The deep work, before the marketing

Brand strategy that makes your marketing work

We define what you stand for, who you’re for, and why buyers choose you, then make every page, pitch, and ad say the same thing. Founder-led, senior team, start to finish.

Book a free fit call → Take the free brand audit

The team that scopes the work does the work. Same team, every engagement.

1st

Brand strategy first on every engagement

100%

Founder-led strategy, start to finish

35+

Years of brand and marketing work

6 wk

Brand strategy audit, fixed scope and price

Forbes

Featured in Forbes

The problem

Most businesses don’t have a brand problem. They have a clarity problem.

They know what they sell, but not what they stand for. There’s a logo, but no position. There are marketing tactics, but no strategy underneath to tie them together. So the budget gets spent, the ads run, the posts go up, the site gets redesigned, and the results disappoint. The strategy was never set, and no amount of marketing makes up for that.

The basics

What is brand strategy?

Brand strategy is the work that defines what makes you different and the value you create, then builds your marketing on it. Price, specs, and features are easy to match, and competing only on those turns into a race to the lowest number. Brand strategy is how you compete on something a competitor can’t copy.

Sales-centric

Compete on price and features

Price, specs, and features. Anyone in your category can match them, so it comes down to who is cheapest, and your margin pays for it.

Value-centric

Compete on difference and value

What you do better, who you serve, and the problem you solve. A brand strategy discovers that, names it, and builds the marketing on it.

To map where you stand today, a brand strategy answers four questions:

Position

Where you sit against competitors

Audience

Who you serve

Belief

What you stand for

Recognition

How buyers remember you when it’s time to buy

The harder work

Then it looks where your competitors aren’t

Those four questions map the market everyone can already see, and your competitors see it too. Any position you take in known space, they can copy and crowd. The work that builds a lasting edge is finding the space they are not in yet: the angle, the audience, or the need no one in your category owns. That takes real research, data, and analysis, and it is where our strategy engagements go deepest.

When it’s time

Signs your business needs a brand strategy

Brand strategy work pays off most when a few of these are true at once:

You’re spending on marketing and the results don’t match the spend.

Your team can describe what you sell but stalls on what you stand for.

Two people in the company pitch the business two different ways.

A competitor with a weaker product keeps winning deals you should win.

You’ve added products, services, or audiences the original brand was never built to hold.

The brand feels dated, and a new logo or website hasn’t fixed the deeper problem.

None of these is a design problem. They point to a position the business hasn’t set yet. A new coat of paint won’t fix that. Brand strategy will.

Not sure how many apply to you? The free brand audit turns these signs into a score.

Take the free brand audit →

What goes wrong

Why most brand strategy fails

Three things sink most brand strategy work. We see them on almost every brand audit we run.

01

It never got past a logo

A logo, a few colors, and a tagline, with no position underneath and no definition of who it was for. The first hard marketing decision had nothing to point back to.

02

It lived in a slide deck

A strategy got made, presented, and filed. It looked sharp in the readout and never reached a campaign. Months later, nobody could state the positioning in a sentence.

03

It came from the room, not the market

The positioning described the business the way the owner sees it, not the gap the market left open. It felt true inside the company and meant nothing to a buyer.

All three trace back to one mistake: treating brand strategy as a deliverable instead of a decision the business runs on. Our framework is built to prevent each one.

The engagement

What’s in a brand strategy engagement

No two engagements look the same. The Let’s Canoe Framework™ is what keeps them all rigorous. Every brand strategy covers the same foundations, but how deep we go on each one depends on what’s already in place. A competitive analysis that still holds up, we validate and move on. Audience work that’s dated or thin, we rebuild. Here is what a complete engagement covers, and where most of the work happens.

Market and competitive landscape

Competitor analysis

Market reach and opportunity

Market positioning

Audience and customer insight

Target audience analysis

Psychographics and segmentation

Persona development

Customer experience insights

Brand position and voice

Differentiators and value proposition

Key messages and brand values

Brand voice and personality

Visual identity and brand system

Visual identity system (logo, type, color)

Brand messaging and voice guidelines

Brand book and standards

Growth alignment

Growth goals

Key metrics and measurement framework

Where you are

Three ways to engage

It depends on where you are right now. Need a diagnosis, the full strategy build, or ongoing marketing leadership? Start with the one that fits your situation.

Looking for clarity

6-week flat rate, all in

Brand strategy audit

A focused, fixed-rate diagnostic for businesses that sense the brand is holding them back but want a clear read before committing. You leave knowing where the brand stands and what to fix first.

