People choose brands based on their attributes. The more your audience resonates with your brand’s traits or feels positive about them, the more likely they are to support you.

The problem is: not all brands highlight characteristics that help them connect with their audience. 

That’s where a brand attributes strategy comes in.

In this blog post, we’ll talk about why brand attributes matter, the types of attributes, and some examples, and also discuss the best brand attributes strategy.

TL;DR – What is the Best Brand Attributes Strategy?

If you’re in a hurry, check out these actionable steps for developing a compelling brand attributes strategy:

1. Identify your brand attributes
2. Clarify your brand essence
3. Research your competition
4. Highlight key attributes
5. Integrate attributes into your brand strategy

I will discuss these steps in detail in this article, so read on to learn more.

Even after creating a good brand attributes strategy, you still need to ensure your brand gets in front of your intended audience. That’s the task of effective and compelling messaging.

That’s where I can help. I will work with you to understand your business, attributes, target audience, and more to deliver a message that your audience remembers. 

Connect with me, Nora Sudduth, today.

What Are Brand Attributes?

Brand attributes are the unique characteristics that define your brand.

Are you budget-friendly? Sustainable? Youth-led? Innovative? These traits represent your values, beliefs, direction, and target audience.

Collectively, they form your brand identity and personality, which endear you to your customers.

Brand Attributes vs. Brand Personality

It’s easy to confuse brand attributes with personality. After all, when we ask brands what their attributes are, they will likely produce a list of traits like “elegant” or “fun.” 

But there’s a slight difference.

Your brand attributes are the details that describe your brand, such as being sustainable or creating disruptive technology. It can also be your brand’s slogan. On the other hand, your personality is one collective idea about who you are, and that influences the feelings associated with your brand. 

Brand Attributes Examples

We can understand a company’s brand characteristics from its brand messaging. 

So, if you think of some of the world’s most beloved brands today, you’ll notice that you already have an idea of what traits define them, even without reading their mission, vision, or company values.

Here are some examples:

1. Work Smart with Asana

Asana helps you work smarter and spotlights key features that appeal to people who are tired of cluttered workspaces and complicated work processes.

Why does it appeal to its target audience?

The brand focuses on critical attributes such as:

• Empowering: Providing support to teams to help them perform their best.
• Purposeful: Taking each step with meticulous planning, focus, and craftsmanship.
• Approachable: Being friendly, sincere, open, and honest.
• Quirky: Creating delightful moments to make work fun.

2. Reimagine Remote Work with Zoom

Zoom lets you work together as a team, even if you’re miles away.

The brand appeals to its audience as it’s built on attributes like: 

• Human connection: Keeping the human connection in communications.
• Care: Caring for employees, customers, the company, and communities.
• Happiness: Delivering happiness to customers, teammates, and community.

3. Build a Global Team with Deel

Deel can help you build a world-class team without any hassle by consolidating all the HR tools you need.

Here are key attributes that appeal to the company’s target market:

• Care: Valuing the customers and understanding the company’s impact.
• Optimism: Staying positive and balancing various perspectives.
• Speed: Moving quickly and building tools that last.
• Exceed expectations: Overachieving by owning their work.

Why Do Brand Attributes Matter?

Your brand’s attributes convey its pillars to your customers in a way that they identify with and understand. If they “get” you, it’s easier for them to remember you when they need what you provide.

Other than that, these benefits make brand attributes a key factor when shaping your company’s branding:

Create an Emotional Connection

Your brand’s key characteristics help you tap into your audience’s emotional motivators and needs. Examples of these motivators are the fear of missing out and the need to belong.

Intangible attributes like “innovation” appeal to people who need the next cool thing or the newest technology.

Differentiate Your Brand

Highlighting unique traits communicates your competitive edge, making it easier for potential customers to decide between you and other companies in the same industry.

Build a Positive Reputation

As entrepreneur Brian Koslow said, 

“There’s no advertisement as powerful as a positive reputation traveling fast.”

It may take you decades to build a good reputation. But if you use the right attributes, they will help you get there sooner and build trust with your customers.

Types of Brand Attributes

Brand attributes fall under two main categories. Understanding both will help you define your key characteristics and nurture the ones that impact your business the most.

1. Hard Brand Attributes

Also called functional attributes, these refer to practical, measurable, and tangible characteristics directly related to your products and services. 

As the term suggests, these traits shape your product messaging and define what a product or service looks like, how it works, what customers experience with it, and even how much it costs.

Examples of hard attributes are:

• Brand name and logo
• Product specifications
• Service offerings

2. Soft Brand Attributes

Soft (or emotional) attributes are intangible features that help forge an emotional connection between you and your customers. They influence how your customers feel about your brand.

