How To Prepare To Work With A Brand Strategist & Designer
Congratulations! You’ve officially decided to hire a professional brand strategist and designer, and you’re over-the-moon excited about giving your brand a little facelift.
…But let’s be real, you’re also kinda terrified right?
Trust me when I say that’s completely normal.
Don’t get me wrong, working with a brand strategist and designer is FUN. And by the end of the project you’ll be absolutely thrilled about what you’ve accomplished together and what’s to come for the future of your business.
But it can also be really daunting. Creating a strategic brand takes a lot of deep, and sometimes difficult or uncomfortable work. That’s just the “nature of the game”, and I can promise you that it will be 100% worth it in the end.
Fortunately there are a handful of things you can do to prepare yourself and your business to start the strategic branding process. And even better, a lot of them are pretty dang easy!
Here at Specht & Co. we require the following of all of our clients before we officially kick off any branding strategy and design project:
1. Collect feedback from your current ideal clients
Client feedback is an absolute gold mine when it comes to brand strategy. Think about it, you’ve got past clients literally telling you in their own words what it was like to work with you.
A significant portion of brand strategy includes getting inside the head of your ideal client, so if you make sure to diligently collect feedback from your actual ideal clients ahead of a branding project, you’ll be able to easily answer a majority of the ideal client profile questions that most brand strategists will ask you.
Here are a few of our favorite questions to include in your feedback requests that directly translate to creating an effective brand strategy:
What were your pain points before working with me?
How has your life changed since working with me?
What would you say was the best/most memorable thing about working together?
What were you surprised about during our time working together?
One important thing to note here: We know that not every client you work with is going to be one that you’d like to work with again. For the sake of this exercise, make sure you’re specifically requesting feedback from your ideal clients only (aka the ones that you wish you had 100 more of).
2. Do a competitor audit
We are firm believers that there is enough work for everyone, and as such we don’t like to let clients obsess over their competition here at Specht & Co.
That said, taking stock of what other services like yours are available and making note of what sets you apart from them is a key piece in building a strategic brand.
During our strategic branding process we’ll ask you to identify 3-5 competitors in your space and then work together answer the following questions (along with several more):
What is their core offer?
What is their pricing structure?
What is their brand message?
Who is their target audience?
How effective is their online presence?
What are their clients saying about them?
If you’re able to do some of this work ahead of time, it will not only speed up the branding process, but it will also get your wheels turning about what makes you unique in your space. Spoiler alert: your unique value proposition, or as we like to call it, your special sauce, is one of the key pieces we build your brand around!
At the bare minimum, we love to see clients come to our brand strategy intensive with a list of competitors, their websites, and their social media handles so that we can work through answering the competitor audit questions together.
3. Take stock of your existing brand - what’s working and what isn’t working?
Good news! Chances are, if you’ve made the decision to hire a brand strategist and designer, then you’ve already done a version of this. And if you’re starting from scratch and don’t have an existing brand, then you get to skip this part altogether!
There are two questions that we are guaranteed to ask you at the start of a rebrand project:
What do you love about your existing brand?
What do you NOT love about your existing brand?
These seem pretty simple, and we tend to get a lot of answers like the following:
“I love my colors but I don’t love my logo”
“I love my website but I don’t love the photography”
“I love my logo but I never know what fonts to use”
These statements are all helpful. AND we’d love to see you dig a little deeper.
Before you start your brand strategy/design project, take a little bit of time (like at least 30-60 minutes) and really think about the following.
Is your brand an accurate reflection of not only your business now, but also where your business is going in the future?
Does your brand connect with your ideal client? Why or why not?
Is there anything that your brand is miscommunicating?
What struggles do you run into when actually trying to use your brand?
If you’re able to answer these questions clearly, it will allow us to pinpoint exactly what areas we need to focus on during your rebrand and ensure that you don’t run into the same pain points down the road with your updated brand.
4. Define your business vision and goals for the next 3-5 years
Who doesn’t love a little daydreaming?
As business owners, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the day-to-day of running our business that it often feels like there is no time to imagine what things could be like in the future.
But that’s exactly what I want you to do.
Take a couple of hours and go for a walk or cozy up at your favorite coffee shop. Put away your laptop, turn off your phone notifications, and really commit to thinking hard about where you’d like our business (and life) to be in 3-5 years from now.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are a few of my favorite journaling (or thinking) prompts for this exercise:
If money were no object, how would I love to spend my days?
If I could guarantee a steady stream of clients, what type of clients would I want to work with?
What impact do I want to make on my industry and the world?
What do I want clients to think/say/feel after working with my business?
If I was able to find perfect fit hires, what would my team look like?
When we create a brand here at Specht & Co., we’re creating a brand for your future. The more specific you can be about your goals and vision for your business, the better we will be able to help craft a strategy and design a brand that will get you to where you want to go (maybe even a little sooner than planned).
Interested in learning more about our branding process? Download our service guide for a complete breakdown of our packages, process, and pricing.