Ready to build

3 to 4 months

Brand strategy engagement

The full build for businesses that know the problem and want the foundation fixed. Strategy, identity, messaging, and brand guidelines, with a roadmap your team can run. The work the rest of your marketing compounds on.

Ready for a partner

6 to 12 months

Fractional CMO partnership

Senior brand and marketing leadership on a retainer, for businesses that need direction month to month without a full-time CMO hire. A strategy lead plus a team handling execution.

Either way, it all starts with a free fit call with our co-founder and director of strategy.

Start with a fit call →
Brian Murnion leading a brand strategy session at Let's Canoe

Our process

The Let’s Canoe Framework™

Most agencies sell brand strategy as a deliverable. We treat it as a discipline, and the Let’s Canoe Framework™ is what makes the difference.

The framework runs in five phases: discovery, positioning, identity, brand narrative, and the activation system that ties them together. It’s how we move every engagement from “we know we have a brand problem” to “we have a brand that works.” Built from over thirty-five years of strategic work, refined across every engagement we’ve run.

Each phase produces real artifacts. Discovery surfaces the audience, market, and competitive context. Positioning defines where the brand sits, who it serves, and what makes it different. Identity translates positioning into a visual system: logo, type, color, and the design language that follows. Brand narrative gives the brand its voice, its story, and the messaging architecture that keeps every piece of communication consistent. The activation system pulls everything into a brand book your team can actually use, long after the engagement closes.

The framework is what makes brand strategy repeatable and defensible. Every engagement we run is built on it, and it’s what separates a brand that looks good from a brand that works.

See the framework →

Who it’s for

Who we work with

We work with established businesses that have outgrown the brand they started with. Stage matters more to us than industry. The work pays off when there’s real revenue to protect and a real decision to make about where the brand goes next.

Hospitality

Come to us to turn a strong guest experience into a brand people choose before they arrive and remember after they leave.

Medical and healthcare

Come to us to build trust in a regulated category, with a brand that feels human and still holds up to scrutiny.

Consumer and ecommerce

Come to us to win the two-second decision on a shelf or a screen, with a brand that holds up across product, packaging, and the ad.

Nonprofits

Come to us to say what you stand for in a way donors and the people you serve both feel, without losing the mission in the message.

We’ve also run brand strategy for B2B and SaaS companies that need to stand out in a category that looks the same from the outside, plus professional services and arts organizations. Most of our clients are past product-market fit and into the stage where the brand has to carry the next phase of growth.

Anna and Brian Murnion, co-founders of Let's Canoe in Billings, Montana

Why us

Why work with us

Anna and Brian Murnion are the founders of Let’s Canoe, a husband-and-wife team based in downtown Billings, Montana, with over thirty-five years of combined experience across brand strategy, content, design, and digital marketing.

Brian personally leads every brand strategy engagement. Anna leads client experience, so every engagement runs smoothly from first conversation to final handoff. We, with our team, handle the marketing execution that flows from the strategy work.

The senior person on your brand work is the senior person on your brand work. Start to finish.

Book a fit call with Brian → Read more about the team →

Where we work

A brand strategy agency in Montana, building for clients anywhere

Let’s Canoe is a brand strategy agency in Billings, Montana. We work with Montana businesses that want a brand built to compete well past the state line, and with clients across the country who want senior, founder-led strategy without a coastal-agency price tag. Engagements run remote-first, with on-site work in Montana and nearby when it helps. Wherever you are, the same senior people do the work start to finish.

Start with a fit call →

What comes next

How brand strategy connects to the rest of your marketing

Brand strategy is the foundation. The marketing runs on top of it, and it works better when it starts from a brand that has already decided what it stands for.

Brand identity and design

Turns the positioning into a visual system buyers recognize.

SEO and content

Earns search visibility around the brand’s real point of view, not keywords that don’t convert.

Paid ads

Reach the right buyers with a message that matches the brand they land on.

Conversion work

Turns that traffic into customers.

Each one compounds because they all start from the same position.

Most clients come to us knowing something isn’t working.
They can’t always name what. The Let’s Canoe Framework™
is built for that. It’s where most engagements start, and
where the answers come from.

Ready to start?

Three ways to start the conversation, depending on where you are.

Researching

Self-assessment

A free, scored assessment that shows where your brand stands and where the gaps are.

Take the assessment

Evaluating

20-minute fit call

A short call to see whether we’re the right fit and which engagement makes sense.

Book a call

Specific project

Send a message

Tell us what you’re working on. We’ll reply within a day.

