Are you struggling to stay in love with your brand look? You find yourself beavering away hours and hours re-editing your logo design, picking new fonts, colour palettes, rearranging the content on your website again and again, all in the hopes to better what you had before. Maybe your aimlessly scrolling on Pinterest and spot a new trend to copy or someone else’s designs you think “Ohhh that looks pretty, I should be more like that!“
The frustrating part is, in the moment re-designing your visuals sometime can feel like the right thing to do. You convince yourself that this is the last time you’ll re-brand, because it feels like you’ve truly found the perfect look. But like a true perfectionist you find yourself getting the itch. Doubt re-surfaces again and you start questioning your brand all over again…
Is it professional or pretty enough?
But, wait is this really me?
Is it attracting the ideal customers I want?
But is it as good as theirs?
Don’t worry your not alone I’ve experienced this first hand and know how to put an end to the re-branding cycle. Stay tuned if you want to learn exactly why you can’t stick to your brand look, identify the key problems that have accumulated beneath your brand causing you all this frustration and doubt. I’ll help you address these issues, so you can have a brand that feels insync with your business. Feel happier and confident with your branding, so you can free up more time to grow the audience you want and build trust online.
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The problem in your brand process
When on social media we can’t help ourselves but make snap judgments and compare ourselves to others. It’s no shook we do this with our brand. When we see someone else’s brand looking better than our own and are clearly killing it online. You start to doubt your own brand strength. You might of in the past jumped to the solution to copying their’s, because if it’s doing great things for them…why can’t it do the same for you, right? Unfortunately branding doesn’t work that way, another brand style cannot transfer over it’s trust, traffic, audience or level of success over to you it has to be earned.
“Don’t Copy, Create!”
Plus lets take a moment to realise that copying is never a good idea. A brand is your way to show off why a specific person should buy or work with you. Your brand is there to differentiate you from the masses, highlight your youness. Think about Friends the show, each character has a different set of traits. And either we can everyone either identify with one or have a favourite! A show with all the same sort of characters would work and be pretty boring to watch. You brand needs to be different from the rest. Copying someones branding is just a way for you to hide, and a indication that you might currently be struggling with confidence issues online. Don’t panic your not alone and it’s something we will address later.
Perfection Mindset
I understand you want to impress your ideal customers! Have the perfect brand look, which includes being original, professional creative a dam right clever! You love what you do, and want only the best for your business, and that includes having the best brand! But, by constantly striving for this idea of perfection it comes at timely cost, which I’m sure you’re well aware of by now, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Being perfect all the time will only make you think that there is always room for improvement. It’s arguably a form of procrastination I believe it can stem from a place of fear, fear of not being good enough or ready. And thus why you’ve been dedicating hours tweaking pixels on a screen and not growing your brand or doing the things that will make you money.
The Core Problem
If you’ve been mentally nodded in agreement, then listen closely here. The reason why you’ve been struggling is because you’ve been choosing your brand style for all the wrong reasons. You’ve been too hung up on looking the best, impress your customers and perfect what you already have. Rather than getting a firm hold on what is right for you. If you hadn’t realised the best and most impact full brands come in all shapes and sizes you know why? Because they’ve been built specifically in that way for a reason, for a specific business, and for solely their purpose. It’s time to stop copying, stop hiding, stop doubting and take control of your brand for good.
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How to fix the problem
Your probably wondering so what do I need to do? Hopeful by now you’ve realised that no matter the amount of brand editing, it will never provide you with the satisfaction or contentment you want. This will only happen when you gain some brand clarity. To end this re-branding cycle, you must go to the root core of your brand. Gain a clear idea on what type of message you are trying to communicate. It’s time to connect you with your audience and stop being so focused on being the best. And start identifying on what the best looks like for you. So repeat after me
“It’s less about how my brand looks and more about why it should look like this.”
Take Your Time
In order to get you off this brand conveyor belt you put yourself on. You must stop and curve out a chunk of time to understand what you want. This is the step you’ve been missing previously and the root cause to all your problems. You may feel this sudden urge to rush through this stage because you’ve already spent so much previous time on re-branding. I know you need to get back to your to do lists and the things that make you happy and makes you money online. I see you see but in all seriousness don’t speed through this process. If you do you’ll more likely be back here again! And it will only end up costing you and hurting your business.
