What Does a Brand Strategist Do? A Founder's Guide to When You Need One
Brand strategist is one of those job titles that means slightly different things depending on who you ask. Some people picture logo design, others picture a workshop full of sticky notes, and others picture a marketing plan.
In practice, a brand strategist does something more specific (and, for a growing SaaS company, more useful). They help you define what your brand stands for, who it's for, why it's the right choice for those people, and how all of that should come across every time someone meets your company.
This guide covers what a brand strategist actually does, how the role differs from a designer or a marketer, and the moments when bringing one in makes the biggest difference for a SaaS founder.
What is a brand strategist?
A brand strategist is the person who shapes the thinking behind your brand. Their job is to turn what's in the founder's head (why the company exists, who it serves best and what makes it different) into a clear, shared foundation that the whole team can use.
That foundation then guides everything else: your website copy, your sales deck, your visual identity, your content and the way your team describes the product.
A useful way to think about it:
A brand strategist decides what your brand should say and why.
A brand designer decides how it should look.
A marketer decides where and when people should see it.
All three matter, and they work best in that order. Strategy gives design and marketing something solid to build on, which is why brand strategy usually comes first.
What does a brand strategist actually do?
The day-to-day work varies, but a good brand strategist will help you answer the questions that sit underneath every marketing and sales decision. At Emotion Brands we break this into five stages, and each one builds on the last.
1. Brand DNA: why you exist
This is the purpose, mission, values and vision your company is built on. It sounds abstract, but it's what keeps a brand consistent as more people start speaking for it. A strategist helps you put it into words your team can actually use. (More on this in What Is Brand DNA?)
2. Positioning: why you're the right choice
Positioning is about relevance as much as difference. The product that feels most relevant to a specific person with a specific problem tends to win. A strategist researches your buyers and competitors, maps where you sit in the market and helps you choose the space only you can own. Choosing a lane can feel risky, but it's far less risky than blending in. (See Brand Positioning Maps for how this works in practice.)
3. Brand persona: who you are when you speak
Your brand persona is the personality behind every interaction. Using tools like brand archetypes, a strategist defines how your brand thinks, behaves and sounds, so it feels like the same company whether someone reads your homepage, a sales email or a support reply.
4. Messaging: what you say
This is where strategy turns into words: your core message, value proposition, proof points and the story you tell buyers and investors. Good messaging is rooted in buyer psychology, so it explains the product in the terms your buyers already use to describe their problem.
5. Identity: how you look
Finally, the strategy shapes the visual identity: logo, colour, type, imagery and the guidelines that keep it all consistent. With the foundations in place, design decisions become much easier to make and to explain.
Along the way, a brand strategist will usually run research and discovery sessions, review your current brand (a brand audit is a useful starting point), and pull everything together into guidelines your team can pick up and use without needing to ask.
The five stages complement each other. Skipping one tends to show up later, usually as messaging that doesn't quite match the product or a visual identity that doesn't feel like the company behind it.
When does a SaaS founder need a brand strategist?
There's no single right moment, but there are some clear signals that the timing is good.
Your voice is no longer in every conversation. In the early days, the founder is the brand: every pitch, every sales call, every post. As you grow, new people start selling and writing about the product, and the brand has to work without you in the room.
You've made your first marketing or sales hires. A shared foundation gives them a head start, so they're not each inventing their own version of what the company does.
You're preparing for a go-to-market push or a raise. A clear position and a story that holds together make both conversations easier, whether you're speaking to buyers or investors.
You're up against bigger, more established names. You don't need to out-spend them. You need to be the obvious choice for a specific buyer, and that's a positioning job.
You're about to rebuild your website or rebrand. Strategy before design saves time, money and rounds of feedback, because everyone is working from the same brief.
The opportunity here is a big one. Research by Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, popularised by the LinkedIn B2B Institute as the 95:5 rule, suggests only around 5% of B2B buyers are in the market at any one time. A clear, memorable brand is what keeps you front of mind for the other 95%, so you're the name they think of when they're ready to buy.
And when might you not need one yet? If you're still testing who your product is for, it's often worth casting the net wide and seeing who bites first. A brand strategist adds the most value once you have real customers and patterns to work from.
What to expect when you work with a brand strategist
Brand strategy projects follow a similar shape:
Discovery: a structured Q&A, or a video strategy session with your team, to capture what's in the founder's head and what the team already knows.
Research: looking at your buyers, your competitors and the wider market.
Strategy: defining your Brand DNA, positioning and brand persona.
Expression: turning the strategy into messaging, a story framework and, if needed, a visual identity.
Handover: guidelines and tools your team can use day to day.
Timescales depend on scope. A focused project can take four to six weeks, while a fully researched strategy across all five stages takes longer.
How to choose a brand strategist
A few things worth looking for:
A clear process. Ask them to walk you through how they work and what you'll have at the end.
Experience with companies like yours. SaaS buyers, sales cycles and growth stages come with their own challenges, so relevant experience helps.
A link to commercial outcomes. Brand strategy should make selling easier, not just look good in a document.
Deliverables your team will actually use. The best strategy is the one that shows up in your next sales deck, homepage and campaign.
You'll also come across brand strategy consultants, agencies and freelancers, each with a slightly different way of working. I'll look at how they compare, and which suits which situation, in a follow-up post.
How we work at Emotion Brands
Emotion Brands is a startup branding agency for SaaS and sustainability-led founders. I lead the brand strategy, working alongside a team of designers, so the thinking and the design stay joined up from start to finish.
Everything runs remotely. With Persona Sprint™ and Persona Messaging™, you work through structured Q&As in your own time, and I review and build on your answers, so it fits around running a company. Persona Pro™ adds live video strategy sessions with whoever you'd like involved, from co-founders to your first marketing hire.
Our strategic branding framework follows the five stages above, and our startup branding packages are built around what founders need at their stage: Persona Sprint™ for identity, Persona Messaging™ for the words, and Persona Pro™ for the full picture.
Frequently asked questions
Is a brand strategist the same as a brand consultant?
Largely, yes. The two titles are often used interchangeably, and both describe someone who helps you define what your brand stands for and how it should show up. What matters more than the title is the process behind it and what you’ll have at the end.
Do I need a brand strategist before a designer?
Ideally, yes. A designer can create something beautiful, but without a clear strategy they're guessing at what it needs to say and who it needs to appeal to. Strategy first makes the design brief sharper and the result more effective.
How long does brand strategy take?
For a SaaS company, anything from around four weeks for a focused project to ten weeks or more for a fully researched strategy across positioning, persona, messaging and identity.
What does a brand strategist deliver?
Typically a brand strategy document covering your Brand DNA, positioning and persona, plus messaging guidelines and, depending on the scope, a visual identity and brand guidelines.
Ready to get clear on your brand?
If you'd like to talk through where your brand is now and what would help most, book a discovery call.
About the Author
Gemma Johnson is a Brand Strategist & Designer and the founder of Emotion Brands, a startup branding agency helping B2B SaaS founders build brands with clarity and credibility. With 24 years in creative roles and brand strategy woven in over the last six, she created the Startup Branding Packages to give growing teams a brand that doesn’t just look good, but makes them more attractive to buyers and investors and ready to take to market.
Connect with Gemma on LinkedIn or get in touch.
See the work behind it in our brand stories.
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