Send a message

Common strategy questions

Common questions about brand strategy, what it costs, and how to hire for it. If yours isn’t here, book a free fit call and we’ll answer it.

Hiring a brand strategy agency

How do I hire a brand strategy agency?
Start by naming the business problem, not the deliverable. A real brand strategy agency runs a rigorous strategy phase before any design, so look for a clear process, senior people who stay on the work, and case studies that show strategic shifts rather than new logos. With us, the first step is a short fit call to see whether the problem and the fit are right.
How do I choose the right brand strategy agency?
Look for three things behind the portfolio: a defined strategy process that comes before design, senior people doing the actual work instead of handing it to juniors, and proof of business impact rather than awards. Be cautious of any agency that jumps straight to logos. A portfolio with range is a good sign, because it means the work is driven by each client’s strategy and not the agency’s house style.
What should I look for in a brand strategy agency?
Senior people on your account from start to finish, a clear strategy phase before any visual work, and case studies with named clients and real outcomes. Pricing and timelines that match the depth of the work, since anything promising a full brand in two weeks is running a template. And a team curious enough to challenge your assumptions instead of just taking the brief.
How is Let’s Canoe different from other brand strategy agencies?
Founder-led. Brian, our director of strategy, manages every engagement himself, so no juniors or account managers sit between you and the person making the decisions. We take a limited number of engagements each quarter to keep it that way. And we’re brand-first: the strategy drives the marketing. The framework behind every engagement is how we keep it consistent.
Do you work with clients outside Montana?
Yes. We’re based in Billings, Montana, and work with clients across the country. Engagements run remote-first, with on-site work when it makes sense. Where you’re located matters less than whether the brand problem is one we’re the right team to solve.
Are you a Montana brand strategy agency?
Yes. We’re a brand strategy agency in Billings, Montana, working with businesses across the state and the country. Montana clients get senior, founder-led strategy without a coastal-agency price tag, and the same people do the work start to finish. If you’re looking for a Montana brand strategy agency, a short fit call is the place to start.
Can I see your brand strategy work?
Yes. Our case studies show the work and the thinking behind it. On a fit call we can walk through the examples closest to your industry and stage.

Cost and engagement options

How much does brand strategy cost?
Across the industry, a standalone brand strategy runs from a few thousand dollars for a light positioning project to $50,000 or more for deep agency work, and full strategy-plus-identity programs run higher. The right number depends on scope and which engagement fits, so the fastest way to a real one is a short fit call.
How much does it cost to hire a brand strategy agency?
Agency brand strategy projects run from around $25,000 into six figures for large, multi-stakeholder work, because they involve a senior team across strategy, design, and messaging over two to four months. Smaller, focused engagements cost less. We price to scope rather than a fixed menu, so tell us the situation on a fit call and we’ll give you a real number.
What’s the difference between a brand strategist, a brand consultant, and a brand agency?
A brand strategist is one person who defines positioning, audience, and messaging. A brand consultant is similar, often advising more than building. A brand agency brings a team across strategy, design, and messaging to build and apply the whole system. A solo strategist costs less and goes narrower. An agency costs more and delivers the full system. We’re an agency run founder-led, so you still get one senior point of view holding it together.
What does a brand strategist do?
A brand strategist decides what a business stands for, who it serves, how it’s positioned against competitors, and how it sounds. They run the research, set the positioning, and shape the messaging everything else is built on. A strategist defines the brand; designers and marketers express it.
How much does a brand strategist cost?
Freelance brand strategists charge roughly $75 to $150 an hour, with senior people at the top of that range. Project work runs from about $5,000 for a focused scope to $50,000 or more for deep strategy. Agency engagements cost more because you get a team instead of one person. We quote to scope on a fit call.
Is brand strategy worth the investment?
When the business is spending on marketing that isn’t returning, yes. Brand strategy is what makes a business compound: the work happens once, and every campaign, hire, and product after it starts from the same foundation. The return shows up over years, in lower marketing costs and faster recognition. If you’re pre-revenue and still testing the model, it can wait.
What brand strategy engagements do you offer?
Three. A brand strategy audit is a focused six-week diagnostic with fixed scope and price, for businesses that want clarity before committing. A brand strategy engagement is the full build over three to four months: strategy, identity system, messaging, brand guidelines, and a roadmap. A fractional CMO partnership is ongoing strategic leadership over six to twelve months for businesses that need brand and marketing direction as a continuous function.
What is a brand strategy audit?
It’s our focused diagnostic: six weeks, fixed scope, fixed price. For businesses that suspect the brand is holding them back but want a clear read before a full engagement. You leave with where the brand stands today and a roadmap for what comes next. Many clients start here, then move into the full engagement.
What is a fractional CMO and do you offer one?
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with your business part-time, giving you executive-level strategy and direction without a full-time hire. Yes, we offer it as a six-to-twelve-month partnership: a strategic lead plus a team supporting execution. It fits businesses that need ongoing brand and marketing direction rather than a one-time project.
How much does a fractional CMO cost?
Across the market, fractional CMOs run from about $4,000 a month for early-stage scope to $20,000 or more for senior leaders working two to three days a week. We scope our partnership to what the business actually needs and quote it on a fit call. It’s built to cost less than a full-time CMO hire while giving you senior direction plus a team.