Be More Strategic
Have you hear brand designers harper on about the importance of building an intentional and strategic brand? Well…this is what we are really referring too. It’s time for you to gain a clear, deeper understanding around who your brand is. What it is you want to communicate ? Who you want I to attract and talk to? Think of these as your brand pillars, once you have got them in place, you can easy align and design a brand look on-top. You can stop choosing things on a whim, stop using your subjective eyes, and feel less impulsive to go on what looks good in the moment. Instead you can mindfully select elements and a brand style with reason! You can now form a meaningful brand look that is deeper for you than just shallow looks.
Aligning your brand strategy with your brand look
Once you’ve completed the process you’ll have the language and visuals to explain clearly who your brand is, use it, defend it and uphold it. The way you talk about your brand should just simple roll of the tongue as naturally as when someone asks you for your name, no hesitation, just simple effortless. And the visuals you pick for your brand language should now feel like home for your business. So that now when your tempted to copy another businesses design, you can rationally understand, that it wouldn’t be right for you because it hasn’t been made with you in mind. Up next I’ll be guiding you in how to create brand design that will stick.
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How to do it
You
By getting a good idea on your personality, style, identity strengths and weaknesses. You can build a brand that is just right for you and your needs.
It’s vital in this section to identify how you play a part in your brand identity. For example. Do you want your personality and face as the central focus for your brand? If your already showing up online everyday and have no issues around showing your face, this might be the perfect positioning for you.
However, if you’ve been using someone else brand identity as a crutch, to hide behind. And the thought of talking on social media gives you cold sweats. You may feel more comfortable taking a step back from the brand focus. And implement other ways to connect with your audience. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever show your face, I would highly recommend that you work on it! But, this way you don’t feel pressured to build a brand that relies on you showing up!
Who are you talking to?
We all know that if your brand is talking to everyone, it’s really talking to now one. But that doesn’t mean you have to be talk to one specific person, but to a specific ideal group. I identity who it is you brand is talking to is a key step in building a brand.
If you haven’t already made an ideal customer or client profile you can listen to the full version of this section in episode 7. I’ll guide you here through the key points,
Who do you want to do business with?
What do they want and need?
What drive behaviour in your ideal audience?
What are there problems externally and internally?
What are they visually attracted to?
It’s tricky to get into the mind of your customer, so it best to refer to proven methods. Use a personality type system, to identity your customers personality. We can tell a lot from a personality type, such as what they desires, fears, drivers and struggles. That is best place to start.
Brand Strategy
It’s now time to identity what you want to communicate to your audience. We’ll be closely looking at your messaging, story and values.
Firstly your messaging, this will include your purpose, mission and vision statement. You purpose is more the emotional reason for you brand, The mission is more the action and visions is your look term view.
Ok, moving onto story, your story is a way for you to connect and relate to your audience. Sharing your story with people is more powerful than you know. We might not remember you face or name, but your customers and clients will always remember a story.
Lastly your values, your values are so important, they are just random keywords to describe your brand you need meticulously think about what it is you want to be known for, stand for and be remembered. Your brand might evolve but your values are here to stay forever. If you’ve never done any brand strategy work please take advantage of my free resources and go listening to episode 3 were I break brand strategy into manageable bite size pieces.
Now it’s time to gather all this information and use it to help influence your brand look. Your brand has been feeling off because you’ve been building it inside out. It’s now time for you to design a brand that reflects everything you stand for. I understand it can be difficult for non-creative listening how do I turn all this into a look?
Here’s a simplified way to take what you know and select 3 keyword to help guide you in designing your brand look. You have realised that your brand is more a luxury due to higher prices. Therefore it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with more luxury brand style as inspiration. Your second keyword might of been discovered within your ideal audience, personality type. Use this information as a way to understand what they would visual enjoy seeing and channel that through the design. Your last keyword might be from your values, reliable and that could be represent simple though colour or fonts used.
There will be a few varying brand direction you could take your look towards. So it’s important that you look carefully remember what it is your trying to communicate. Gather inspiration from a group, rather than focusing in on one. That way you wont make the same mistake and look like a duplicate of someone else.
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Start Sticking To Your Brand Look!
It’s time wrap this puppy up! You’ve now got all the knowledge and steps to build a brand identity that will not only stick, but will actually work for you! Instead of it become a hindrance! It’s it exciting that you can finally say goodbye to the frustrating re-branding cycle, and start moving forward to make time for growth! I know your ready! So start getting to know your brand in-depth with strategy. Needing a little more hand holding with the brand strategy stuff? I’ve got you covered! Tune into The BrandMade Podcast and use my five simple steps to building brand strategy.