The Brand HOME Framework: 4 steps to a strong brand strategy
When clients reach out for help with their branding, they often focus on choosing the perfect name or designing a gorgeous logo or website. And I get it! It’s your front-line connection to your audience, and you know how powerfully it can accelerate your business’ growth and success.
But the truth is that visuals are only part of what makes a powerful and memorable brand. Branding is first and foremost about strategy. Before you develop the visuals for your brand, you need to lay a strong foundation that clearly defines who you are as a business, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what makes you unique and valuable in how you serve your clients.
Having this foundation in place will allow you to make choices about your design and brand visuals that reinforce your strategic objectives rather than just picking something because you think it looks nice.
More than that, it’ll give you a consistent message and voice that will help you stand out from the crowd with ease — and make sure that your message is reflected in your visual identity, too.
In this post, I’ll share the four essential elements of building a strategic brand — and the Brand HOME framework I’ve created and use with my clients. Let’s get started!
Think of brand-building like house-building.
Before the shovel goes into the ground, you’ll think seriously about the house’s functionality and how you’ll use it. Where are the bedrooms? What are the views? Do you need space for a home office or room to entertain? Does it need to be kid-friendly?
You’ll have a vision, not just for your home, but for your life inside that home. And then you’ll ensure that everything – from the foundation to the construction to the paint colours – aligns with that overall vision.
If you’ve ever watched HGTV, you know what happens if the foundation work (literally!) is done poorly. It doesn’t matter how lovely that granite countertop is if the wiring or plumbing are bad. You’ll be tearing it all up again before you know it.
THE SAME THING IS TRUE FOR YOUR BRAND.
You could have the most beautiful logo or website in the world. But if a clear vision and strategic direction aren’t guiding them, you’ll find yourself frustrated and wondering why they aren’t working.
To build a powerful and consistent brand, you need to have four core elements in place. When these are working together in harmony, you’ll create a brand that is cohesive, meaningful, true to who you are, and compelling to your audience — a brand that genuinely feels like a home.
HERE’S WHAT MY BRAND HOME FRAMEWORK LOOKS LIKE:
This framework pulls together the core tools and pieces you’ll often hear mentioned in branding and marketing strategy — things like audience profiles, positioning statements, and brand voice.
But before we walk through each piece of the framework, a quick word of encouragement:
Don’t feel you have to have all these right this second.
Creating a brand takes time, and our goal is to evolve and build out as you go. It’s more important to be building everything together than to be very focused on one component and ignore the other(s).
Heart - Your brand’s core
Your brand heart is all about communicating who you are at your core. Why do you do what you do? Why is that so important to you? What kind of impact do you want to have — for your clients and team, on your industry and community, within your own life? Why does all of this matter?
Think of this as your home’s foundation and the studs. Everything gets built around this, and if the framing can’t carry the load of everything else you’ll add later, the house will fall in on itself.
This is all about understanding you. We’ll get to your audience, competitors and the marketplace in a moment — but if you don’t start with your own reason for being, you’ll never be able to articulate what you stand for or cultivate authentic, values-based points of connection with your audience.
The common elements of your brand heart include:
BRAND VISION
Where are you going / what is the big picture? Why is it so important?
BRAND MISSION
How will you get there?
BRAND VALUES
What are the key characteristics or ideas that shape how you show up in the world, create and deliver your product or service, and connect with your audience?
BRAND PURPOSE / BIG IDEA
How can you quickly summarize the impact your brand will have over the long term?
Orientation - Your brand’s position
If you’re building a home, what’s around you directly impacts the final result. Are you in the city with neighbours pressed up on either side? Or in the country with lots of space? Are you in a forested mountain or an arid desert? Your environment will dictate your priorities and choices as you determine how to build your home and how it will function.
In marketing speak, orientation is all about positioning. Your surroundings are the marketplace — your audience, your competition, and how you relate to them and set yourself apart.
Like your brand heart, orientation is a foundational piece of your brand in the sense that your research and the insights you develop here will often be “behind the walls” — they’re internal to your brand, and you’ll likely want to keep them confidential to protect your competitive advantage. But your positioning choices directly shape how your brand expresses itself externally through your messaging and visual identity.
