If I were to let you into the "Watch Later" playlist on my Youtube right now, you’d find a mix of ankle mobility routines (don’t ask), bicep and shoulder workout routines, and productivity review app videos. 

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Not videos around “how to be more productive” or “how to better manage your time”. I'm much more curious about what apps people are using because I have shiny object syndrome like a motherfucker.

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I'm constantly searching for that perfect app or system that will transform me into a productivity powerhouse. I crave that satisfying feeling of fine-tuning a new tool, inputting all my tasks and projects, only to close the browser and continue...well, doing nothing.

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Deep down, I know the truth: my issue isn't with productivity or time management. It's the misguided belief that I haven't found the right tool to make these things effortless. It's a comforting lie I tell myself, but it's just that—a lie.

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The reality is that lasting results come from weeks and months of internal work and organization. It's the intangible effort that snowballs into tangible outcomes.

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This principle applies not only to productivity but also to creative work and building a cohesive brand ecosystem for your business.

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That same logic can be applied to the question: “What should I do/invest in first? Brand Identity Design, Copywriting or Website Design?”

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As we explore this question, you'll discover that the answer lies in a foundational step that many overlook—but it's the key to pointing your brand and business in the right direction.

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Remember: the process of organizing yourself, aligning your goals, and clarifying your vision is just as crucial as the end result.

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The First Step: Brand Strategy

While "brand strategy" might sound like a buzzword, it's far from an elusive concept reserved for marketing gurus. In reality, it's a fundamental tool that any business owner can and should utilize.

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What is brand strategy?

Think of brand strategy as like the blueprint of a house.

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Blueprints give a house shape. Giving structure and dimensions to each room in relation to its surroundings. Without blueprints or house plans, you’re gonna have a hard time building a house in an efficient and organized way. 

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The same goes for building a brand: if you don’t have a plan and established boundaries set up, you’ll lose direction and consistency.

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Have you ever felt scattered, unsure of who you're addressing, what to say, or how to visually package your message? That's what happens when you lack a strategic plan for navigating your industry and the broader business world.

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You need a roadmap—a clear plan outlining how your brand will progress from one milestone to the next.

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Understanding Brand Strategy

If you’re still unsure as to what brand strategy is, try answering this key question:

With my services/skills/offerings - who are the right people that would benefit from working with us and how can we talk to who they are NOW and to who they wanna be in the future?

That question touches on some of the key components of what makes up a brand strategy. So let’s break it down: 

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That question covers your target audience, what offerings you provide, the benefits of those offerings, and your messaging. 

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There are additional components of brand strategy that that question doesn't quite answer, but it covers the gist. 

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Positioning and Perspective

Being able to answer that question is positioning you (keyword here is positioning) in the right direction to understand the space that your brand is accompanying in your industry in contrast to your competitors. 

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That space that you’re occupying and HOW you occupy it is called your positioning and perspective.

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How your brand positions itself in the minds of its audience is an extremely important piece of what brand strategy is.

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When you shape the perceptions people have of what your brand does, who it speaks to, what it believes, and the bigger impact it wants to make on the world, you position your brand in their mind for future recall when they need you.

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Memorability is the goal.

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You want your positioning and messaging to be so strong and so on-point that when the right people need you, they can immediately call you to mind. That makes them more likely to purchase from you.

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For example: when you think of a luxury car, what brands come to mind first?

• Range Rover
• Mercedes Benz
• Ferrari
• Porsche

And the brands that probably don’t come to mind are brands like a Toyota, Kia or Nissan.

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Toyota recognizes it's not the first brand associated with "luxury car." However, this doesn't stop them from innovating and updating their vehicles to position themselves as a more luxurious or reliable option compared to competitors like Nissan or Chevrolet.

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A Mental Filing System

Think of your audience’s brain as one big room filled with a fuck ton of file cabinets. 

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Each file cabinet is a category: skincare, sports, interior design, cars, etc. Everyone has a ton of cabinets depending on their interests. Some have a lot of folders in each cabinet, and some don’t.

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Inside each file cabinet are hundreds and thousands of file folders for each brand/business that they’ve encountered in that category. 

Brand strategy is about deciding where you want your file folder to fit in your target audience’s brain.

Once you understand that, you’ll have a better understanding of the psychological issues that your audience is struggling with and how to position your brand as the no-brainer solution for them. 

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You won’t feel the need to jump on every new trend, product, or marketing strategy because that isn’t what your people need from you to get what they want. You’re able to stay true to your brand values and vision while avoiding sounding like everyone else.

