Are you looking for brand strategy training courses to take in 2023?
There’s no better way to start the year than taking a good course and upgrading your skills.
Why not?
It’s stiff competition for designers and freelance professionals out there.
Companies and brands are looking for designers who bring more to the table than just logos and brand materials.
Though exciting and sad at the same time, there are now DIY design tools like Canva and Visme to assist the average business owner and marketer to create logos and designs.
So if that’s the only thing you bring to the table, then you might have a hard time finding high-paying clients (or maybe already swarming in the famine).
I’m not saying designers no longer have a job in the industry, we still do but you need to be able to bring more to the table.
And speaking of more, skill and service that complements you best is brand strategy.
A rich understanding of brand strategy and how to apply it will set you apart from other designers. And this is the dream of every average designer – differentiation.
You can learn the basics of Brand strategy by watching YouTube videos and reading books and blogs.
But that would require countless hours and dedication.
A better alternative is to take a course on brand strategy.
A brand strategy training course holds you by your hand and teaches you everything you need to know.
You learn from others and also see how other designers and brand strategists are applying it to their businesses and clients.
In this article, I gathered and reviewed the best brand strategy training courses to take.
It’s also worth mentioning that these courses are not ranked in any order, just randomly (except the first course which is my #1 recommendation).
Also, you don’t need several courses because that would be too expensive and not worth it. You only need a very good course that covers everything you need to know.
With that said, let’s get into the list.
#1 Brand Master Secrets
This is our #1 recommendation. Brand Master Secrets is a course offered by Brand Master Academy.
It is one of the two courses offered by the Academy. The Brand Master Secrets covers powerful steps to build effective brand strategies.
It teaches you all you need to know about brand strategy and how to develop one.
The course is targeted at people looking to offer brand strategy as a service to other businesses and also to their business.
You get to relate with other Brand strategists and experts charging high for their service.
You learn industry techniques and strategies. What makes Brand Master Secrets different from the rest of the courses on this list is the fact that it is value-packed.
It is fully loaded with several mini-courses and bonuses to help you.
Here’s a breakdown of the mini-courses you get access to in addition to the main course:
- The Brand Masterclass
- The Brand Master Playbook
- The Brand Master Toolbox
- The Trophy Client Sales Funnel
- The Brand Strategy Matrix
- The Agency Model Framework
All these are mini-courses that come along with the main course as bonuses.
Each of these mini-courses consists of several videos and can be treated as stand-alone courses.
Brand Master Academy has a youtube channel that goes by the same name.
Stephen Houraghan, Brand Master Academy’s founder publishes useful branding videos on the channel.
Here’s what others have to say about the course:
Who is it for?
Brand Master Secrets is best for brand strategists and designers looking to establish themselves as consultants and charge a premium for their services.
It is by far the most comprehensive course on brand strategy out there that specially focuses on brand strategy. It provides the systems and tools needed to become a better and highly-paid brand strategist.
BMS Price
BMS comes at a one-time fee of $897 or a three-part payment of $347 per month.
#2 Core Discovery from The Futur
Core Discovery for Creatives is another brand strategy training course that you would want to consider.
Core Discovery for Creatives is a course offered by The Futur, an online school driven by creatives and experts excelling in their niche and space.
This is why the courses on The Futur are taught by experts in their niches and industry.
In this case, Core Discovery’s instructor is Jose Caballer, a digital agency owner and a graphics design expert. According to his bio, Jose studied graphic design at Art Center College of Design and was then schooled by the COM boom at Razorfish, a digital agency that started in the ’90s.
Core Discovery is a course for designers that help them take a more clear and simple approach to nailing the business needs and visions.
The course hands you the tools to understand and focus on a clear vision and a plan to achieve the goal.
The major objective is to help you nail your client strategy session and avoid the tiring series of back-and-forth with the clients.
You get access to client discovery templates that you can learn from and also duplicate in your business.
Also, it comes with client strategy session videos to watch and learn from. Not just that, you get access to exclusive Q&A webinars to ask burning questions and things you have been wanting to know more about pertaining to brand strategy and designing.
To crown it all, you get lifetime access to the course and you’ll continue to enjoy the lifetime updates that are being added to the course.
The course is broken down into four:
- Discovery Work Sessions
- Strategy Facilitation
- Build & Define Brands
- Charge for Discovery
Who is it for?
CORE Discovery is a course for creatives and designers who want to build processes around their business to systemize and scale. It is also for brand strategists and web designers.
You can also add an extra income channel to your business by charging for discovery sessions.
Price
CORE Discovery costs a one-time price of $489.
#3 The Brand Strategy Sprint by Scott
Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU Stern and the founder of Section4.
He is a New York Times best-selling author and an expert in marketing and branding.
Scott boasts of having spent over a decade working with and researching the world’s greatest brands and this makes him a man to learn from.
Just like you must have guessed, he is the instructor and creator of The Brand Strategy Sprint.
The Brand Strategy Sprint is a course with live sessions where students can engage with the instructor in real-time, asking questions and getting responses.
