Brand strategy: now what? How to put your strategy into action from day one

Have you been working on your brand strategy? Writing your mission? Uncovering your ideal audience? Visualising your visual direction?

It’s powerful stuff that can truly transform your business and your life. But while you can get a lot out of the brand strategy process itself, the long-lasting impact that will help you build a next level brand, is actually using that strategy!

So when your brand strategy is ready, then what? Let’s talk about how to put your strategy into action from day 1 so you can intentionally and effectively build your brand!

How to put your strategy into action from day 1

Put a bookmark to your brand strategy on your phone and desktop

To make sure your brand strategy is as easily accessible as possible, wherever and whenever you need it, add a bookmark or shortcut to all of your devices. For example, using Safari on iPhones you can create a shortcut to add a website to your phone’s homepage which is great if your Brand Strategy is in something like Canva or a Google Doc. Or if your Brand Strategy is a PDF document, you could add a shortcut to your computer’s desktop or your favourites in Finder if you use an Apple device.

These all remove the barrier to accessing your strategy so you don’t have to go digging in files or finding links. When it’s easily accessible it’s more likely that you’ll actually use your strategy.

Put your vision, mission, & values in places you’ll always see them

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to forget things you can’t see. So having visual reminders of your vision, mission, and values are really great ways to keep the important things top of mind.

You could create on-brand designs that fit your aesthetic and make you want to look at them, and keep them as your phone background or desktop wallpaper. I also add my vision, mission, and values to my Notion dashboard so I see them whenever I open up Notion (which is a lot!) You could also just write them down on paper, post-it notes, or create a handmade or printed design that you can stick on your wall.

However you choose to display your vision, mission, and values, the point is to keep them in places you’ll always see them so you’re constantly reminded of the important parts of your brand.

Share your strategy with your team or collaborators

Once you’ve got a brand strategy, it’s important to share it with anyone you work with. Whether you have employees, contractors, or collaborators, anyone who works on or with you brand needs to know what’s behind your brand so you can maintain brand consistency. Having a clear brand strategy that everyone is on board with means that everything is cohesive, on-brand, up-to-date, and coming from one brand voice, with one message, one goal, and one perspective. So make sure you share your strategy with everyone involved, and you can do that from day one.

Print out your brand strategy

If this is your first time having and using a brand strategy, I recommend printing it out. This is a super useful way to get in the habit of looking at it because when it’s hidden away as a file on your computer, it’s easy to forget about it, but when its right there on your desk in front of you, you’re reminded that it’s a tool that’s there for you to use.

You can print it yourself or get it printed at your local print shop, and keep it on your desk in front of you so you can get in the habit of flipping through it and using it regularly.

Link or add your brand voice guidelines wherever you write content

As we dive into the brand strategy itself, you can take each part of your strategy and link or add it wherever you’re going to use that piece in your business. For example, wherever you write content, whether that’s for your website, social media posts, or other parts of your business, link or add the parts of your brand strategy about your brand voice guidelines.

Having your brand voice guidelines easily accessible as your writing content means that you or whoever else is writing content will always have those guidelines on hand and everything you write is more likely to be in line with your brand’s personality and overall brand strategy.

Link or add your audience information wherever you plan content, create offers, or do business planning.

This also applies whenever you’re making something new for your business, whether that’s content, products, services, freebies, funnels, or other assets. You always want to keep your audience in mind and make sure that what you’re creating aligns with your strategy for reaching and connecting with your audience, so to implement that strategy from day one, you can link or add the work you’ve done to pinpoint your people in your strategy to wherever you do that planning.

That might mean adding a link to the audience section of your strategy in your Notion workspace or copy and pasting information about your audience into the Google Doc template you use for writing product descriptions, for example.

Link or add your content strategy wherever you plan and create content

When we’re creating content day-to-day, it can be easy to forget the overall strategy behind what we’re putting out there. Having your brand strategy on hand as you’re planning and creating content makes sure that you’re always considering the overall content strategy. So wherever you plan and create your content, have a link to the content plan you created in your brand strategy, or copy and paste that information in.

Link or add your brand visibility strategy wherever you plan your marketing efforts

Marketing your business isn’t just about creating content, either. There are other approaches that you may have included in your brand visibility strategy to get more eyes on your creative business. To make sure you stay on task and keep those goals in mind as your working on your marketing plans, link to or pop that visibility strategy in wherever you do your marketing work and you’ll be increasing that visibility from day one!

Link or add your visual direction wherever you design for your business, or share it with whoever will be helping you to do that

Just like writing and planning, the visuals are important things to keep consistent when it comes to your brand too. Wherever you or your team are designing assets for your brand, whether that’s in Canva, Figma, Adobe, or other design tools, make sure there are easy ways for those people to access the visual direction strategy you’ve crafted to ensure everything stays aligned and on-brand.

Update your social media profiles

When everything is set up and in place, you’re ready to start applying your strategy across your business. The first and most obvious place to do that is on your social media profiles.

Within your brand strategy you may have written taglines, elevator pitches, vision statements, mission statements, values, and other pieces of copy that could be added to your bio to align with your new brand strategy, as well as any new visuals you may have created.

Update your website about page

Your website’s about page is the perfect place to use things like your vision, mission, values, story, unique selling position, and other taglines. You can also use these and other parts of your strategy across other parts of your website and they’re easy to add and update from day one.

Do everything for the next week at least with your brand strategy open by your side.

Your brand strategy is there to be your guide, to influence and impact everything you do in your business and should be the strategy you follow for everything you do from now on. It’s a useful document that’s there to be used, so use it. You just need to get in the habit.

So when you first finish and start using your brand strategy, I would recommend doing everything for at least the next week with your brand strategy open by your side.

• Planning content? Look at your content pillars and information about your audience
• Making a decision? Check in with your vision, goals, and values.
• Setting up a freebie and funnel? Refer to your customer journey, brand voice guidelines and positioning.
• Starting to put your brand identity together? Use your personality, audience, and visual direction.

Those are the tips and tricks I have for you for putting your brand strategy into action from day one. You’ll get so much clarity and direction out of the brand strategy process itself, but when you start implementing and using your brand strategy in your business on a regular basis and seeing the results of that consistent, strategic, intentional implementation, that’s where the magic happens. That’s what will take your brand to the next level.