That said, you should learn how to adapt when necessary. For example, your approach may change across platforms—how you communicate on LinkedIn may be far different from Instagram. Strike a balance and communicate those nuances to relevant teams.

Are you wondering what’s next? There are several different ways to measure your brand strategy’s success.

First, choose brand metrics that align with your business goals and help monitor awareness, engagement, and loyalty.

Next, gather customer feedback to measure your brand strategy's impact. SurveyMonkey has 400+ fully customizable survey templates. Start with the following survey templates:

Analyze customer feedback to improve your brand health. Customer feedback reflects your brand’s success as it shares how customers feel about your business.

There are a handful of common mistakes you should avoid when devising a brand strategy. 

Apple greatly focuses its brand strategy around a set of core values. Everything the brand says and does reflects these values. Apple’s commitment to its values and design choices makes its marketing materials instantly recognizable.

Here’s why Apple’s brand strategy works:

Nike’s brand strategy began with one slogan. The instantly recognizable “Just do it” may be one of the leading slogans worldwide. The slogan encompasses Nike's mission statement, aiming to empower existing and potential customers to appreciate the joy of movement.

Here’s why Nike’s brand strategy works:

Starbucks’ strong brand identity is recognizable to most. Its visual identity—color scheme and logo—are internationally recognized. Yet, going beyond its visual elements, Starbucks uses its brand values and vision to connect with its target audience.

Here’s why Starbucks’ brand strategy works:

Purpose, strategy, and consistency are the cornerstones of a healthy brand.

Building a comprehensive brand strategy can help you take your brand to the next level. It is one of the key elements to creating a successful business. No matter where your brand stands, there’s always room for improvement and refinement. 

The most important step in creating a successful brand strategy is thorough market research. Customer feedback allows you to define or refine your brand strategy effectively. Use the SurveyMonkey Brand Awareness Survey Template or 400+ survey templates to get started. 

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