Every business brand you love started with strategy. Every business brand you love started with strategy.
That cohesive vibe you pick up on? The way their Instagram feels like an extension of their website, which feels like walking into their actual office or talking to them on the phone? That’s brand strategy doing its job.
Here’s the thing about starting with brand strategy before you jump into design: it’s the difference between building a business that works for you versus building one you have to constantly perform for.
I’ve spent the last 10 years watching people build businesses and built a few myself. The ones who slow down at the beginning to get clear on their strategy end up with businesses that feel like home. I’ve learned from starting my own projects too: skip straight to “make it look pretty” and the design takes longer and we end up going back and doing these steps anyway in order to pass some business hurdle.
what brand strategy actually is
Think of brand strategy as creating the living room of your business’s personality. Not some sterile showroom designed to impress everyone. A real living room, the kind where the right people walk in, settle onto the couch, and think oh, I could stay here awhile.
When I develop brand strategy with clients, I’m creating a design concept that complements who they already are. Not who they think they should be to succeed. Not some polished version that looks professional but feels foreign. The actual them, with all their expertise, worldview, values, and the specific way they approach their work.
This is the work that makes everything else click. When you have strategic clarity first, your brand design isn’t just making things look good, it’s expressing something real. Your website isn’t just presenting information, it’s extending an invitation to exactly the right people.
Brand strategy is the how behind building a cohesive brand. It’s what creates a visual language that makes sense, a culture that feels authentic, and representation that attracts the people you’re meant to serve.
why starting here changes everything
When you begin with brand strategy instead of jumping straight into design, you’re making a different kind of investment. You’re investing in alignment.
You’re taking time to understand what you’re actually building and who it’s for. You’re getting clear on your spot in the market, your unique approach, what makes you irreplaceable. You’re figuring out how to work your business to you (your energy, your interests, your values) instead of twisting yourself to fit some template of what a business “should” look like.
This slower, more intentional beginning means a few things:
Your brand grows with you instead of boxing you in. It’s built on who you actually are, not who you thought you needed to be.
Your marketing feels natural. You’re not trying to sound like someone else or forcing yourself into frameworks that don’t fit. You’re just clearly saying what’s already true.
The right clients find you. Not just any clients. The ones where the work lights you up, where your particular skills and approach create something special.
Everything holds together without effort. It’s all flowing from the same aligned source, not cobbled together from different “best practices” that don’t quite fit.
what goes into brand strategy
Here’s what we dig into when building your strategic foundation:
Market Research: Know the Landscape
Before you can stand out, you need to know what you’re standing out from. What’s happening in your industry? What are the trends? What’s everyone else doing?
This isn’t about copying. It’s about understanding the territory so you can find your own plot of land. You’re looking for the gaps, the opportunities, the places where what you offer could be the obvious choice for someone.
Woo woo: Pay attention to what makes you roll your eyes when you’re looking at competitors. That eye-roll is information. It’s showing you what feels fake to you, which helps you figure out what real looks like in your work.
Ideal Client Research: Really Know Your People
Who are you actually set up to serve really well? Not “anyone who needs what I offer.” The specific people where your background, personality, and approach create something special.
What matters to them? What are they building toward? How do they make decisions? What would make them feel like they’ve found exactly the right person?
(We’ll go deep on ideal client avatars in the next post.)
Competitor Research: Find Your Spot
Who else does what you do? How do they talk about it? What’s their approach? And more importantly, what’s the space they’re not filling?
This isn’t about trash-talking the competition or trying to be “better.” It’s about finding your unique spot in the ecosystem. Where do you fit that no one else quite does?
Woo woo: If you find yourself thinking “no one in my field does it the way I want to do it,” that’s not a problem. That’s your edge. Your different approach is often your strongest asset.
Know Yourself: The Foundation Under the Foundation
What do you actually want to offer? What lights you up? What’s your philosophy or approach that makes your work yours?
This is about bringing your full self to your business. Your side interests, your random knowledge, the things you think about that don’t seem “professional.” Those are often what make you irreplaceable.
