Before You Hire a Brand Strategist, Get Clear on These 5 Things

I’ve had more than one person come to me and say they need branding when what they really mean is that they want more followers on Instagram and have no idea where to start. Usually, they’ve seen enough polished accounts to have some idea of what they think branding should look like: beautiful graphics, engaging videos, a cohesive feed, and maybe a few trendy reels.

Those things can certainly be part of a brand’s presence, but they aren’t brand strategy.

A brand strategist helps determine what you should say, show, and communicate wherever your brand appears, from social media and your website to printed collateral. More importantly, those decisions should be authentic to who you are and support what you’re actually trying to accomplish in your business.

That process requires something from the client, too.

I don’t expect someone to begin a brand strategy project with every detail figured out. Part of my job is asking questions, noticing connections, helping refine ideas, and serving as a sounding board when someone is deciding between a few possible directions. What I don’t want to do is invent the business or the person behind it. A strategist can help you articulate what’s already on your mind and in your heart, but there has to be something there for us to work with.

Before you invest in professional brand strategy, there are five areas where I believe you should have at least some clarity.

1. You Need to Know What You Do

This sounds obvious, but it’s one of the places where branding projects can become unnecessarily complicated. Before you hire a brand strategist, you should know what your business actually does. You don't necessarily need perfectly named packages or polished descriptions for every offer, but the underlying business needs to exist.

I’m a brand strategist, not a business coach. If you offer several services and need help determining how to communicate or prioritize them within your brand, we can work through that together. If you don't know what services you want to offer in the first place, that's a different kind of work.

Branding is ultimately about communicating something that already exists. A strategist can refine it, position it, organize it, and make it easier for your audience to understand, but we need something to communicate first.

2. You Need a General Idea of Who You Serve

I give clients more room here because identifying and refining your brand audience is part of the strategy process. You don't need to arrive with an overly detailed customer persona or know every demographic and behavioral characteristic of your ideal client. You should, however, have some sense of who benefits from what you do.

Maybe you know you work with coaches but haven't determined which types of coaches are the best fit for your services. Maybe you serve women entrepreneurs but need help identifying which stage of business makes someone most likely to benefit from your offer. Those are questions a brand strategist can help you explore.

Your audience influences almost every decision that follows, including your brand messaging, the platforms you prioritize, your visual identity, and your content strategy. You don't have to know everything about your audience before hiring a strategist, but you do need to know that your work is intended to serve someone.

3. You Need to Understand the Transformation You Provide

This is the area where I have much less flexibility. You need to know what changes for someone because of your work.

I can help you find the language for that transformation. I can ask questions that uncover details you hadn't considered important or take something you explain in several paragraphs and help turn it into one clear message. What I can't do is invent the value of your work for you.

If you're a coach, what changes for someone after working with you? If you're a consultant, what becomes easier, clearer, more profitable, or more effective because someone hired you? If you sell a product, what experience or benefit does that product provide?

The transformation doesn't need to be life-changing. Sometimes you're simply making something more convenient, enjoyable, beautiful, organized, or effective. What matters is that you understand why someone would choose to pay you.

Without that understanding, there isn't enough of a foundation for meaningful brand strategy. We'd be trying to communicate a promise that hasn't been defined yet.

4. You Need to Have Thought About What You Stand For

You don't need to walk into a branding project with five perfectly worded brand values. Sometimes the formal language comes later. What matters is that you've done the mental and emotional work behind them.

You should have some understanding of what matters to you, why you're doing this work, what you're unwilling to compromise on, and how you want people to experience your business. Those thoughts don't have to be packaged neatly. They simply need to be yours.

This is also an area where I would resist the temptation to immediately ask AI for an answer. AI can help you organize your thoughts, find language, or consider questions you hadn't thought to ask yourself. It can't determine what you genuinely value.

A good strategist will often recognize those values through conversation. We notice the phrases you repeat, what excites you, what frustrates you, and the ideas you instinctively defend. Our job is to help make those pieces coherent, not manufacture them for you.

5. You Need to Know What You're Trying to Build

When someone tells me they need "branding," one of my next questions is usually some version of: Where?

Are you trying to build a stronger social media presence? Do you need a website that better reflects your business? Are you creating business cards, brochures, or other collateral? Are you preparing for a launch, trying to establish yourself as a thought leader, or attempting to make an existing business finally feel cohesive?

You don't necessarily need to know exactly which deliverables you need. A professional can help determine that. You do need to know what you're trying to accomplish because the goal shapes the strategy.

This is where people can become overly focused on logos and social media. They're tangible and exciting, so they're easy to point to when something about a brand doesn't feel right. Sometimes, though, the real issue is unclear website messaging, an audience that isn't connecting with your content, or collateral that no longer represents the business you've become.

Good brand strategy begins with the goal and determines the right tools from there, rather than starting with the tool and hoping it solves the problem.

A Brand Strategist Shouldn't Have to Tell You Who to Be

I once spoke with a prospective client who wanted to become an influencer and secure sponsorship deals. There was nothing wrong with that goal, but as I started asking the questions I would need answered to develop a strategy, it became clear that there wasn't much underneath it yet. She didn't know what kinds of companies she wanted to partner with, what content had worked for her in the past, what made her perspective different, or what she wanted to offer an audience.

More importantly, she wanted me to provide those answers.

At that point, we weren't talking about brand strategy anymore. We were asking the strategist to determine the identity, purpose, goals, and business model and then build a brand around those invented answers. That's not a process I take on because I don't tell clients who they should be. I want to help them communicate who they already are more clearly and strategically.

The difference is obvious when I work with someone who has done that foundational thinking. My husband is a great example. He knows who he is as a coach, what he believes, what he teaches, who he's trying to reach, and what he ultimately wants to build. He doesn't always know how those ideas should translate into a website, social media strategy, or broader personal brand, and that's where my expertise comes in.

Those projects tend to move smoothly because both people are bringing something valuable to the process. The client brings the substance. I bring the strategy, communications expertise, and creative perspective that help turn that substance into something other people can understand and connect with.

How Do You Know When You're Ready?

You don't have to hire a brand strategist just because you're serious about your brand. Someone who has been doing their work for a while, is intentionally starting over with the benefit of experience, or is comfortable working through strategic exercises may be perfectly capable of establishing much of their brand foundation independently.

I consider that empowerment, not a lost client.

Professional strategy becomes especially valuable when you understand the basics but struggle to apply them, don't have the time or capacity to execute well, want an expert perspective, or are preparing for a significant next step in your business. At that point, you're not asking someone else to figure out who you are. You're hiring them to help you communicate and execute it better.

Doing the foundational work first also protects your investment. Brand strategy, website design, and creative execution can cost thousands of dollars. Entering that process with clarity keeps you from paying a professional to spend weeks trying to determine basic information about your business, and it reduces the likelihood that you'll be disappointed because you expected the project to solve a problem it wasn't designed to solve.

A strategy requires foundational principles first. Otherwise, what are we strategizing?

Before you invest in making your brand look better, invest in making it strong and complete. Know what you do, have a sense of who you serve, understand the transformation you provide, spend some time considering what you stand for, and know what you're ultimately trying to build.

Once those pieces are there, a good strategist can help you bring them together.

Start With the Foundation

If you're still working through some of these questions, start with the Brand Clarity Checklist. It's designed to help you assess the foundational pieces of your brand, see where you're already clear, and identify what needs more thought before you're ready for the next step.