Because you have very little control over the associations and feelings customers have about your brand, they’re more complex and take longer to build.

Examples of soft attributes are:

• Trustworthy
• Authentic
• Customer-centric

How to Identify Your Brand Attributes

Here are the ways to identify your brand attributes:

• Review Your Core Values: They tell you what’s important and keep you on track, even if you’re trying to adapt to market changes or considering rebranding.

Tip: Many of your brand attributes are directly related to and even synonymous with your core values.

Look at Apple’s example. One of its core values is “innovation,” which is also its most recognizable brand attribute.

• Observe Company Culture: Your internal culture doesn’t exist in a bubble. It expresses itself outwardly–in your customer touchpoints, services, and content messaging.

So, examining your culture will shed light on attributes your team and customers see.

One way to gain better insight into your culture is by running surveys. This way, responses are honest, eliminating the cognitive bias that prevents many business owners from giving an objective assessment.

• Know Who Your Customers Are: Pay attention to the audiences that your key messages appeal to. Are they young, ambitious go-getters? Are they new moms struggling to find a balance between a career and homemaking?

Get to know your tribe, and you’ll understand the traits people see and love about you.

• Find Out Brand Associations: Brand associations are concepts that people connect with your brand. For example, Nike is associated with sports and working hard to achieve your aspirations.

These associations are built through consistent messaging. This means that though you may not have direct control over what people think about your brand, you can influence those associations by delivering a message that targets your audience’s pain points, needs, and motivations.

Brand Attributes Strategy Explained 

Establishing the characteristics you want your company to stand for requires strategy. It’s not as simple as picking qualities that sound good or that your competitors don’t have.

You need to be:

• Authentic: Foster customer loyalty and trust by highlighting qualities you uphold as a company. 
• Realistic: You must also be able to realistically and consistently embody the characteristics you claim to have.

Follow these practical steps for shaping your brand attributes strategy:

1. Identify Your Brand Attributes

Your strategy should begin with a clear understanding of the attributes you already have.

As mentioned above, to identify your brand traits, reflect on your core values, examine your culture, and pay attention to what people say about you.

In the process, you may find characteristics that don’t help or, worse, erode your brand equity. We’ll get to those later.

2. Clarify Your Brand Essence

Take the self-evaluation a little further to get to the heart of your brand – the reason why you exist.

Get inspiration from how you began, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Why did I start this company?
• Who am I here for?
• What value do I provide?

3. Research Your Competition

Find out what your competitors’ attributes are. Then, evaluate which attributes of your brand stand out from those of your competitors.

Focus on those characteristics and create a hierarchy that highlights the ones that impact your branding most positively. They should also shape your strategic messaging to bring in your desired response.

4. Integrate Attributes into Your Brand Strategy

The last step is to infuse your brand attributes into your branding strategy.

There are two main areas of focus here:

• Messaging: Communicate a value proposition that is tied to and consistent with your key attributes. This encompasses all your brand messaging, from your slogan to your content and visual language.

Tip: Test your messaging before, during, and after executing a brand attributes strategy to keep your message delivery on-point. 

If you’re looking for guidance on creating impactful messaging based on your brand attributes, connect with me today to discuss how I can help you with it.

• Customer experience: Ensure that your customer relationships and interactions are marked by your brand attributes. For example, if your key trait is efficiency, improve the customer experience with chatbots or more streamlined processes.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some of the top questions about brand attributes:

What Role Do Brand Attributes Play in Brand Differentiation?

Your attributes differentiate your brand from your competition by highlighting qualities that set you apart or areas where you have a competitive edge.

This is crucial for brands that compete in a highly saturated market.

How Can You Measure the Effectiveness of Your Brand Attributes Strategy?

To measure the effectiveness of your strategy, start by setting clear, measurable objectives. Once those are in place, check key areas where brand perception is most likely to surface:

• Customer engagement
• Sales
• Conversions
• Leads

How Can You Align Brand Attributes with Company Values?

Reviewing your core values and prioritizing company attributes that reinforce those values will help keep you aligned. 

Not all your attributes are equal. So, spotlight the ones that positively impact your company’s goals and identity.

What Tools Can Be Used to Analyze Brand Attributes?

Identify and analyze your brand attributes through the following:

• Brand audit
• Surveys
• SWOT analysis

Conclusion

Scale your business by refining your brand attributes.

To do so, highlight attributes that resonate with your audience and integrate your brand qualities into your brand strategy. 

But remember that for your brand attributes strategy to work, you need a compelling brand message that speaks directly to your target audience.

Let me help you design a messaging strategy that highlights your attributes and creates an authentic connection with your audience. Schedule a discovery call with me today!