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Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of a brand strategist. Feel free to use our brand strategist job description template to produce your own. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as a brand strategist.

 

Who is a Brand Strategist?

A marketing specialist in charge of a company’s messaging and strategy is known as a brand strategist. Effective brand strategists have a thorough understanding of their company’s product and target market and can create customer experiences that lead to sales. Brand strategists can come from a range of educational, training, and professional experiences. We’ll go over what brand strategists do and how to become one in this article. A Brand Strategist works closely with the Brand Manager or marketing team to ensure that the brand messaging is consistent and effective. To predict future trends and the success of a product or service, he or she will frequently need to be forward-thinking. A Brand Strategist will look for ways to improve a product’s or service’s branding, as well as build a marketing strategy based on current market data. It would also be beneficial to be familiar with statistics and research analysis. To predict future trends and the success of a product or service, he or she will frequently need to be forward-thinking. Brand strategists create holistic brand experiences based on extensive research, experience, and knowledge of the industry and clients. Brand Strategists undertake research, find actionable insights, design and present plans, and are outstanding storytellers. They also work with creative teams, attend client meetings, and lead brainstorming sessions.

 

A strategist will help you generate positioning recommendations, conduct market research, and define your brand’s aspects and tone. A company’s brand strategist researches the market and devises a strategy for influencing the attitudes and purchasing decisions of their target audience. They describe and portray the brand to potential customers through written, conversational, and visual approaches. They want their product or service to be the answer to the difficulty that their ideal consumer is experiencing. The goal of a brand strategist is to acquire the approval and trust of their target audience so that they will ultimately recommend or purchase the company’s product or service.

A brand strategist usually reports to a marketing director or a brand manager. They may collaborate closely with the marketing team, advertising or sales department, copywriters, graphic designers, agencies, and video producers, depending on the size of the organization. Brand strategists spend most of their time in an office and may travel to photo or video shoots to ensure a consistent brand message is delivered.

 

Types of Branding Strategies

1. Corporate Branding

Corporate branding is one of the more reputation-focused types of branding. It involves cultivating a cultivated name for an entire corporation. The public will identify the organization’s name with a promise – that they will stand behind the services they provide and have a track record of success. Customers are more likely to trust new products when they are associated with a brand they recognize. Good corporate branding has long-term effects because these companies can rely on name-brand recognition.

2. Personal Branding

This mainly relates to personal branding as opposed to branding a company as a whole. Celebrities, politicians, and even digital marketers who wish to preserve a positive public image should focus on personal branding (usually because it benefits them in their career to be endorsed). When it comes to creating a personal brand, social media is a great tool since it allows you to reach a large audience while “speaking” from a personal platform. Tony Robbins and Neil Patel, both entrepreneurs, are excellent instances of personal branding done correctly; each has invested extensively in his internet presence and established himself as an expert in his industry.

3. Product Branding

Have you ever noticed how the word ‘Kleenex’ has evolved to mean ’tissues’? That’s because the product has reached the pinnacle of product branding success — the kind of branding that convinces customers to choose one product over another solely on the basis of the brand. Because you’ve learned to correlate the two as a result of excellent product branding, you’ll frequently encounter logos or colors on certain items that stand out.

4. Geographical Branding

This form of branding is ideal for those in the travel business. Geographical branding emphasizes the distinctive characteristics of a certain area or region as a selling feature for a specific location and why you should come. Countries frequently claim a sort of food as their own or exaggerate the region’s unique history. (Think Egyptian pyramids or Moussaka from Greece.) Also, regions of the world that want to modify their image can use geographical branding; the city of Amsterdam, for example, did an excellent job at it with its “I Amsterdam” redesign, which shifted the focus away from their Red Light District and onto the city’s cultural richness.

5. Online branding

This sort of branding, often known as “internet branding,” refers to how you position your organization (or yourself) online. This may be creating a website, developing a social media presence, or writing a blog — anything that takes place on the internet under your name.

6. Offline Branding

This refers to branding that occurs outside of the internet, as the term implies. Offline branding necessitates a combination of smart design and outgoing spokespeople to represent your company, from handing out business cards to setting up sit-down lunches with potential clients or leads.

 

7. Co-branding

This is the point when branding and collaborations collide. When two or more firm brands are linked by the same product, this is known as co-branding. For example, Uber and Spotify collaborated on the “soundtrack for your journey” promotion, allowing users of both applications to be the DJs of their rides.

8. Service Branding

This style of branding places a great emphasis on the consumer and offers top-notch service to them. While every brand should strive to avoid alienating customers, service branding goes a step further by focusing on increasing perceived value in customer service and using it as a selling point. People who contact service brands look forward to the “extras” they receive, whether it’s hot chocolate chip cookies on foreign flights or “how-to DIY” packets with every purchase at a local coffee art store.

9. Ingredient Branding

When you showcase the accomplishments of a single ingredient within a product or a single branch within a company, the brand becomes more appealing than the product or company as a whole. Consider Westin’s Heavenly Bed, which made consumers prefer Starwood hotels (later Westin and Sheraton) for their vacation lodgings by stressing the quality of the bed.