Woo woo: The business you build should fit who you already are, not require you to become someone else. Alignment isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the strategy. When you’re fully yourself in your work, you become magnetic to the right people. Your business should look like yours!
Your Brand Statement: Where It All Comes Together
This is where all that work comes together into one clear statement: why your business matters, what you’re offering, and your approach.
Here’s mine for Highly Anticipated (still evolving): Brand strategy and web design for service-based entrepreneurs building businesses that feel like themselves.
Your brand statement should be clear enough that someone reads it and knows right away whether you’re for them. That’s not shutting people out. That’s clarity.
Woo woo: Your brand statement is like a tuning fork. It vibrates at a specific frequency, and the right people will feel it. Trust that being specific attracts rather than limits.
Visual Concept
Here’s where brand strategy goes beyond typical business planning: we translate all that strategic work into a visual concept.
After we’ve clarified your market position, ideal clients, and brand statement, I create two things:
A mood board that captures the visual feel of your brand. Not your final colors or logo yet, just the aesthetic direction that fits who you are and who you’re serving. Think textures, imagery style, the overall atmosphere.
An AI-generated living room showing what your brand would look like if it was an actual space. This is where the “living room of your business personality” concept becomes real. You can see the room where your ideal clients would want to settle in and stay.
These aren’t just pretty pictures. They’re strategic tools that help you feel whether we’ve gotten it right. They bridge the gap between abstract positioning and concrete visual expression.
When we move into the branding phase (logos, colors, typography), we’re not starting from scratch. We’re bringing to life what we’ve already envisioned together.
try it yourself: design your brand’s living room
One of the challenges of designing for an online business is that it doesn’t have a physical space to pull information from. But here’s what I love: when I’m on Zoom calls with clients, I pay attention to what’s behind them. That vintage poster on their wall. The specific type of plants they keep. The way they’ve organized their desk. Those details tell me so much about their aesthetic and what feels like home to them.
You can use this same thinking to create a visual concept for your brand.
Here’s how to write a prompt for an AI-generated living room that reflects your brand:
Think about:
What colors feel right for your brand?
What’s the lighting and atmosphere? (Bright and airy? Moody and intimate? Warm and cozy?)
What kind of furniture and objects would be there?
What textures and materials show up?
What would make your ideal clients feel at home in this space?
The prompt I wrote for Highly Anticipated:
“Office of a brand and web design agency. Accents of terra cotta orange and a light sage green and highlighter yellow. Natural lit work loft with window light, wood floors, and lots of potted plants. Work desks with computers and bulletin boards of swatches and images. A cute coffee area with filtered water and clay mugs, and a seating area with pillows, blankets and notepads.”
And this is what I got:
See how specific the prompt was? It’s not just “a nice office.” It has the exact colors, the specific vibe (natural light, loft feel), the objects that matter (potted plants, clay mugs, bulletin boards), and the functional areas that reflect how I work (creative workspace + cozy thinking space).
And the AI delivered. The terra cotta planters, the sage green accents, those inspiration boards full of color swatches, the inviting seating area where clients could curl up and think, the coffee station with clay mugs. Even the pops of highlighter yellow on the bulletin boards.
This is the living room of Highly Anticipated’s personality.
Your turn:
Take 10 minutes and write a prompt for your brand’s living room. Be specific. Include:
Colors (not just “blue” but “dusty blue” or “navy”)
Lighting and atmosphere
Furniture style
Objects and details
Textures and materials
The feeling you want to create
Then use an AI image generator (like Midjourney, DALL-E, Adobe Firefly, or the one built into Claude) to create it.
What you’ll discover: the process of writing the prompt is almost more valuable than the image itself. It forces you to get specific about your visual direction in a way that “I like clean and modern” never will.
And when you see the image? You’ll know immediately if it feels right or if something needs adjusting. That’s the strategic value of visualizing your brand before you start designing it.
You might find yourself saying “yes, but the lighting should be warmer” or “that’s it, but I need more texture” or “perfect, this is exactly the vibe.” That feedback is gold. It’s telling you what your brand actually needs to express.
what this looks like in real life
Money coaching is a crowded field. Thousands of people helping clients with their finances. So how do you stand out?
