How to create a powerful brand strategy: My complete 3-part process
Brand building can feel overwhelming — and understandably so! There are so many moving parts:
Articulating your vision and strategic direction
Understanding your audience and marketplace
Honing your brand voice and message
Creating design assets and a cohesive visual identity
And that’s just the development part! After that, you’ll still need to roll everything out across your product and service delivery, marketing systems, and internal operations. It’s a lot of decision-making, resources, and head space.
And with the strength of your business riding on its success, it’s a real problem when your brand isn’t working as it should. Worse still, it can be hard to diagnose why it’s not working or be tempted to go for quick tactical fixes (“I’ll just tweak my website” or “I just need to be on social more”).
But I have two pieces of good news:
First: There is a solution, and it doesn’t involve just putting out more Reels and praying to the algorithm gods. A strong brand strategy gives you clear messaging, a consistent brand experience, and a realistic plan for growing and marketing your small business.
(Read about what a brand strategy is and why you need it and my 4-part HOME framework for building your brand for more on this.)
And second: Whatever stage you’re at in your business — whether you’re just starting, pivoting to something new or different, or scaling your successful business to a whole new level — there is a step-by-step process that you can follow to build that strategy for yourself.
That step-by-step process is what I want to talk about today. In this post, I’m sharing the 3 phases I take every Elevated Brand Blueprint client through to develop a rock-solid brand strategy.
Developing a brand strategy feels a lot like taking a jumbled-up ball of yarn, carefully pulling it apart, and organizing the different coloured strands into something easy to work with.
First, we get the threads of your brand — the ideas, concepts, and emotions that make up who you are and where you want to go — out of your head and onto the table.
Next, we organize them into tangible words, visuals, and structure that feel true to who you are and can be consistently applied and shared.
To make that happen, I break the brand strategy process into three phases: Discovery, Messaging, and Implementation.
Here’s how my brand strategy development process works.
Phase 1: Discovery
This phase is about auditing your existing brand, getting to know who you are, and doing research. In this phase, I’m focused on getting a clear understanding of your:
competitors
key differentiators
business goals
In the language of the Brand HOME framework, we’re focused on your brand’s Heart and Orientation here.
Discovery happens through a combination of client meetings and my own research. Ultimately, I’m trying to articulate and highlight the best of what already exists inside your brand, not to create something new. It’s about seeing what already is and combining it with the potential of what could be. At the same time, as an outside observer, I can offer a fresh perspective and distinct point of view. That combination of listening and fresh thinking is very powerful.
Questions to answer in this phase:
Who is your brand at its heart? Why is what you do so important? What are the stakes? Why does it matter?
Who do you serve?
How do you stand out from the crowd?
Phase 2: Messaging
Once we know the core themes, ideas, and vision that make up the foundation of the brand, it’s time to figure out how that’s expressed. (You can go here for more on the difference between foundation vs. expression.)
At this stage, I develop:
Brand personality (archetypes)
Turning the ideas and positioning elements from the Discovery phase into high-level messages written in your brand’s personality and voice (for example, vision / mission / values, elevator pitch, and key differentiators)
If the project also includes copywriting, I’ll create a separate brand voice and style guide that includes elements like:
product / service descriptions
voice and tone guidelines
key message matrix
founder bios
Questions to answer in this phase:
How does your brand show up in the world? How does it sound? How does it relate to your audience in a way that meets their needs and expectations?
What are the key messages your brand needs to share across all touchpoints?
Phase 3: Implementation
Okay — we have a clear sense of the brand’s heart, positioning, and message. The job now is to figure out how to apply that practically.
That means brand design and visual brand assets like your logo. But it also means setting priorities for your next steps beyond brand design. What is your roadmap for translating this wonderful strategy into results and growth for your business — especially when you need to make smart choices about how best to focus your resources as a small business owner?
Let’s break those two elements down a bit more.
Brand Design
I’m not a designer myself, so this is where we bring a brand designer in or give you what you need to DIY more effectively.
Our goal here is to connect the strategic dots from everything we’ve done so far with the brand’s overall visual direction. Then, we partner with a brand designer whose creativity and expertise can turn the strategy into a tangible design that can be applied to every part of the brand experience.
(I also have lots of clients who are still DIYing their designs. In that case, the goal here is to give you what you need to make smart, strategically informed design choices on your own so you don’t feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.)
This includes:
Brand impact and creative direction
Mood board and visual inspiration
Brand design (logo, colours, typography, and any other necessary design assets)
Questions to answer in this phase:
What visual impact does your brand need to have on your audience? How do we translate what we know about the brand’s heart, message and personality into how your brand looks and feels?
What considerations should a designer keep in mind while developing the brand’s visual identity?
Roadmap of next steps
As a small business owner, you must strategically decide how best to focus your resources. There are lots of things you could be doing.
At this stage, our job is to understand the best way to bring your vision to life and choose where you’ll focus in the short, medium, and long term.
This includes:
Identifying what you’ll prioritize
How and when you’ll get things done
How you’ll measure your success
Next steps for taking action
Questions to answer in this phase:
What are your brand’s business goals and priorities?
Knowing what we know now about your vision, positioning, and message:
What are the first things you need to address?
What marketing channels and tactics are the best options for getting you where you need to go?
What things will you say “no” or “not now” to in order to stay focused on getting the best results from what you have to invest?
What will you prioritize over the short, medium, and long term?
What projects, timelines, and resources will you need to get those things done?
To sum it all up…
Brand development has many moving parts and can quickly feel overwhelming or frustrating when you’re not getting the results you need. Building a brand strategy helps you develop focused messaging and priorities to get you where you need to go faster.
My brand strategy process has three phases: Discovery, Messaging, and Implementation.
Discovery is all about uncovering your brand’s heart and positioning so we know the core of who you are, how you serve your audience, and how you are different from everyone else in your space.
In the Messaging phase, we translate the core vision, ideas, and strategy that drives your brand and business into decisions about what your brand has to say (key messages) and how you say it (brand personality and voice).
In the implementation phase, we turn everything from Discovery and Messaging into a plan for bringing your brand to life. This has two parts. Brand design establishes your creative direction and visual brand identity. Roadmapping sets your priorities for the next steps in bringing your brand to life, connecting your business goals and brand vision to specific tactics and timelines for getting results.
Next steps
I hope this post has given you some inspiration and ideas for what’s involved in building out your brand strategy and the questions you should be asking yourself at every step along the way.
Want my help in bringing your brand strategy to life? I’d love to work with you! Head over here to learn more about the Elevated Brand Blueprint process, or send me a note with any questions or to set up a discovery call.
And don’t forget to bookmark or Pin this page as a resource for the future. I’ll be updating it with links to more articles as I write them, and updates will also go out via the newsletter. I’m excited to share more with you soon!
