Brand Strategy Consulting for Leaders: Story, Positioning and Search
Many organisations invest heavily in campaigns, websites and design while the underlying brand story remains unclear. This article looks at brand strategy consulting from a leader’s perspective and explains how focused external support can rebuild the connection between strategy, customer insight and search visibility.
Snapshot for busy readers
- Brand strategy consulting translates business goals into a narrative that sales, marketing and product teams can use every day.
- Effective projects combine three lenses: what customers want, what the company can credibly promise and how the market currently talks about the category.
- Brand work and SEO are closely linked, since language choices affect search visibility, content planning and internal linking.
Why brand strategy deserves leadership time
Brand is sometimes treated as a design project or as a marketing concern. In practice it is a leadership topic. It shapes pricing power, talent attraction and resilience in downturns. Studies such as the
Interbrand Best Global Brands report
show that firms with strong and consistently managed brands often outperform their peers on valuation and profitability.
When leaders do not provide clear direction, different teams fill the gap with their own interpretations. Sales emphasises one storyline, product another, and recruiting a third. Brand strategy consulting helps senior teams align on a single narrative that can carry across all of these situations.
NMS Consulting has explored this topic in several focused articles, including
the importance of a clear brand strategy
and
ten ways to improve your brand strategy.
This article builds on that work with a specific focus on how external consultants partner with leadership teams.
Considering a refresh of your brand story in the next planning cycle and want an outside view before you commit budgets?
Three lenses used in brand strategy consulting
Most engagements combine three separate but connected views. Treating them explicitly prevents a familiar problem where a brand platform sounds compelling in the workshop yet fails to gain traction in the market.
Customer lens
The customer lens focuses on how people currently perceive the organisation and category. Consultants collect interview quotes, survey findings and search query data, often drawing on sources such as the
McKinsey marketing and sales insights library
or sector specific trend reports. The outcome is a map of needs, language and decision drivers that can be compared with internal assumptions.
Company lens
The company lens examines what the organisation can credibly promise. It covers capabilities, culture, track record and financial goals. Here, brand strategy consulting intersects with wider work on
strategic management consulting
and change management. The key question is simple: which promises can the business keep consistently across regions, channels and time.
Category lens
The category lens reviews how competitors position themselves and which messages are becoming crowded. Consultants scan rival sites, analyst commentary and conferences to spot overused claims or emerging spaces. This perspective is reflected in dedicated NMS pieces such as
what are brand consulting firms
and
what is strategic brand consultancy.
By looking through all three lenses, a brand platform can place the organisation where it is both credible and distinct.
How a brand strategy consulting engagement is designed
No two assignments are identical, yet many follow a rhythm that can be usefully summarised. The focus is on helping senior teams make a limited number of clear decisions rather than generating a large deck of theory.
| Stage | Main question | Example outputs |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Where are we today and how are we perceived | Brand audit, customer insight summary, search and content review |
| Direction setting | What do we want the brand to stand for in three to five years | Draft positioning territories, leadership workshop outcomes |
| Definition | How do we express this direction in simple language and visuals | Positioning statement, messaging pillars, tone guidelines |
| Activation planning | Where should we express this story first and how do we phase it | Activation roadmap, content plan, internal launch plan |
| Measurement | How will we know whether the new brand direction is working | Brand and search KPIs, dashboard structure, review calendar |
NMS Consulting often structures this work as a joint effort between client teams and consultants. For example, internal marketers may own asset production while consultants focus on research design, synthesis and facilitation. This approach is described in more detail in the
brand strategy consulting guide 2025
and the
briefing on how consultants help with brand strategy.
For organisations with complex product portfolios, brand architecture becomes a central topic. Consultants help decide when to use a masterbrand, endorsed brands or stand alone brands, considering factors such as regulatory risk, channel expectations and acquisition history.
Joining brand strategy with search and digital
Brand teams and digital teams often work in parallel. Brand workshops produce a set of themes, while SEO teams focus on keywords and technical structure. Aligning these efforts is one area where external consulting support can create significant value.
A simple starting point is to map brand messages to search behaviour. Reports such as the
Google Search Central blog
and
independent SEO primers
emphasise how clear, descriptive language helps both users and search engines. In practice this means using the same phrasing in site headings, meta descriptions and internal links that appears in customer interviews and keyword data.
NMS brand projects therefore often include:
- Updating internal anchor text so that core brand phrases point to relevant service and insight pages, including the primary brand strategy consulting service page.
- Defining a content calendar that connects insight pieces such as the brand strategy consulting for positioning, portfolio and growth article with service offerings.
- Ensuring schema markup, meta titles and descriptions use consistent brand language and reflect user intent rather than internal jargon.
Over time, this integration helps build what search engines view as topical authority. The site contains multiple interlinked resources on brand strategy, each addressing a specific question, and all connected in a coherent structure.
Would it help to review your current brand platform and digital footprint side by side with an experienced consulting team?
Frequently asked questions
What is brand strategy consulting?
Brand strategy consulting helps organisations define how they wish to be perceived, who they want to reach and how that story appears across channels. Consultants combine research, positioning, messaging and activation planning so that every contact point reflects the same narrative and supports commercial goals.
When does it make sense to hire a brand strategy consultant?
Brand strategy consultants are most useful when an organisation is entering new markets, launching new offers, facing intense price pressure or dealing with inconsistent messages across teams. External specialists bring structure, market insight and an independent view that can be difficult to achieve internally.
How is brand strategy linked to search and digital performance?
Brand strategy shapes the language used in site copy, navigation, meta descriptions and off site content. When those elements are aligned with the way buyers search and speak, search engines can better understand the brand and reward it with stronger visibility. Brand strategy consulting therefore often includes work on SEO structure, internal links and content planning.