Timeline, process, and deliverables

How long does brand strategy take?
Our focused audit runs six weeks. A full brand strategy engagement runs three to four months from kickoff to a finished system. Timelines move faster when you have decisive approvers and slower when the upstream questions are still open. Anything promising a complete brand in a week or two is running a template, not a strategy.
What’s included in a brand strategy engagement?
Market and competitive analysis, audience and customer insight, positioning and messaging, a visual identity system, brand guidelines, and a growth layer with goals and KPIs. How deeply we work each area depends on what’s already in place: if your competitive analysis still holds, we validate it and move on; if the audience work is thin, we rebuild it. You leave with a brand book your team can actually use.
How involved does my team need to be?
Most in the early phases, when we need your decision-makers on the business, the audience, and the calls only you can make. Once the positioning is locked, we need less of your time, with reviews at the key milestones. A brand argument can’t be built without the people who know the business in the room early.
What happens after the brand strategy is delivered?
You get the full system, a brand book, and a handoff so your team can run it. From there, some clients bring us in for the marketing that puts the strategy to work: identity and design, SEO, paid ads, and conversion work. Others run it in-house from the guidelines. The strategy is built to keep working after the engagement ends.

Do you need brand strategy?

Do I need a brand strategy?
If your marketing runs but the results disappoint, the problem is upstream of the marketing. Signs you need it: you know what you sell but not what you stand for, you have a logo but no clear position, or every campaign starts from scratch. A free brand audit is a quick way to see where the gaps are.
Do I need brand strategy or just marketing?
If marketing is running and not converting, the gap is in the strategy. Marketing brings a brand to an audience; it can’t fix a brand that hasn’t decided what it stands for. If you have a clear position and only need more reach, you may just need marketing. If campaigns keep underperforming no matter the channel, that’s a strategy problem.
When should I invest in brand strategy?
When the business has outgrown the brand it started with. Common triggers: a new market or audience, a merger or new product line, a position that no longer fits, or marketing spend that isn’t returning. The best time is before a big push, so the budget goes toward a position you’ve already decided on.
Do I need a brand strategy before a website, logo, or marketing?
In most cases, yes. A website, a logo, and a marketing plan all express a position. Build them before the position is set and you’re guessing, which is why so many sites and logos get redone within two years. Strategy first means the design and the marketing are built on a decision instead of a hunch.
What size company is brand strategy for?
We work mostly with SMBs and middle-market companies that have proven the model and now need a brand that can carry the next stage of growth. Stage matters more than size. The work pays off most when there’s real revenue to protect and a real decision to make about where the brand goes next.
Does brand strategy work for small businesses and startups?
Yes, once the business has proven that people want what it sells. Before that, the priority is product-market fit, and a heavy brand strategy can wait. After it, brand strategy is what keeps a growing business from sounding like everyone else in its category. For early-stage companies, our six-week audit is a good entry point.
Do you work with B2B and SaaS companies?
Yes. B2B and SaaS brands carry their own challenge: a buying group of six to ten people, each weighing the decision differently, in a category that often looks crowded. Brand strategy there is about a clear position and a message that lands with every stakeholder. We’ve done the work across B2B services and software.
Do you work with ecommerce and consumer brands?
Yes. Consumer and ecommerce brands live on recognition and the two-second decision. Brand strategy gives them a position and a story that hold up across the website, the product, the packaging, and the ad. From there our identity and conversion work puts it to use at the point of purchase.
Can you work with my existing brand or logo?
Yes. Most engagements are evolutions, not teardowns. We assess what’s working, what’s holding the brand back, and where the leverage is. Sometimes the logo stays and we build the system around it. Sometimes the strategy shows it needs to change. The work tells us which.

