What is a brand strategy?
Before you choose your colours, fonts or start designing your website, you need to know what you’re actually trying to communicate.
That’s where brand strategy comes in.
A brand strategy is the thinking behind your brand. It gives you clarity around who you are, who you want to attract, what makes you different and how you want your business to be remembered.
It’s not just a document full of nice-sounding words.
Done well, your brand strategy becomes a decision-making tool for everything you do, from your visual identity and website to your content, messaging and customer experience.
I’ve been reminded of this while working through my own Studio Lago Design brand reset. I’ve spent much more time revisiting my foundations than I initially expected, and it’s made the visual side of the refresh considerably easier.
Because when you know what you’re trying to say, it’s much easier to decide how it should look.
Why does your business need a brand strategy?
1. It gives your brand direction
Without a clear strategy, it’s very easy to make branding decisions based on what you personally like.
You choose a font because it’s pretty. A colour because it’s trending. A website layout because you’ve seen another business use it.
Before long, you can end up with a collection of things that look good individually but don’t necessarily create a coherent brand.
Strategy gives those decisions somewhere to come from.
2. It helps you stand out for the right reasons
Your competitors might offer similar services, but your business isn’t identical to theirs.
Your experience, perspective, personality, values and way of doing things are different.
A good brand strategy helps you uncover those differences and turn them into something meaningful.
That’s a big part of my Anti-Beige philosophy. I’m not interested in making brands different just for the sake of being different. I’m interested in finding the things that already make a business distinctive and giving them more visibility.
3. It makes your marketing easier
This is something I’ve experienced first-hand during my own brand reset.
I’ve been creating content much more intuitively because I have a clearer understanding of what Studio Lago Design stands for, what I want to talk about and what I want to be known for.
Instead of constantly thinking, What should I post?, I’m noticing ideas everywhere. That’s what happens when you have strong foundations.
Your strategy gives you content territory to explore.
How to Create a Brand Strategy
You don’t need a complicated 50-page document to get started. I’d begin with these key foundations.
1. Define your purpose
Ask yourself:
Why does this business exist beyond making money?
What do you want to change, improve or contribute?
Your purpose becomes the underlying reason behind the brand.
2. Get clear on your positioning
What do you actually do?
Who do you do it for?
What makes your approach different?
Your positioning should make it easier for someone to understand why they should choose you rather than someone else.
3. Understand your ideal client
Don’t stop at demographics. Think about what your ideal client values, what they’re struggling with, what they’re trying to achieve and what makes them decide to invest.
The better you understand them, the more relevant your brand becomes.
4. Identify the problem and transformation
What is your client experiencing before they work with you? And what changes afterwards?
This helps you communicate the value of your work, rather than simply listing what you do.
For example, I don’t just design brands. I help businesses move from feeling unclear, inconsistent or forgettable to having a brand that feels confident, distinctive and recognisable.
5. Define your brand values
Choose the principles that genuinely influence how you work. For Studio Lago Design, I’ve refined mine to:
Curiosity. Clarity. Flavour.
These aren’t just words I’ve chosen because they sound nice together.
They give me a filter for how I approach strategy, creativity, communication and the client experience.
6. Define your brand personality
If your brand walked into a room, how would it behave? Would it be confident? Warm? Playful? Thoughtful? Straight-talking? Quirky? Sophisticated?
Your personality helps make your brand feel human and creates consistency in how you communicate.
7. Define your brand promise
What can people consistently expect from you?
Your promise doesn’t need to be complicated.
It simply needs to communicate the experience or transformation you’re committed to delivering.
8. Create your creative direction
Now you can start thinking visually.
Your strategy should inform your creative direction, which then informs your visual identity.
Think about:
- Typography
- Colour
- Photography
- Illustration
- Graphic elements
- Imagery
- Texture
- Layout
- Overall visual feeling
This is the stage I’m currently at with my own Studio Lago Design refresh.
For my own brand, I’ve been asking how I can make my values of Curiosity, Clarity and Flavour visible rather than simply writing them down.
My love of travel is finding its way into stamps, postcards and maps. My love of collage is helping me explore layers and discovery. My background in cake is influencing how I think about ingredients, detail, craft and experience.
The visual identity is becoming a translation of the strategy. And that’s exactly what it should be.
Your brand strategy is your creative compass
The biggest mistake is thinking that brand strategy is something you complete before getting to the fun bit. It’s actually what makes the fun bit better.
When you know what your brand stands for, who you’re speaking to and what makes you different, you have a much stronger foundation for making creative decisions.
You don’t have to second-guess every font, colour or Instagram post. You have a filter and a direction, and you have a brand that feels like it belongs to your business, rather than something you’ve borrowed from everyone else.
That’s why I’m spending so much time on the foundations of the Studio Lago Design refresh.
I’m itching to get stuck into the visuals, but I know that the clearer the thinking underneath them, the stronger the final brand will be.
Good branding starts with clarity. Great branding knows what to do with it.
Ready to uncover your own brand foundations?
If your brand feels a bit unclear, inconsistent or, dare I say it, beige, my free Anti-Beige Brand Guide will help you start uncovering what makes your business different and create the foundations for a brand people actually remember.