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Step Two: Copywriting

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Now that you've established your brand's positioning strategy, it's time to transform those ideas into compelling, relatable content. This is where copywriting comes into play.

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The Power of Copywriting

Copywriting is the art of organizing your brand's message into something people can read, relate to, and—most importantly—remember. It's the natural progression from ideation to communication, just like how humans write down our big ideas or new inventions.

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This is where copywriting comes in, and why it’s so powerful.

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Through copywriting, you'll:

1. Discover multiple ways to communicate your positioning and perspective
2. Develop and refine an overall message for your brand
3. Craft words, sentences, hooks, and phrases that authentically represent your brand's voice

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Whether you choose to do your copywriting yourself or work with a copywriter - this step of fleshing out your messaging is crucial.

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Even if your copywriter works only on your website copy with you, going through the process is going to help you better understand how to talk about your brand, the benefits and transformations you provide, and why those transformations are important to your audience. 

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Writing website copy (or really copywriting for anything tbh) isn’t an easy thing for a lot of people. It can take a lot of trial and error and will sometimes leave you staring at a blank google document for hours on end with nothing to say.

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As any website designer can tell you, getting website copywriting from clients during website design projects can be…….a hassle. And that’s usually not the client’s or the designer's fault - it’s a daunting task that if you aren’t already a wordsmith, the idea of writing 3-5+ pages of website copy can be anxiety-inducing. 

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Our Approach to Copywriting

We know how hard this shit is, and that's why we've added some form of copywriting to every project here at Standard Operations:

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1. We provide every client with a comprehensive website copywriting guide to simplify the writing process.
2. Every website design project includes a complimentary copywriting audit from one of our experienced copywriters.

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We believe that on-brand, engaging, and SEO-focused copywriting is crucial to the success of any website project. Our investment in your copywriting reflects our commitment to you and your overall success.

We believe that copywriting is the bridge between your brand strategy and its visual representation. It's a vital step in creating a cohesive, memorable brand presence.

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Step Three: Choosing Your Path

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You’ve now realized that understanding who you’re talking to, what they need to hear from you, and what you’re actually going to fucking say is where the real magic is. 

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With that strategy in hand, you can choose a route that fits your current situation best: 

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Two Primary Routes

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Route One: Brand Identity Design First

If your brand identity is not aligned with your strategy and doesn’t give you confidence, then going through a rebrand (either a refresh or a complete overhaul) is the next best step. 

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This route takes all of the brand strategy work that you did previously and turns that into something visual that represents how your brand expresses itself online and off. 

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Key components of a cohesive brand identity design:

1. Strategy-first approach: Experienced designers begin with a brand strategy phase to understand:
   
   • Your brand essence
   • Your target audience
   • What attracts your audience
   • What motivates them to buy
2. Varied and cohesive brand identity suite: This typically includes:
   
   • Multiple logo variations (e.g., full name, monogram)
   • Graphics
   • Patterns
   • Icons
3. Color palette and typography options to keep your brand consistent across your marketing chanels, website, internal documents, etc.

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While every brand may not need patterns or icons, at the very minimum your brand identity suite should include multiple logo variations that can be used in various ways throughout your marketing, on your website etc.

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These variations can be in color, orientation, and each logo may be designed a bit differently as well. For example, one logo has the brand name completely spelled out, and another is a monogram.

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Having all that done by a designer takes that pressure off of you of having to be some graphic design whiz, and gives you a plethora of tools in your arsenal to represent your brand online and off. 

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Route Two: Website Redesign First

If your current brand identity is still aligned with your strategy and it gives you confidence to let it represent your brand, then working on redesigning your website so your messaging has a permanently online space to be the center of attention is the next step. 

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You have two main options:

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Purchasing a website template:

Pros:

1. Start up time is quick:
   Meaning once you purchase the template the basic setup and design of the site is already done. Designing and developing a website can take some time depending on the amount of pages and complexity of the design, so purchasing a template can cut that time down considerably.
   
   
2. Done at your own pace:
   By purchasing a template, you can launch your site whenever you’re ready. If you’re learning a new platform and you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to getting everything up and running, being able to work on this part bit by bit can be great.
   
   
3. Plug and play:
   You’ll be using the template as a guideline of where to put your copy, images, color applications, etc. This saves you time and lowers your chance of decision fatigue. And since the layouts are predetermined, you shouldn’t have to worry about the flow of each page from top to bottom in regards to how the copy, imagery, color, animations, etc. interact with each other. 

