Should you outsource brand strategy?

Key takeaways

Should you outsource brand strategy? You can buy help with it, but you cannot hand it over. Who you serve, what you stand for and why customers should choose you are owner decisions. An agency or adviser can research, challenge and articulate them. Brand production, such as applying guidelines across content and materials, outsources well.

• Positioning decisions stay with the owner.
• Advisers can research, challenge and write it up.
• Production against brand guidelines outsources well.
• Brand building pays back over years, not weeks.

Why does brand strategy stay with the owner?

Because it commits the business: which customers to pursue and which to turn away, what to charge, what to promise. Those choices shape hiring, pricing and products. An outside party can recommend; only the people running the business can commit to living by the answer.

• Which business processes should you outsource?
• Does this process win you customers? The differentiation test

What can outside help add?

Customer research, competitor review, an outside view that challenges assumptions, and clear wording of positioning and messages. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute on distinctive brand assets, and IPA work by Binet and Field on balancing long-term brand building with short-term activation, are the kind of evidence a good adviser brings.

• Distinctive brand assets: be recognised at a glance
• Brand guidelines for your website: what to include

Which brand work can be outsourced?

Production that applies the strategy: templates, presentations, social content, sales materials, website updates and checks that everything matches the guidelines. This is repeatable work with a written standard, the brand guidelines, which makes it suitable for a managed team.

• Templates and presentations.
• Content production to guidelines.
• Website and material updates.
• Brand consistency checks.

• Website content updates: who should make the changes?
• Marketing processes to outsource, and the ones to keep

When is brand strategy work premature?

When the business has not yet found which customers buy and why. Early on, sales conversations teach you more than any workshop. Spend on brand strategy once you can describe your best customers and why they chose you.

• Is it too early for your business to outsource?
• Can you measure it? The test every outsourced process needs

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: businesses pay for a brand strategy, then apply it inconsistently because production is squeezed in. Consistent production is often worth more than a new strategy.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses

Brand strategy checklist

Use these questions before buying help.

• Can you name your best customers?
• Do you know why they chose you?
• Who will make the final decisions?
• Who will apply the strategy day to day?
• How will you check consistency?

• Outsource, split, fix or keep: four process verdicts
• Should you outsource pricing? Why the decision stays in-house

Next step

Tell us where your brand feels inconsistent today. We will tell you whether you need strategy help or simply steadier production.