How to Build a Brand Strategy From Scratch: Step by Step

A brand strategy is a set of written decisions that define who your brand speaks to, what promise it makes, what proof backs that promise and what tone it uses. When you build one from scratch, the order is usually: business goal, target audience, competitive set, positioning, values and brand voice, and only then the name and visual identity. The logo comes at the end of that sequence, not the start, because a logo that does not know what it is meant to say is just decoration.

What is a brand strategy, and what isn't it?

A brand strategy is not a slogan, a logo or a campaign plan. Those are outputs of the strategy. The strategy is the shared reference your team and your agencies use when producing those outputs: who are we talking to, what are we promising, why do they find it credible, and what kind of language do we use?

A good strategy document does not have to be long. For most small and mid-sized businesses, two to five pages are enough. What matters is that every sentence corresponds to a decision, and that a new hire who reads it can describe the brand the same way.

Where do you start when building a brand?

The first question is a business question, not a marketing one: what should this brand achieve over the next two or three years? Entering a new market, moving up a price tier, building a dealer network or selling to corporate customers each call for very different brand decisions. If a manufacturer that wants to raise its prices builds its brand on an affordability message, the strategy becomes an obstacle to the business goal.

At this stage, settle three answers:

• Which category are you competing in, and in which category do customers look for you?
• What price level are you aiming for: economy, mid-range or premium?
• Which channel do you expect growth from: direct sales, e-commerce, dealers or marketplaces?

How should you define your target audience?

Demographic descriptions like "women aged 25 to 45 living in a big city" are not enough to make decisions on. What you really need to know is in what situation, and to solve what problem, the customer looks for you, and what worries them when they decide.

The cheapest way to find out is to talk to people directly. Hold half-hour conversations with a few recent customers and a few people who got a quote but did not choose you. Ask:

• How were you trying to solve the problem before you contacted us?
• Who else did you consider when deciding?
• What made you hesitate the most?
• How would you describe us to a friend in one sentence?

The objections your sales team hears most, the questions that reach customer service and the search queries that bring people to your site in Search Console are all part of the same picture. Turn this into one or two customer profiles, each stating the need, the trigger moment and the decision criteria.

Who is in your competitive set?

Your competitive set is not the companies you consider competitors; it is the options customers compare you with. The list can be surprising: an accounting software product's competitor may not be another software product, but a spreadsheet or the customer's own accountant. "Doing nothing" is often a strong competitor too.

Look at competitors' websites, the language they use on social media and their customer reviews, and write a one-sentence summary of each: who are they talking to, what do they promise, in what tone? The points everyone claims (fast delivery, quality service, customer satisfaction) will not set you apart. The ground they leave empty, which customers care about, is a candidate for your positioning.

How do you write a positioning statement?

Positioning is the place your brand occupies in the target audience's mind. The common template shared by Harvard Business School Online has four parts: target market, competitive set, unique value proposition and reasons to believe. It can be written like this:

For [target audience], we are the only brand among [competitive set] that offers [unique value], because [proof].

A hypothetical example: "For working parents on Istanbul's Asian side, we are the only study center in the area that stays open until 8 pm and sends parents a written end-of-day report every day, because we keep the number of students per teacher limited."

This sentence is not used word for word in advertising; it is an internal compass. Apply two tests. If the sentence is still true when you put a competitor's name in it, it is not distinctive enough. If you cannot fill in the proof, the promise is not yet defensible.

How do you clarify mission, values and brand promise?

The mission explains why the brand exists and for whom it creates value, not what the product is. The brand promise is what customers have a right to expect at every touchpoint: a measurable promise such as "your quote within 24 hours" is stronger than a generic one such as "the best service."

Limit your values to three to five and tie each to a behavior. Writing "transparency" is easy; saying "we publish our price list on the site and state what is out of scope in every quote" is a decision. Do not write a value you cannot live up to; customers see the gap at the first contact.

How do you set brand personality and voice?

The same promise can be told in different tones. To define the brand's voice, choose a few opposing pairs and note where you stand on each: formal or friendly, technical or plain, bold or calm? Then prepare a short "we say / we don't say" list. For example: we address customers politely, we don't use slang, we don't name competitors, we don't claim superiority without numbers.

This list keeps everyone who writes for the brand, from the social media manager to the account manager, speaking with the same voice. We go deeper into this in our guide to brand voice and tone.

When do the name, trademark and visual identity come in?

Once the strategy is clear, move on to the name and visual identity. When choosing a name, do not skip three checks: whether similar marks exist in the trademark register (in Turkey, the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office), whether the domain and social media handles are available, and whether people can spell the name correctly when they hear it on the phone. By that office's definition, a trademark can consist of any kind of sign, such as words, figures, colors, letters, numbers, sounds and the shape of packaging, that distinguishes one business's goods and services from others. Planning the application with a trademark attorney reduces the risk of having to rename later. Our brand naming guide covers this step in detail.

Visual identity (logo, colors, typefaces, photographic style) makes the personality in the strategy visible. In our corporate identity projects we run this stage on the basis of the strategy document; when design decisions are judged by "does it fit the positioning?" rather than "do I like it?", the process gets shorter too.

What should the strategy document include?

• Business goal and category
• One or two customer profiles (need, trigger moment, decision criteria)
• The competitive set, with a one-sentence summary of each
• The positioning statement and its proof
• Mission, brand promise and values tied to behaviors
• Brand voice: the pairs that describe the tone and the "we say / we don't say" list
• How you will measure success

How do you know the strategy is working?

The effect of brand work shows slowly, but it can be measured. Track the trend of searches for your brand name in Search Console, direct visits to your site and how customers describe you in sales conversations. If customers start describing you in words close to your positioning statement, the strategy is taking hold.

Review the strategy once a year, or at a major decision such as entering a new market or changing your price level. If you would like an outside view of where your brand stands today, get in touch.