Branding
How to Build a Brand Strategy (Step by Step)
Most brand strategy documents fail the only test that matters: hand it to someone new and ask them to make a decision with it. If it cannot settle an argument about which customer to decline, which feature to lead with, or which enquiry to walk away from, it is a mood board with headings. The process below is organised around producing decisions, not slides.
Step 1: Interview customers before you write anything
Start with evidence you do not already have. Interview eight to twelve recent customers, including at least two who chose a competitor and at least one who churned. Ask what they were trying to solve, what they compared you against, and what nearly stopped them buying. Record the words they use for your category, because those are the words that go into your copy later.
The artifact is a verbatim quote file, organised by theme. The failure mode is asking customers what they want, which produces polite nonsense. Ask what they did and what it cost them instead.
Step 2: Write down who you are not for
Audience definitions are easy to write and useless when they only describe inclusion. Write the exclusion instead: the enquiry types you will decline, the price floor below which you say no, the sector you will not serve. This is the part that later resolves real arguments, and it is the part most strategy documents omit because it is uncomfortable to commit to.
Step 3: Map the competitive language, not the competitors
Open the homepages of your six closest competitors and paste the headline of each into one document. If they are interchangeable, and they usually are, the sameness is the opportunity. You are looking for the claim everyone is making, so you can stop making it, and the true claim nobody is making, so you can take it.
Step 4: Write positioning as one sentence
Ries and Trout introduced the idea in a three-part Advertising Age series in 1972 and expanded it in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind in 1981. Their central claim is worth keeping in view while you write: the job is not to invent something new in the customer’s head but to work with what is already there. A useful format is: for [audience] who [need], [brand] is the [category] that [difference], because [reason to believe].
The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.
Test the sentence by inverting the differentiator. If no sane competitor would claim the opposite, the differentiator is not a position, it is table stakes. "Committed to quality" fails this test instantly. "Only takes clients with more than 200 staff" passes, because plenty of competitors would happily claim the reverse.
Step 5: Define personality with limits
Pick three traits and give each an explicit boundary: friendly but not chummy, expert but not condescending, direct but not blunt. The boundary half is what stops a voice drifting into caricature over eighteen months of content, and it is what makes the trait usable by a freelancer who has never met you.
Step 6: Ship a two-page document, not a deck
| Step | Artifact | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| Customer interviews | Verbatim quote file grouped by theme | 8 to 12 interviews including two lost deals and one churn |
| Audience definition | Inclusion and exclusion list | It names at least three things you will decline |
| Competitive scan | Six competitor headlines in one document | You can name the claim everyone makes and the one nobody makes |
| Positioning | One sentence | A competitor could plausibly claim the opposite |
| Personality | Three traits, each with a “but not” limit | A freelancer could apply it without a briefing call |
| Documentation | Two pages, shared, dated | Someone outside marketing used it to settle a decision |
Key takeaways
- ✓A brand strategy is only real if it can settle an argument about which customer to decline.
- ✓Interview 8 to 12 customers including lost deals and churn, and keep verbatim language for later copy.
- ✓Define the audience by exclusion. Inclusion-only definitions never resolve anything.
- ✓Test the positioning sentence by inverting it. If no competitor would claim the opposite, it is table stakes.
- ✓Positioning as Ries and Trout framed it works with associations already in the customer’s head rather than inventing new ones.
- ✓Two dated pages that get used beat a thirty-slide deck that gets archived.
Next in the series
Sources
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout, McGraw-Hill (1981)
- Trout & Ries, including the 1972 Advertising Age series “The Positioning Era Cometh”, Wikipedia
Mara Whitfield
Brand Strategy Lead
Mara Whitfield leads brand strategy at ThisCom, helping small and medium businesses build distinctive brands and consistent digital presences that earn trust and stand out.
All articles by Mara Whitfield →Frequently asked questions
What is a brand strategy?+
A written set of decisions about who you serve, who you decline, what category you compete in, how you differ, and how you sound. The test of whether you have one is functional rather than formal: if someone in the business can use it to settle a disagreement without asking you, it exists. If not, you have a description rather than a strategy.
How do I know if my positioning statement is any good?+
Invert the differentiator and see whether a competitor could plausibly claim the opposite. "Committed to quality" fails, because no one claims to be committed to poor quality, so the phrase carries no information. "We only work with teams over 200 people" passes, because plenty of firms would advertise the reverse. Anything that survives inversion is a real position.
How many customers should I interview?+
Eight to twelve is enough for a small business, provided the sample includes at least two prospects who chose a competitor and one customer who left. Those three are where the useful information sits, because happy customers tend to reconstruct their reasoning flatteringly. Keep verbatim quotes, since the language customers use for your category is what your copy should use.
Can a small business do this without an agency?+
Yes, and the interviews are usually better done by the owner, because customers say things to a founder that they will not say to a researcher. What an outside party genuinely adds is willingness to force the exclusion decision, which is where most in-house attempts stall. Set a review date six months out and check the strategy still describes the revenue you actually booked.
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