It is a 3-week sprint course and not always available, the course is run in sessions of which the next batch is taking place March 7 – March 28.
While the course is hosted as live sessions, each session is recorded for easy access of students later on.
So even if you’re busy and not able to catch up with one of the sessions, there are always recordings of the sessions available for you to rewatch.
While Scott is the creator and founder of the course, he welcomes guest instructors.
A guest author you’ll find lecturing some part of the course is Katherine Dillon, an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She lectures visual language, design fundamentals, UX, and more.
Here is a quick breakdown of what the course will cover:
- Brand strategy as the foundation of value creation
- Brand’s strength and opportunities
- Firm’s value proposition and competitive differentiation
- Strategic recommendations on how to spend resources
- Personal brand optimization
- Value communication via branding
Who is this for?
The Brand Strategy Sprint is a course for brand strategists, marketers, designers, and founders themselves.
The course is targeted to help you develop an effective brand strategy for building your branding. So, founders and marketers are not left out.
Price
A major downside to this course is that its price is on the high side. It costs a one-time fee of $995, approx $1k.
#5 Brand Strategy Class by Mark Pollard
Brand Strategy: Build a Business that Lasts is a course by Mark Polland which is available on Skillshare.
This course is a short course with a duration of 1 hr 24 mins. Already taken by 11 thousand students, this goes to show that it is worth the investment.
The course is not for intermediate, instead, it is targeted at beginners just starting their brand strategy and designing career. It covers the basic and fundamental things about brand strategy.
A little about the instructor is that he is the founder of Sweathead, a strategy membership community where he hosts his short strategy classes for premium members.
Mark Polland is regarded as an expert in the brand strategy space and has been interviewed on a couple of sites like eBaqdesigns.
Here is what the course outline for the 1-hour course looks like:
- Introduction
- The 3-Brand Model
- Model 1- Product centric
- Model 2 – customer centric
- Model 3 – vision-centric
- Brand-on-a-page
- Final thoughts
- Strategy AMA with Mark
- More classes on Skillshare
Who is the course for?
This course is different from the rest because it is very short and also very affordable. It is a course targeted at beginners who are new to the world of brand strategy. It is an affordable way to get your feet wet.
#6 Branding Masterplan by Daniel
Branding Masterplan is another branding course on our list of best Brand Strategy Training Courses.
It’s a course for brand strategists, consultants, and business owners looking to build a solid brand.
It provides you with a brand strategy toolkit and framework to build a brand strategy for your business.
Here’s what you get access to in the toolkit:
7-figure Framework
The 7-figure framework is a step-by-step framework developed and used by Daniel’s agency to build a $1m+ brand from scratch.
Interactive Tools
The Branding Masterplan course also provides tools in form of templates to ease your branding work.
70+ Branding Videos
The course comes along with over 70 branding videos that cover both the theory and practical aspects of building a solid brand.
Members Community
Finally, you get access to a members-only community where you meet other brand strategists and business owners.
Who is it for?
Brand Masterplan is a course for brand strategists and designers looking to improve their offer and service to attract high-ticket clients. It is also for business owners and founders that want to be a remarkable brand.
Price
This course costs $595 which you can also split into a three part payment of $199/month.
#7 Design Strategy by IDEO U
IDEO U is an online university that provides design and strategy training courses.
It offers certificate programs, cohort courses, and self-paced courses.
From a 5-weeks duration to 3 months, you’ll find both a variety of short-term courses on the platform.
Design Strategy is one of the main courses offered by IDEO U.
The Design Strategy has a certification program, so you’ll be awarded a certificate on the completion of the course.
Here’s what the course outline look like:
- Identify a strategic problem that your organization faces, frame it as a question, and brainstorm possibilities to solve it.
- Surface and pick the conditions that would need to be true to make the possibility a winning strategy.
- Build and conduct different types of tests to help you choose among your possibilities.
- Set your team up to be able to take action on the strategic choices you make.
If you’re wondering about the cost, it costs $799. The duration of the course is 5 weeks.
Compared to BMS (Brand Master Secrets), this course isn’t comprehensive enough and 0nly touches the surface.
#8 Free Brand Strategy Classes (SkillShare)
Skillshare is my preferred Academy to find short-term online courses to take.
Skillshare offers free brand strategy classes that you can take advantage of if you don’t have the budget for expensive courses.
These courses are offered by several experts and you can take a bunch of them.
- Do Things, Tell People: The Power of Personal Branding
- The Branding Masterclass for Graphics Designers: The Entire Process
- The Staples of Branding: From Purpose to Product
- Storytelling for Leaders: How to Craft Stories that Matter
- Among several other courses.
Most of these courses are free or less than $15.
Which is the Best Brand Strategy Training Course?
From the results and testimonies, the Brand Master Secrets is the best brand strategy course.
You don’t need to take my word for it, JustCreatives also recommend it as the #1 brand strategy course.
What makes BMS different from the other courses on this list is that it is all-inclusive. It is a comprehensive course on brand strategy and also comes along with mouth-watering bonuses (mini-courses).
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