Ready for 2026? Start with Strategy (and Skip the Panicbranding)
Gas up the tractor and bring on the new year—it’s time to reframe your goals, survey your land and grow some figurative crops. If you’re like us, you’re already thinking about ways to reinvigorate your client-facing materials and think through your marketing strategies so that you can hit your targets in 2026. We love this time of year—when the enthusiasm is on the rise and the appetite for strategy is strong. We look forward to juicy conversations with our clients about how their brand DNA intersects with their goals for the upcoming year.
Creating space for strategy allows our clients to avoid the terrible business of panicbranding. Panicbranding is just what it sounds like: trying to force a last-minute rebrand or build a new website in record time to accommodate an impending event or launch. Branding is a process, not an event. It takes time to build a strong foundation from which every part of your business can grow. If you have dreams of a brand refresh or a website renovation, give yourself the space and time to work through your ideas.
We get it—strategy isn’t the glitziest part of the process, but it is absolutely necessary. Plus, it saves you money in the long run by preventing dodgy investments and costly course-corrections. So before you crank up your advertising budget, hire a few new VAs to churn out social media content, employ a firm to beef up your SEO, invest thousands of dollars in a shiny new gewgaw that you believe is necessary for marketing, there’s something you need to do first: think it all through. Here are a few areas that might require some in-depth strategy as you review your materials to kick off the new year.
Brand Clarity
As we’ve seen (and experienced first-hand) the attention span of the contemporary adult human is shrinking at a dramatic and uncomfortable rate. This means websites have a very limited window in which to capture the attention of prospective audience members. Three to eight seconds is about all the time users will spend on a website before making the critical decision to stick around and investigate further or to bolt for greener pastures.
This doesn’t leave brands a lot of wiggle room to communicate the important aspects of their business. Here are a few key questions that should be addressed in the first few sections of your homepage:
What services does your business provide?
How can you relieve the pain points for your audience?
What makes you distinct among your competitors?
To convey this critical information in three to eight seconds requires well-crafted answers to preliminary questions, such as: Who is your target audience? What is the purpose of your brand and what is the mission that helps you achieve this purpose? A strategy session can help you address these questions and prepare you for writing thoughtful marketing copy that connects with your audience in the short time you have their attention.
Trust + Professionalism
We’ve worked with many clients who theoretically understand the importance of brand cohesion—Brand is everything! They’ll declare, looking earnestly into our eyes—but upon further investigation, we’ll discover that the shade of red they’re using on their website is wildly different from the one that appears on their Instagram graphics. Or their marketing messaging uses different terms to describe the same service. Or they will contradict their brand values in order to tap into a marketing fad. Whatever the case, a lack of brand cohesion erodes trust, which ultimately costs clients.
The new year is a great time to take stock of client-facing digital and print materials and evaluate them for consistency. Go through each page of your website. Click every link. Reread your social media bios. Scan the visuals across your platforms to make sure they’re aligned. Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve taken the full tour of your materials, and the information you’re putting out into the world has become outdated. Maybe links have been broken or testimonials on the website extol services that you no longer provide. A refresh doesn’t have to make you gnash your teeth, weep at the sky and shell out thousands of dollars—it can simply be an in-depth review of how your brand shows up in the world.
Communication
Some websites send users on a mysterious quest to discover what services they’re providing and how users can access them. Remember, if you only have three to eight seconds to get someone’s attention, your organization and messaging needs to be watertight. You’d hate to lose a potential client who is interested in your services but can’t find their way to the point of purchase. Or what about a prospective client who wants to know more about the services you offer, but can’t find a comprehensive sales page with all the details?
The way you communicate your brand to the world is wrapped up in all of these moments. It’s important to create multiple, organic pathways through your website to the point of purchase so that users don’t have to hack a trail through the jungle of your copy to find what they’re looking for. A lot of this comes from the way your website is organized. How many top-level navigation items do you have? If you have more than five, is there a way to consolidate categories so as not to overwhelm the audience? Do you have a page for FAQs on your website? This will help boost SEO, but also, it will give insight into how your business works and address common questions that may help a prospective client determine if you are a good fit.
Try to see your website through the eyes of your audience—how might you move through the site if you were seeking information? How are you titrating information to your audience, leading them through the site without overwhelming them? When potential clients reach the point where they’re ready to act, do you have a strong call to action or a guide to next steps?
Alignment
As we’ve learned, it takes time (sometimes years!) to arrive at a place where you feel like your services are aligned with your audience and you’ve ironed out the finer points of your brand and how it functions in the world. Sometimes this involves niching down, sometimes it means leaning into what makes your brand distinct or learning how to scale efficiently as you grow. Over time, a business experiences change and requires ongoing strategy and evaluation to ensure everything remains aligned.
Alignment can speak to many different aspects of a business. Consider your clients—are you working with the types of clients you want to work with? Can you tweak your marketing messaging to weed out certain types of inquiries that are wasting your time? Alignment might also relate to brand perception. For example, have you evolved into a premium brand and started working with higher-end clients, but your services still reflect your original budget pricing? Evaluate which elements of your business need to catch up to who your brand is in 2026, and consider refining your marketing messaging, services or workflows to sync with where you’re headed.
As you set your sights on the year ahead, remember that sustainable growth starts with intention, not panic. By slowing down to clarify your brand, refine communication and realign your business with your current goals, you create fertile ground for everything that follows. Set yourself up for success in 2026 by leaning into strategy and skipping the mad scramble of panicbranding.