As Katie likes to say, “your Brand Strategy is how you’ll meet your consumer’s needs in a way your competitors can’t, or won’t, in order to set your brand apart.” When the front and back end of your business is integrated and aligned around your “North Star,” every resource you put behind your brand is so much more efficient and effective.
When it comes to brand strategy though, it’s so all-encompassing (yes, it’s so much more than your logo, colors, or marketing plan!) that it can be hard to get a handle on what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.
Today on the Real Food Brands Marketing Podcast, host and Food & Bev Brand Strategist Katie Mleziva goes through the free Brand Checkup Scorecard tool she’s created to help you make sure you’ve got the foundation pieces in place to define, align and activate your Brand Strategy for your food or beverage company. Having these pieces in place help you optimize your brand and align your team around your vision and goals.
Why Every Food Business Needs a Clear Brand Strategy
Even big brands that have gone through extensive Brand Strategy work sometimes struggle to create a differentiated brand that stands out to consumers. The good news is that as a smaller food company, you can infuse personality and humanity into your brand in ways that larger competitors usually can’t. For one thing, you often have a better story to tell and don’t need a bunch of people to sign off on your message before you put it out there. More importantly, you’re often closer to your customers than a big brand, with the ability to constantly interact via email, customer comments, social media, and more.
The Brand Checkup Scorecard
With the Brand Checkup Scorecard, you can take the first steps to see how your strategy is working, and where there might be room for improvement.
This self-assessment takes you through 25 questions to help you think through how well your brand strategy is defined, how well your team (internal employees as well as external partners as appropriate) is aligned and understand that strategy, and how well you work together to activate it and bring it to life in various areas of your business to truly set your brand apart. By the end of the Brand Checkup Scorecard process and ranking your current status 1,2, or 3, you’ll have a clear picture of what’s working, what’s needs attention, and how to move forward from here.
Over the next few Real Food Brands Marketing Podcast episodes Katie will be diving into how to define, align and activate your Brand Strategy to help you move your scores confidently towards 3’s. If you don’t want to wait or prefer online learning options that include a workbook to guide you, Katie eagerly announced she will be offering an on-demand Brand Strategy Fundamentals Workshop, which will be launching shortly after this podcast goes live. You get the benefit of the proven workflows and frameworks from her 1:1 work, but you can work on it at any time, from anywhere, and go at your own pace.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out at katie@realfoodbrands.com. Grab your Brand Checkup and you’ll be added to the email list to hear when the Brand Strategy Fundamentals Workshop is live!
Why leave all the Brand Strategy fun to the big food brands? Let’s go shake up shopping carts!
In This Episode:
- Four past episodes that can help you get started on your Brand strategy.
- Why Brand Strategy is not just for big brands, and why you may actually have an advantage.
- How to recognize solid brand strategy work when you see it.
- How to download free Real Food Brands Brand Checkup Scorecard tool to see how your brand is doing.
- Examples of questions from the Brand Checkup Scorecard.
- The power of documenting your Brand Strategy to align your team.
- How to go deeper with the Brand Strategy Fundamentals Workshop.
Quotes:
“Brand strategy is not just for big brands with big agency budgets.” – Katie Mleziva
“When your team is small, you can harness insights easier than some of the big brands can.” – Katie Mleziva
“Once you’re aware of the different places you can be focusing to help build your brand, it’s only going to get better because you know what you need to work on.” – Katie Mleziva
“Founders I’ve worked with have really appreciated that we’ve been able to take the ideas that have been floating around in their heads and combine that with some outside resources and tools to document their competitive set’s key messaging, document their consumer profile, and actually write down their company’s key points of difference.” – Katie Mleziva
Resources:
- Ep #2: How to Start Building and Documenting Your Brand Strategy
- Ep #36: How to Define, Align and Activate Your Brand Strategy
- Ep #45: The 5-Minute Food Business Brand Strategy Formula
- Ep #49: 4 Common Brand Strategy Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
- Real Food Brands Brand Checkup Scorecard
- Real Food Brands Marketing Roundtable Facebook Group
- Real Food Brands website