My client Mikelann Valterra (mikelannvalterra.com) positioned herself at the intersection of financial coaching and the spiritual. She works with women experiencing “the money fog,” that anxious overwhelm that comes from financial vagueness. Her brand is clear: money coaching for women who want transformation through self-awareness, who value beauty and quality of life, who are looking for something deeper than budgeting spreadsheets.
That strategic clarity started before any design work. And once we had the strategy, the visual direction became obvious. Mikelann’s life and passion for tango, her artistic sensibility, her love of color and beauty needed to show up in her brand. The design strategy brought that forward: colorful, artsy, and bold, while maintaining the structure and elegance that reflected her professional expertise. The result is a brand that feels vibrant and alive, just like she is, while still communicating the serious financial transformation she guides clients through.
The strategy made the design work, not the other way around.
why alignment is the strategy
Here’s what I believe about brand strategy: alignment itself is the strategy.
I think business owners should lean into their interests, make business choices based on real curiosity and hunches, and let their complexity show. Not despite professionalism, but as the foundation of it.
Why does this work now, when conventional wisdom says to simplify and streamline?
Two reasons.
AI can copy technique but not real personality. Anyone can learn the mechanics of your service. What they can’t copy is the specific way you think, the experiences that shaped your approach, the particular lens through which you see your work.
People are hungry for something real. We’ve all gotten really good at spotting fake authenticity. When someone is genuinely showing up as themselves (interests, quirks, specific point of view included) people feel it. It cuts through the noise.
When you build your brand strategy around real alignment instead of what you think you “should” do, you create something that can’t be copied. You become the only person who does what you do, the way you do it, for the people you serve.
And that alignment makes running your business feel completely different. You’re not performing. You’re not switching between “business you” and “real you.” You’ve built something that works to you, your energy, your values, your life.
you can DIY brand strategy (but don’t skip it)
Here’s what I see happen: you know your business needs to look polished. You can spot when other brands have that cohesive quality, that visual language that just works. You want that for yourself.
So you start trying to piece it together. You pick colors you like. You find a template. You write some copy. But something feels off. The pieces don’t quite fit. Your website feels disconnected from your presence. Your messaging sounds generic or like you’re trying too hard to sound “professional.”
That’s not because you can’t do it. It’s because you skipped the strategic foundation.
You absolutely can do brand strategy yourself. You can work through the market research, get clear on your ideal clients, find your unique positioning, and develop your visual concept. The living room exercise I just walked you through? That’s brand strategy work you can do right now.
But here’s the thing: don’t skip it.
Brand strategy is the how behind building something authentic to you. It’s what creates the visual language, the culture, the values, the representation that makes everything hold together. Without it, you’re decorating before you’ve built the house.
Whether you work with someone like me or do it yourself, the strategic work has to happen. It’s the difference between a brand that feels like you and one that feels like a collection of pretty things that don’t quite fit together.
The choice isn’t “DIY or hire someone.” The choice is “skip brand strategy and struggle” or “do the strategic work and build something real.”
the invitation
This is why I always start with brand strategy when working with clients on brand and web design.
Not because it’s what you’re “supposed” to do. But because taking time to get strategically clear (to understand your market, know your ideal clients, find your spot, and say who you are and what you’re offering) changes everything that comes after.
Your brand design becomes real expression instead of decoration.
Your website talks with clarity instead of just looking pretty.
Your marketing feels natural because you’re speaking from alignment.
Everything holds together because it’s all coming from the same intentional foundation.
You end up with a business that feels like home. Like that living room where your people can settle in and stay. Where you can be fully yourself and do your best work.
That’s what brand strategy creates. And that’s why it’s worth slowing down to get it right.
Whether you do it yourself or work with me, don’t skip this step. Your business deserves a real foundation.
what’s next
In the next post in this series, we’ll go deep on ideal client avatars. How to really understand who you’re serving without falling into pain-point marketing or generic demographic descriptions.
Because once you have strategic clarity about your brand, the next step is getting crystal clear about who you’re inviting into that living room you’ve created.