What Does Branding Mean to You?

Yesterday, I was walking the furkids when I came across 2 coffee vans.

One had great photos, professionally placed on the front of the van. The colours were appealing, the food in the photos looked delicious, and the menu was easy to see and read.

The second van had sticky taped laminated images, which had handwritten prices, and the words Toast 4 You stencilled on the front. Even the sticky tape was wrinkled in its placement.

Which van do you think was doing the most business???

The one that had taken the time to make itself look appealing, of the one that had adopted a 'Good Enough' approach?

Yes...of course...the one with the good branding.

We know that branding is important for traditional businesses to attract customers to them, but those same principles are just as important - if not more so - when brought back to us in our online endeavours.

Nobody is going to use our services just because we are conveniently positioned.

We don't have the luxury of drive past traffic.

We have to be able to attract our clients to us, and build know like and trust with them...

And a lot of that trust will come from our branding.

Now most people think that branding is all about a pretty logo and choosing our colours, and while that is a part of it, it is just the surface layer of branding.

I want to run through 4 main areas you need to take into consideration when you start to brand yourself online.

1. Messaging

Before we get anywhere near the pretty logo part, we need to have nailed in our messaging, or our message to the market.

Who do you help? How do you help them? What benefit can they expect from your help? And just importantly, who don't you help?

These questions are the starting point for our research into our avatar. We need to know our avatar intimately so that we can call them out, be that voice messaging in their head, and take up their own internal dialogue where they left off.

You see it is not just our logo that needs to be consistent, but what we are saying and doing.

Our story, our ethics, our morals, what we stand for, what we hate, our struggles, are all things that are going to draw people to us and bind them to us far more than our logo ever will.

WE need to be a polarising personality to be memorable and attract our perfect clients.

WE need to be showing up consistently, as that leader that can help them overcome their pains and frustration.

Our brand should be more about WHO WE ARE, AND HOW WE HELP PEOPLE than about anything else.

Well before you start designing your logo, or choosing you colours, or all the fun stuff, you need to have researched your avatar, and yourself, to make sure that you have a strong, consistent message that you are going to be using in your marketing.

2. Claiming

Once you have worked out your messaging, you need to come up with your brand name.

Now it is fun to come up with a business name, but the most important brand you need to grow as a coach, is yourself.

Brand yourself, and as you grow and change, your brand will grow and change with you.

People want to do business with people.

Look at all the great online successes out there, and you will find that most of them (all the ones you can remember) branded themselves!

Now whether or not you brand yourself, or a business name, you need to 'Claim Your Real Estate'.

Go and get all the social media handles that match your brand, plus your domain name, EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO USE THEM NOW!

Even if you just want to start with Facebook, also grab the Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, Domain name etc now, so that when you are ready to use them, your branding will be consistent.

As you start to scale your business, you will start moving into these other platforms to create a blanket of social proof. It would suck if you missed out on a congruent brand because you didn't claim your real estate at the start.

3. Strategy

AS you create each piece of your branding, have your overall strategy front of mind.

How are you helping people? And what do you want them to do?

What action do you want them to take within your branding?

Do you want them to get your lead magnet? Do you want them to book a call with you?

These are things you can incorporate into your headers for your social media platforms.

You want to have one primary goal with everything that you create. One action you want people to take.

Do not give them options. You will just confuse them.

A confused mind will always say no!

That's not to say you can't have different CTA's you are using, just don't give more than one at a time.

SO always be asking yourself, what is my aim here? What am I trying to get people to do? What is my overall strategy?

4. Packaging

Now, after you have worked out the rest of it, you can get to the fun stuff!!!

But I want you to remember something very important.

If your business is not growing, it is most probably NOT YOUR LOGO that is the problem.

It will be your messaging...

Or your inconsistent activity...

Or your lack of money-making activity.

You can work very hard in a business without actually doing any money-generating activity, and then when the clients are not coming it is easy to jump to the conclusion that it is your branding that is the issue.

Now if you have done your research and worked out your messaging, your packaging is the easy part.

The icing on the cake...

The wrapping on the present...

It is the pretty stuff that makes us look professional, and it needs to be consistent across our different platforms, so that we are recognisable.

The colours and the fonts need to be attractive to your potential clients.

If you are a female, helping men, you need to use colours that will appeal to, and attract them. Not your favourite shade of hot pink.

Remember that your branding is the flower that attracts the bee. So it needs to be attractive to that bee.

Have fun with it. And, if design is not your strong point, outsource it. But you want to be able to give your designer the elements that you want incorporated into your design. So fonts, colours, concepts, mission statements.

One more reason why the packaging part needs to come last.

Right, well I hope that has helped you to see branding in a more three dimensional way than just the shiny logo that graces your business cards.

In your corner,

Donna Joy

P.S. Want help building out your online business. Jump on a speed coaching call with me so we can start looking at your goals, and what's currently standing in the way of getting there. https://donnajoyusher.com/speed-coaching1