Brand strategy, brand identity, website: what you're actually buying

Ask three agencies to quote on "branding" and you'll get three numbers that are nowhere near each other. One says $4,000. One says $12,000. One says $40,000.

They aren't pricing the same thing. They're often not even pricing the same category of thing.

Here's what the three pieces actually are, in plain terms, and the order they go in.

Brand strategy is the decisions

Brand strategy is where you decide who you're for, what you stand for, what you say, and how you sound. What kind of client you want more of. What you want them to feel about you. What you're prepared to be known for and what you're happy to leave to someone else.

The output isn't a picture. It's a set of decisions, written down, that everything else has to obey.

Most firms have never done this. They have a general sense of it living in the founder's head, which works fine until someone else has to write a proposal, brief a designer, or post on the firm's behalf.

Brand identity is the expression of those decisions

Brand identity is what the decisions look like once they're made visible. Logo, typefaces, colour, layout, photography, the templates your documents live in, the rules for how it all fits together.

The key word is system. A logo on its own is a single asset. An identity is a set of parts that work together and keep working when someone new joins and starts making things.

This is what most people mean when they say branding, and it's the part that does the most visible work.

A website is one application of the identity

Your website is where the identity gets used, in public, at scale. It's the most visible application but it is still an application. It sits downstream.

That ordering is the whole point of this post.

The expensive mistake

A consultancy comes to a designer wanting a website. Fair enough. It's the thing they can see is out of date, and it's the thing clients mention.

They spend $15,000. It looks good. Everyone's pleased.

Six months later the same firm realises the deeper problem: they're chasing the wrong clients, the offering has drifted, and the way they describe themselves doesn't match what they actually sell now. So they do the strategy work they should have done first.

Every conclusion from that work contradicts the website. Wrong message, wrong tone, wrong audience, wrong feel.

They pay for the website twice.

This is the most common way firms waste money on branding, and it doesn't happen because anyone was careless. It happens because the website is the visible symptom and the strategy is the invisible cause.

Three questions to work out what you need

Could two senior people in your firm independently write down who your ideal client is and roughly agree? If no, you need strategy. Nothing built on top of that disagreement will hold.

Do you have consistent assets you can hand to someone new so they can make things that look like they came from you? If no, you need identity. You don't have a system, you have a logo and some improvisation.

Do the first two exist and hold up, and the site just looks dated? Then it's a website project, and it should be a relatively straightforward one.

Most firms who think they need all three actually need the first two, and a website that follows from them.

What this means for the number

Strategy is the cheapest of the three and changes the most.

Identity is the one with the longest life. A good one runs for a decade.

A website is the most expensive to get wrong, because it's the one you'll redo if the layer underneath it changes.

Spend accordingly.

If you want a professional opinion on what your brand is currently saying, I do a short 5 day brand audit that gives you insights into your Positioning & Messaging, Visual Identity, Website — Design & First Impression, Website — Content & Journey, Trust & Proof, and Competitive Standing.

If you’re interested you can learn more or book here