Brand Development

What is brand development?

It’s more than your logo and website. Brand development is the continuous process of defining, refining, and testing your overall brand strategy. It’s the foundation for your company’s go-to-market approach and long-term winning strategy. From brand values to design to marketing assets, brand development is the process to get you there. 

What does brand development help define?
 Brand goals

Brand goals outline the 3 to 5 key things your brand and/or website needs to deliver for your business. The goals can incorporate qualitative (e.g. creative) and quantitative (e.g. revenue) elements.

Brand purpose

A brand purpose outlines a higher purpose (the “why”) for your brand beyond simply revenue or business growth. It typically focuses on the positive change you want to create in the world for customers, communities, or society as a whole.

Audience personas

Audience personas detail 2 to 3 archetypes that represent the main stakeholders your brand is designed to appeal to, including their goals, needs, fears, and frustrations.

Competitive review

A competitive review summarizes the landscape in which you’ll be competing. It analyzes your competitors and their offerings and gives insights into how you can outperform them.

Brand positioning

Your brand positioning is a highly-focused single statement that carves out your unique value proposition in the market.

Brand differentiators

Brand differentiators separate your brand from all other competitors, outlining why a customer should choose you over them.

Brand character

Brand character includes brand personality, which imbues your brand with key human qualities, making it relatable and helping your customers connect with it. It also includes brand voice, which gives your team clear guidance on the preferred tone and feel they should deliver in all written marketing communications.

Why is brand development important?

The most successful companies develop, deploy, and regularly revisit a comprehensive brand strategy to make purposeful and strategic marketing decisions. They don’t wing it. 

Land in the appropriate market

Marketing to a broad market and vague target audience is like taking a shot in the dark. Brand development helps you hit your target audience when and where they are.

Save valuable time and budget

Investing in brand development helps you strategically focus your resources on the right messaging, marketing, and value propositions.

Align your teams

Brand development brings clarity and consistency to your overarching brand goals and strategy so that all your teams from sales to marketing to product are on the same page.

What’s the difference between brand development and branding? 
  • Brand development is the process of creating and testing a brand’s value.
  • Branding puts brand development into practice. It is the application of brand development through marketing assets, communications, etc. 

Related Terms

Brand Strategy

Brand strategy involves translating your technical offering into a clear value proposition and backing it up with a messaging framework and brand personality you can own.

Anchor Text

Otherwise known as link text, a link title, or a link label, anchor text can be described as clickable words or phrases within a hyperlink that connects two web pages.

Search Engine

Database tools that help users find content on the World Wide Web. Once a user enters a keyword or search query, search engines curate a list of the most relevant webpage URLs, images, or videos, known as the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).