Episode 15: 3 Steps for Building Your Brand Strategy with Katie Mleziva

Download the Food Biz Wiz Listener Guide and make the most out of our 250 episode library! Get our curated playlists of top episodes on sales pitches, wholesale buyers, founder mindset, marketing, and more. Fast track your learning by downloading our free Listener Guide HERE.

On today’s episode, I welcome fellow food business consultant and podcaster, Katie Mleziva, to share her three steps for building your brand strategy. Katie brings her extensive experience of working at Kraft Foods to her six + years of consulting with emerging businesses in the CPG industry. 

In this episode, Katie shares what a brand strategy is, why it’s important for emerging food businesses to prioritize this work, and how to know if you’re doing it successfully. 

Tune in to hear Katie talk through her three steps to building a brand strategy:

  1. Define: defining your north star as you think about your competitors, your consumers and your company

  2. Align: align yourself and your team (if you have one!) around your brand strategy

  3. Activate: get your strategic priorities in order. How does it come to life in everything that we do, knowing that we have limited bandwidth?

In addition, Katie talked through her eight strategic priorities that you should evaluate as you grow your brand, which I’ll outline and talk about in my Food Biz Wiz™ Facebook group. Click here to join and keep your eyes peeled for a post on those key steps!

During our recording, Katie and I have a funny moment where we realize our different relationships with our dish soap brands, and she shouts-out Rebel Green as her favorite, local brand. You can hear my dish soap experience when you tune in! 

There was also a moment where we tried to remember the phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” which, as it turns out, was said by Aristotle, and resonates with our message about the importance of a brand strategy that carries throughout each touchpoint of your business. 

To keep in touch with Katie, find her on the following places:

Real Food Brands website - don’t forget to scroll down halfway and take the brand quiz!

Real Food Brands Facebook page

Real Food Brands podcast

Finally, if this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to grab my retail roadmap, which outlines my nine steps to growing a brand that FLIES off the retail shelf. Click here to download it!