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Cons:

1. It can take forever to launch:
   Just because you have the freedom to do something at your own pace, doesn’t mean that it’ll get done quickly. I’ve heard countless stories of people purchasing website templates and letting them sit there for months. Whether work or life got in the way, the template doesn’t just magically insert all of your content into it. If your time management skills are off, purchasing a template isn’t always a time saver.
   
   
2. It’s based on someone else's idea of what your site should look like:
   When you purchase a template, you’re letting a stranger dictate what’s “generally'' best for each page of your website and what you should “generally '' include in it. None of the pages are designed with your specific brand in mind, basically forcing you into the designer and strategist role to guarantee the quality and performance of the site.
   
   
3. They aren’t based on strategy, and (depending on who you buy them from) they may not be built properly:
   This goes without saying as to why this is a problem - especially for experienced brands that have been in business for a while. If you’re feeling the need to change up your site, whether because your offers have changed or you’re trying to attract a new audience, why risk your reputation and the trust you’ve built up with your audience by purchasing a template that isn’t tailored to your business and what it needs? 

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So who are website templates best suited for?

Website templates are perfect for newer brands that are focused on getting themselves out there and building trust. Templates are a low cost solution so you can get your feet wet and get yourself in front of your audience.

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Working with a designer

Pros

1. 1-on-1 time with an expert that’s dedicated to your project and wants to see it succeed:
   Having someone (or multiple someones!) to bounce ideas off of when it comes to what to focus on, goals, strategies, and more for your website (and maybe for your business) is INVALUABLE. Your designer’s expertise on website strategy will be pivotal in making sure your website is a well oiled SEO machine that helps you engage and entertain your audience on autopilot.
   
   
2. A customized and efficient plan of action that takes you through deciding on style/overall look, structure, image choice, content, and more.
   In contrast to purchasing a template, working with a designer gives you a step by step process on developing a creative direction that’ll attract your target audience and how to execute that direction.
   
   Using a template requires you to go through that process on your own - which can be time consuming, confusing. Leaving you with a website that attracts the wrong people, isn’t optimized for legibility or usability, and damages trust with your audience.

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Cons:

1. Can be costly (usually starting at $3,000 + depending on your needs)
   Working with a designer is an investment - one that you shouldn’t make lightly. Depending on your needs and your budget, you may not need something completely custom. We offer sem-custom websites for brands that need something more tailored than a template but a website with all of the bells and whistles isn’t quite necessary.
   
   Our semi-custom websites are built off of an internal template that we only use with our clients, and we then customize and redesign certain sections to better fit your brand, copywriting, and creative direction. It cuts our design and development time in half, while still giving you a unique and custom site.
   
   
2. Can take longer (may take anywhere from two weeks to eight weeks depending)
   This is going to vary from designer to designer, but custom projects are going to take a few weeks to go from strategy to launch. While this may seem like a long time, we promise you - time definitely flies.
   
   The great thing is that you’re along for the ride while we walk you through it every step of the way. Many people find that after purchasing a template they aren't fully aware of everything that goes into launching or relaunching a site, but when you work with a designer, the heavy lifting is done for you. Especially if they’re also taking care of the copywriting 😉
   
   

3. Your active and timely participation is needed:
   Your active, honest, constructive and open-minded participation is crucial to the success of your project. Your designer, no matter their skill or experience level, will still need some guidance and feedback from you to make sure that the project accomplishes the goals you want it to. 

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Let's Recap: The Best Order to Invest

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The answer to the question “What should I do/invest in first? Brand Identity Design, Copywriting or Website Design?” is this:

1. Strategy
2. Copywriting 
3. Brand Identity Design or Website Design (depending on your needs)

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That can be a stressful four course dinner to work your way through. I’ve had to do it multiple times for myself and with all of our clients. And while the process is streamlined and straightforward to me and my team - it can be a lot to take on all by yourself.

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Removing that stress is a big reason why adding in the copywriting element to my studio’s offerings was a no brainer. I wanted to remove another barrier that stops people from confidently talking about what they do and why. 

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While you can always choose when and how to take care of each of these projects for your brand, you can save time and stress by working with a studio or a copywriter for some or all of the projects.

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When you DIY everything, you can run the risk of sending out a confusing and disorganized message to your audience - which leads to you leaving money on the table and pushing your ideal client further and further away.