The common elements of your brand’s orientation include:
RESEARCH
Not an output, but an essential part of the branding process that informs all this 👇🏻
AUDIENCE PROFILES
Call this an ICA, customer avatar, muse, or whatever you want. The name isn’t nearly as important as the process! This is about understanding who you serve, what they want, what’s keeping them from getting it, and what they need from you.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Who else is working in your space? What are their strengths and weaknesses compared with yours? How are you the same? How are you different?
POSITIONING STATEMENT
Sometimes referred to as your “onliness statement”. Pulling together everything you’ve learned, this short statement summarizes how you stand out from the crowd. How are you different / better, and why should your ideal customers choose you?
Message - The story you tell
The second half of the Brand HOME Framework is about how your brand expresses itself — the external factors that shape how you choose to show up in the world. First up is your message: the story you tell.
If you were building a home, this would be the stage where you install windows and doors, put on the roof, and lay down flooring. The choices you make here dramatically impact how your home will look, feel, and function. They’re aesthetic, yes, but they’re also strategic, substantial, and made to last. They’re essential to whether your home is functional, day in and day out.
The same is true for your message. This is where you make the critical choices about how your brand shows up in the world. You’re extending your internal heart and orientation work into an external presence that invites people in, shows off your personality and vision, and creates an articulate experience around what you do and why it matters.
There are loads of brand message elements to consider, but the most fundamental ones include:
BRAND PERSONALITY/ARCHETYPE
If your brand was a person, what would its personality be? How do you relate to your audience and meet their needs?
VOICE AND TONE
How does your brand speak, sound, and feel?
MESSAGING PILLARS
What are the core messages that articulate what you offer and why it matters — everywhere your brand connects with the world?
ELEVATOR PITCH
How do you turn this into a concise summary of who you are and what you do in a language your audience will connect with and respond to?
Emblems - Your visual identity
Finally! We’re at the brand visuals stage!
I hope at this point I’ve convinced you that your brand identity is so much more than just logos, photos, or a colour palette. It captures the ideas that underpin your brand and translates them into a tangible, instantly identifiable presence. That’s why I refer to these elements as your emblems — they’re distinctive, symbolic objects that visually represent who you are, like a badge or a family crest.
And strategically, they’re essential because they’re usually your first impression.
When you build a house, you go through it from the ground up. The foundation, studs, roof, walls, and windows come BEFORE paint chips, countertops, and furniture. But when you invite a guest into your home, they see it in reverse. Sure, they’re experiencing the foundation and the studs behind the walls — but what they see (and comment on!) — are the visuals.
The same is true for your brand. Your audience starts with your identity and message, which become their portal to understanding the heart of who you are.
When the first thing your audience experiences has a solid through-line to the heart of what your brand is about, you’re creating a seamless, consistent experience that’s deeply meaningful.
As with your message, your brand’s visual identity has so many different aspects. The essentials include:
CREATIVE DIRECTION/BRAND IMPACT
What visual cues and direction do you want to set for your brand? How do you want your audience to feel when they encounter it?
LOGO
What is the primary visual representation of your brand?
TYPOGRAPHY
Which typefaces best represent your brand’s message and direction?
COLOUR PALETTE
How can you use the powerful principles of colour psychology to create a connection with your audience? Which colours best represent you and the impact you want to have?
To sum it all up…
To build a brand HOME, you need four distinct elements, all working together:
Heart: Your why, your purpose, and the core of who you are
Orientation: Your position in the marketplace
Message: Your personality, voice, and story
Emblems: The visual representation of your brand’s vision and message
Together, these four elements make up the foundation of a successful brand. Finding clarity in these areas will go beyond creating a great logo or website to impact every facet of how your customers perceive and remember you.
Want help with figuring out how to apply this to your own brand? I’d love to work with you! Reach out today to set up a free call, or sign up for my newsletter using the form below 👇🏻 to get strategic advice and tips on brand-building each week.
