What does brand strategy include for a growing business?

Brand strategy sets out which customers a business will focus on, why they should choose it and what it can credibly promise. It should guide both communication and the customer experience. For a growing business, the written strategy should help answer practical questions: what to offer, what to say and which opportunities to pursue or decline.

I judge the value of this work by the decisions it resolves. A document can contain an impressive amount of research and still leave the founder unable to brief a designer, explain a priority or choose between two audiences. The scope should therefore start with the business decision and the evidence required to make it responsibly.

Start with the business decision

A brand strategy needs a clear account of what the business is trying to change. It might be entering a different market, attracting more suitable enquiries, reducing dependence on its founder or bringing several services into a coherent offer. These situations require different depths of analysis.

Describe the change in a way you can review later. For example, a fictional training business might want employers to buy programmes for whole teams. That raises questions about who buys, how employers approve spending and whether the business can deliver. Making the brand look more established would address only part of the problem.

The Design Council's Double Diamond places understanding and defining the problem before developing and delivering solutions. I apply that distinction here as a discipline for scoping. It does not prescribe a particular brand-strategy package or prove that a redesign is necessary.

Understand the customer and their other options

Identify the customers you intend to serve in enough detail to guide a decision. Company size or age alone may not explain why someone buys. Look at the problem that prompts them to seek help, the result they want and the concerns that delay their decision. Find out who else influences the purchase.

Evidence might come from customer interviews, enquiry records, lost proposals, reviews and relevant market information. State where each insight came from and how confidently it can be applied. Five conversations can reveal useful language and questions; they cannot establish the percentage of an entire market that holds a view.

Next, establish what the customer might choose instead. That could be another supplier, their own team, software or keeping things as they are. Brand positioning explains why your offer deserves consideration against those options. Comparing competitors’ colours and taglines will not answer that question on its own.

Explain why customers should choose you

Positioning explains how the business should be understood compared with the alternatives. The value proposition explains the benefit of choosing the offer. Evidence, such as a relevant example of completed work, supports those promises. These parts should agree with each other and with what the business can actually deliver.

For the training example, a small number of repeatable, sector-specific programmes might support a position based on practical relevance and consistent delivery. Claiming to cover every training need would point towards a different operating model. Strategy should expose that trade-off before the website presents both promises.

Business.gov.uk's guidance on creating a business brand connects brand development with the business's purpose, values, customer understanding and the problems it solves. My additional recommendation is to translate those foundations into choices with consequences, rather than leave them as broad statements of aspiration.

Make the strategy usable by other people

The written strategy should help other people put the decisions into practice. It may explain the main messages, how the business should sound and how its services fit together. It can also identify improvements to the customer experience and which actions should come first. The exact contents depend on the work agreed.

Ask whether the document answers these practical questions:

• Which audience and buying situation should the next brief prioritise?
• Which claims may the business make, and what evidence supports them?
• What should remain consistent across the website, proposals and client experience?
• Who owns implementation, and what must happen before further investment?

Visual identity and campaign production need their own deliverables, responsibilities and budgets. At Brand Strategy UK, the consultancy provides strategic direction; design, website production and day-to-day execution sit with the client's chosen specialists. The strategic brief should give those specialists a clear basis for their work.

Choose the amount of work the decision needs

You may need a focused review when the underlying position is sound and one question remains unresolved. A broader engagement becomes more appropriate when audience, offer, competitive position and message are all uncertain or changing together. The size of the document should follow the complexity of the decision.

Before commissioning work, ask what evidence will be examined, what decisions will be made, what the written deliverables contain and what is outside scope. Agree how uncertainties will be recorded and how recommendations will be prioritised. These questions make proposals easier to compare without assuming every consultancy uses the same service labels.

To explore a connected set of brand decisions, review Brand Strategy. For an uncertain starting point, describe the business change and the decision you need to make when you submit a brief. That gives us a stronger basis for recommending the appropriate depth of work.

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