Brand strategy basics

What is brand strategy?
Brand strategy is the system that defines how a business shows up in the market: where it sits against competitors, who it serves, what it believes, and how it gets recognized. It’s the foundation marketing is built on. Decide what you stand for first, then build the campaigns that reinforce it. When the strategy is right, the marketing gets easier and cheaper.
How do you create a brand strategy?
You start with research, then turn it into decisions. Discovery surfaces the market, audience, and competitive picture. Positioning sets where the brand sits, who it serves, and what makes it different. Messaging and a visual identity express those decisions, and a brand book makes them usable. Our five-phase framework runs that sequence on every engagement.
What are the key elements of a brand strategy?
The core elements are a market and competitive read, a defined target audience, a clear position, the differentiators and value proposition, messaging and brand voice, and a visual identity system. Underneath all of it sits what the brand stands for. Each element builds on the last, which is why they’re decided in order rather than all at once.
What are the types of brand strategy?
Common types include positioning strategy, differentiation, brand architecture for companies with multiple brands or products, rebrand strategy, and growth or extension strategy for entering new markets. Most engagements pull from several. The right mix depends on where the business is and the decision it’s facing, which is what the discovery phase sorts out.
What is a brand strategy framework?
A brand strategy framework is the repeatable process an agency uses to build a strategy, so the work doesn’t rest on one person’s instinct. Ours, the Let’s Canoe Framework, runs five phases: discovery, positioning, identity, brand narrative, and an activation system. A framework is what makes the work consistent and defensible from one engagement to the next.
What’s the difference between brand strategy and marketing?
Brand strategy defines what the business is. Marketing is the day-to-day activity that brings it to an audience: ads, content, social, email. Strategy is the foundation, and marketing is what flows from it. Spend on marketing before the strategy is set and you’re paying to promote a position you haven’t decided on yet.
What’s the difference between brand strategy and branding?
Branding is the broad work of building how a business is perceived. Brand strategy is the decision layer underneath: positioning, audience, what the brand stands for, and how it grows. Strategy answers what the brand should be. Branding is the ongoing work of making that real everywhere the business shows up.
What’s the difference between brand strategy and brand identity?
Brand strategy is the thinking. Brand identity is the expression. Strategy decides positioning, audience, and what the brand stands for. Identity is the visual and verbal system that puts those decisions in front of buyers: logo, color, type, and voice. Identity built without strategy underneath it is decoration, and it falls apart within months.
What is brand positioning?
Brand positioning is the decision about where your brand sits in the market and in the buyer’s mind: who you serve, what you stand for, and what makes you the obvious choice over the alternatives. It’s the core output of a brand strategy, and it shapes every piece of work that follows. A brand has to be willing to defend its position over time.
What is brand messaging?
Brand messaging is how the positioning gets said: the core message, the value proposition, the brand voice, and the points that stay consistent across every channel and author. Good messaging keeps a business from sounding like three different companies on its website, its sales deck, and its social. It’s part of what a brand strategy engagement delivers.
What is a brand value proposition?
A value proposition is the clear statement of what you offer, who it’s for, and why it beats the alternatives. It’s the promise the rest of the brand is built to keep. A strong one is specific and credible rather than broad, which is why it comes out of the positioning work and not a brainstorm.

Rebrands and results

What’s the difference between brand strategy and a rebrand?
A rebrand is a visible change to how a brand looks or sounds. Brand strategy is the thinking that decides whether a rebrand is even the right move, and what it should say if it is. Plenty of strategy engagements end without a new logo, because the better answer was to sharpen the position and use the existing identity harder.
How do I know if I need a rebrand?
A few signals: the business has outgrown what the brand can express, new products or audiences no longer fit, the market has shifted, competitors have converged on the same look, or the brand simply feels dated and the team can’t make it current. A rebrand should follow a strategy decision, not lead it, so the first step is figuring out what the brand needs to say.
How do you measure brand strategy success?
We set goals and KPIs as part of the engagement, so success ties to the business rather than to how the work looks. Depending on the brand, that can show up as a clearer position your team can articulate, marketing that converts better, faster sales conversations, and a lower cost to win a customer over time. Brand work compounds, so the clearest signal is that each quarter gets easier than the last.
How do I get started with brand strategy?
Three ways, depending on where you are. Take the free brand audit if you want a quick read on where the gaps are. Book a 20-minute fit call if you’re evaluating. Or send a message about a specific project. We take a limited number of engagements each quarter, so earlier is better.
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406-998-7901
team@letscanoe.com
119 N 29th St
Billings, MT 59101

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Let’s Canoe is a brand-led marketing agency in Billings, Montana. We start with brand strategy and build the marketing around it. The Let’s Canoe Framework™ guides every engagement we run.