10. Activist Branding

If you have a cause that you truly believe in, you might be able to incorporate it into your brand strategy. Activist branding, sometimes known as “conscious branding,” is a method of using your brand to make a good social impact, with the goal of having your brand become synonymous with the cause. Companies like Gillette have recently adopted this form of branding (albeit it’s too early to know whether it worked in the razor company’s advantage).

11. “No-brand” Branding

This strategy, sometimes known as “minimalist branding,” posits that a product, by itself, is sufficient to catch consumer attention without the use of any bells and whistles. In keeping with this attitude, Brandless, a firm that aims to make good food affordable, stresses their lack of a brand to remind clients that they don’t have to pay any more than required for “branded” food. Instead, customers have direct access to healthy, affordable food that is of excellent quality.

 

Brand Strategist Job Description

Below are the brand strategist job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write a brand strategist job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.

The duties and responsibilities of a brand strategist include the following:

• Learn about a company from the inside out. This entails segmenting the target market, comprehending compensation targets, studying rivals, and defining values.
• Create a basis and strategy for positioning the brand in its market based on this information.
• Plan visuals, vocabulary, tone, and voice carefully to ensure a consistent brand across all media.
• Examine current market trends and forecast future trends that may affect the success of their product or service.
• Develop a marketing strategy by analyzing market data, customer input, and survey replies.
• Carry out some research in order to come up with a good brand name for a new product or service.
• Rebrand existing products or services.
• Conduct research on the intended audience.
• Position the brand which entails establishing the benefits that come to mind when the target audience hears the brand’s name.
• Create buyer personas, which are descriptions of your ideal customer’s age, lifestyle, personality, aspirations, requirements, and obstacles.
• Conduct audits every year or two to analyze the brand’s market position and potential for improvement.
• Create a logo, messaging, creative materials, and marketing campaigns as part of your brand architecture.
• Create brand tales that inform clients about a product or service while also attempting to establish an emotional bond with them.
• Oversee the creation of all brand creative, including commercials, presentations, catalogs, sales sheets, social media campaigns, blogs, and testimonials, and ensure that the tone and messaging are consistent.
• Produce marketing materials with consistent content.
• Conduct research to determine the strengths and shortcomings of competitors’ products.

 

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, branding, communication, or a related discipline.
• Prior experience working as a brand strategist or in a similar position.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Leading client meetings experience.
• A mindset that is analytical and problem-solving.
• A storyteller who is both creative and compelling.
• Excellent research abilities.
• A thinker with a plan.
• Excellent public speaking abilities.

 

Essential Skills

• Storytelling: A brand strategist must be able to integrate different pieces of data and information into appealing narratives that accomplish a variety of brand-related objectives, such as presenting a company’s genesis story or expressing its unique values and culture. Designers and other creatives who use the brand strategy to generate deliverables benefit from brand storytelling because it clarifies the meaning of data.
• Synthesis and Pattern Recognition: Any brand strategy process necessitates a large amount of data. Brand strategists must be able to break things down as well as put them back together, and they must be able to recognize connections and correlations that others would miss. When patterns emerge, they must be able to “connect the dots” so that hunches and assumptions may be backed up by facts and truths.
• Curiosity & Thoughtfulness: Brand strategists are both problem solvers and question askers. They are explorers who desire to investigate things for themselves rather than just accept what is told to them. They don’t make broad comments or conclusions without thinking about how everything is connected, as well as how others see, feel, and react to what they create.
• Empathy/People Skills: Brand strategists work for both large and small businesses. Customers are something that all of those businesses and corporations have in common. People are the reason that brands are created and exist. Brand strategists are aware that the job they do is for people, who have actual needs, hurts, and frustrations.
• Organization and Clarity: A brand strategist must be able to separate and process a variety of interconnected ideas, phrases, and information points. Because mission, vision, and purpose are similar but not the same, it’s critical to maintain them separate and distinct. This capacity to arrange data of all types is becoming increasingly valuable as brand work gets more complex and intertwined with other elements of a business.
• Reading & Writing: This should go without saying, but a brand strategist must be able to sort through a large amount of data. Although some of the inputs may be visual, the majority will be typed. This is closely related to communication.
• Communication Skills:  A brand strategist must be able to articulate not only the decisions they make while establishing brand strategies but also their logic and methodology for why particular decisions were taken at different stages.
• Critical Thinking: Brand strategists must be able to think about brands not just in terms of how they appear on the surface, but also in terms of what is going on behind the surface. These include, among other things, understanding how causes become effects, how actions become consequences, and how some decisions generate gaps and opportunities. Brand strategists are expected to make important decisions, such as value judgments and assessments, and they must be able to analyze information at a deep level.
• Research: Brand strategists must be able to work with a variety of research approaches and technologies. Images are used in some cases, while reference books or articles are used in others. Anything might be the case. To identify relevant information, they must be able to parse data and references. Exploration leads to clarification.
• Listening: A brand strategist may have strong feelings and intuitions about a specific path. However, they must follow the clues, the evidence uncovered through discovery, and interaction with customers and stakeholders, much like a good detective. They must follow the facts wherever it goes. Actively listening to their client’s objectives and goals will enable them to build solutions that actually satisfy their clients’ needs, rather than just their own creative dreams or desires.
• Open-mindedness/Restraint: Strategists, especially those with a design background, may feel compelled to impose bright, creative ideas on a strategy engagement from time to time. Restraint, or the capacity to not force concepts or ideas that do not suit or serve the scenario, and instead trust in their strategic approach to produce the greatest results, is a useful attribute in this case.

