Branding is one of the most important aspects of a business. An effective brand strategy gives you a competitive advantage in a forever changing digital landscape. But what does it mean?

Your brand is your promise to your customer. The promise tells them exactly what they can expect from you, and it differentiates your offering from everyone else. Your brand is the reason why you wake up in the morning, why you bend over backwards to make your customers happy, why you’re in business in the first place.

Your brand strategy is how you plan on communicating and delivering on your brand messages. What you communicate visually and verbally are part of your brand strategy.

Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand, which means the added value of your brand allows you to charge more for your brand vs what identical, unbranded products.

The intrinsic value to brand equity frequently comes in the form of perceived quality or emotional attachment. Nike for example, associates its products with star athletes, hoping customers will transfer their emotional attachment from the athlete to the product. For Nike, it’s not just the shoe’s features that sell the shoe, it’s the emotional connection.

Be diligent to your brand. Customers won’t return to you or refer you to someone else if you don’t deliver on your brand promise. Be consistent. Consistency and continuity is the underlying factor that will determine whether or not your promises are the same .If you can’t do this, your attempts at establishing a brand will fail.

Promises don’t change day to day nor does it change year to year. It never changes, in fact that’s the whole point of a promise isn’t it? It stays the same.