As a freelancer, How to offer Brand strategy as a service?

As a freelancer, being a copywriter, FB ads, Social media manager is common. A lot of people offer that, but how many times have heard about Brand Strategy being offered as a service? Not a lot, right?

That’s because Brand strategy requires use of both sides of the brain. Creativity and analytics and it takes a long time to build a skill in this. But if it takes such a long time, why should I spend time to learn it? I can simply start offering an easier skill. Correct, go ahead and start offering a simpler skill. But in your spare time build this up. This helps you build authority, charge a premium and also very niche offerings.

Before we move on, let’s spend some time on understanding Brand strategy and its elements.

Brand strategy & planning — Of course, when you start strategizing about a brand you will need to understand the product, the offering, who are the competitors and most important of all, what is the story of the brand. What are the values that they believe in etc.

Brand Promise tells current and potential customers what you plan to deliver to them. If they purchase from you, what can they expect. Quality, quantity, trust etc.

Brand positioning — You cannot cater to every single person as a brand or a company. That is where you position yourself. For eg.You will cater to millennials with a certain income group or behavior.

Brand proposition development — Creating an unique proposition for your brand that is as unique as your brand. For example, Adidas and Reebok were already hot favourites. How did Nike make it’s name. Let’s look at what Nike’s proposition was — accessibility, innovation, customization, and brand/status.

So you see, Nike brought a few things that others were missing and made a niche there. Innovation and Brand status being key elements.

Brand architecture strategy — Brand Architecture is a system that organizes brands, products and services to help an audience access and relate to a brand.

Compare two Tata companies — Tata Salt vs Titan!

Brand Consistency means sending a unified, coherent and relevant message to the audience across all channels — digital, social, offline, OOH.

Target Audience is the group of people you hope to reach with your marketing, including demographics and other specifics that can help you craft your message effectively.

Brand Voice defines the tone, word usage and other specifics guiding the creation of copy, visuals and other assets.

Brand Goals define what you ultimately hope to accomplish with your branding and marketing efforts.

Now that you would have a fair understanding of Brand strategy, and must read up and research a lot on this, you can start looking for clients to help them build out their plan. A brand strategy starts from scratch. You basically take a product/service/company and convert it into a brand through thoughtful planning and storytelling. It takes years to build a brand but we would always need to put the first stone of establishment. That is what you can help as a freelancer.

Where can you get clients?

Start with freelancing sites like Upwork, Freelancer, fiverr etc and build credibility. It might not be a high paying stint to start with, but please feel free to skip offers that don’t suit you. Then you can slowly move on to Facebook groups, paid ads, referrals and more. The projects can last between 1 month — 6 months so make sure you try to get a retainer model. This helps you plan better as well.

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