 

How to Become a Brand Strategist

With a range of degrees and work experience, you can become a brand strategist. However, here are some of the most frequent processes that people take to become brand strategists:

1. Earn a bachelor’s degree

A four-year bachelor’s degree is required for nearly all brand strategist positions. English, marketing, psychology, business, design, economics, and communications degrees can provide brand strategists with the education and background they need to get started in their careers. These programs will provide you with a solid foundation in writing, analysis, strategy, and research.

2. Gain experience

Get an internship or entry-level work in a company’s marketing, public relations, advertising, or sales department to begin your career. You might apply for roles like marketing associate, marketing assistant, advertising representative, social media coordinator, digital marketing assistant, or brand ambassador at the entry-level. These positions introduce you to the process and basic job responsibilities of the marketing and branding team. Examine how strategists and managers develop brand plans and strategies. Working for a creative or advertising agency is another option. These third parties are frequently used by businesses to develop their branding and marketing initiatives. You will be exposed to all aspects of the branding and creative process while working at an agency. When you become a brand strategist, your expertise working for an agency can help you identify and manage quality agencies.

3. Develop your writing skills

Brand strategists are often in charge of or collaborate closely with copywriters to provide written content for advertisements, white papers, websites, blogs, and other promotional materials. To learn how to produce great headlines, summaries, and articles, practice your writing abilities and consider attending a copywriting class.

4. Strengthen your computer skills

Basic computer abilities, such as how to utilize a desktop, spreadsheet, and presentation tool, are required of brand strategists. They may also use creative and photo editing tools if they collaborate closely with the design team. Brand strategists should be well-versed in the workings of numerous social media platforms. Marketing techniques such as analytics programs, content management systems, and customer relationship management systems should also be learned.

5. Learn digital marketing

Branding and sales are becoming increasingly reliant on digital marketing. Learn about SEO, SEM, website design and optimization, email marketing, social media campaigns, online advertising, and metrics analysis, among other digital marketing concepts and practices. You can also take digital marketing courses online, some of which will provide you with a certificate once you complete them.

6. Learn to lead

You give direction to the teams you work with on a campaign, such as graphic designers, art directors, copywriters, content managers, and creative agencies, as a brand strategist. Develop leadership abilities so you can successfully distribute duties to the appropriate people and manage teams.

7. Become a certified brand strategist

Earning a certification demonstrates to employers that you are committed to your profession and eager to learn more. If you have a bachelor’s degree in a topic unrelated to marketing or no prior marketing experience, brand strategist certification can help you prepare for your future. Many universities and organizations provide brand strategy courses and certifications, however, the following are some of the most reputable:

• eCornell’s Marketing Strategy Certification Program teaches brand marketing concepts such as marketing strategy, distribution strategy, market research and analysis, and international marketing and takes three months to complete.
• The Brand Establishment’s Certified Brand Strategist program is a comprehensive five-month course about brand development.
• The Kellogg School of Management’s brand strategy program lasts six weeks and teaches management-level branding efforts.

These credentials are likely to impress hiring managers and offer you a leg up on other brand strategists.

8. Pursue a master’s degree

Brand strategists with master’s degrees in marketing, marketing science, business administration, or a related discipline are sought by some employers. A master’s degree can help you qualify for higher-level roles and develop your career more swiftly if you wish to work in management.

 

Where to Work as a Brand Strategist

Brand strategists work for a wide range of firms and businesses. They may collaborate closely with the marketing team, advertising or sales department, copywriters, graphic designers, agencies, and video producers, depending on the size of the organization. Brand strategists spend most of their time in an office and may travel to photo or video shoots to ensure a consistent brand message is delivered. The majority of brand strategists, on the other hand, operate from home.

 

Brand Strategist Salary Scale

In the United States, the average compensation for a Brand Strategist is $64,284. The typical salary range is $56,291 to $73,506 dollars. A Brand Manager in Nigeria earns roughly 564,000 NGN per month on average. Salaries range from 260,000 NGN to 897,000 NGN (lowest to highest). This is the monthly average pay, which includes housing, transportation, and other benefits. Salary for a Brand Manager varies greatly depending on experience, abilities, gender, and region.

Consulting and Strategy

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