One of them even said that I did so much more for her then guide her with her business, but that she felt that her taking action in her business impacted her taking positive action in her life. And to be honest I did not realise that our weekly calls about her business could have such an impact on her life.
For me, starting these mentoring session, was about sharing my knowledge and experience about running a business, getting clarity, deciding which services to offer, visual branding and how to get your business out there. I did not want other business owners going from one week knowing what the next step in business needs to be to yelling from frustration the week after because they just don’t know what to do next.
Been there, done that… more times than I can count……
I had SO MANY IDEAS floating in my head of what I wanted my business to become. Branding, semi-custom branding, custom website design, website templates, coaching, courses, passive income, a template shop and workshops.
All to get the freedom to work for myself, and not for a huge company to only make them more money. The freedom to travel more. It was so clear what I wanted to do, I just needed to do it.
I read all the tutorials and “tips + tricks” about branding, website design, getting a strong foundation and using social media.
I put all my planning skills in action and created a launch plan. I wanted to get my website out there as quick as possible.
Because that would mean I would get my business out there and then the clients would come right?
But they didn’t.
So I took course after course, all teaching me one thing, and I would continue full of energy because this was going to be it.
This course was going to make THE difference.
But it didn’t.
I was so overwhelmed, there was SO MUCH to learn, there was SO MUCH I wanted to do but I had no clear direction.
And then I got it. I knew why I had no clear direction.
I realised I skipped a few steps in the beginning.
I did not take the time to create a clear foundation for my business and my brand.
Because I didn’t, I did not know where to start, what to focus on and how to reach my ideal clients and my goals.
And this is where my idea of this Brand Foundation Series came from. To make sure these important first steps are not skipped and you don’t hit into this wall constantly because you don’t know what to do next.
How do these topics relate to each other?
None of the topics in this series are probably new to you. But you can spend a lot of time on creating your foundation, but if you just write your mission, values and believes down on a piece of paper and put it away, all this work is not going to make any difference in your business.
All of the posts in the Brand Foundation Series are pieces of the puzzle. Just like you start with looking for the corner pieces to get you started with the outer lines of your puzzle, you need these same corner pieces, your brand foundation, to start your business. Separately these pieces don’t have a large impact but once you start combining the pieces one by one to create that foundation, those boundaries, for the inside you can start with piecing together the rest of the puzzle – your brand strategy.
And as you will see from the illustrations below, you do really need all the pieces of the puzzle to create the complete picture. When you miss one element, this can easily impact several other elements. And when it comes to your business, missing this one element can be the differences between getting clients or not having clients at all or between having ‘bad’ clients and ‘the right’ clients.
And you might know all of this but still struggle to see the connection between all the elements. So let’s break all these steps down to see how they all relate to each other. And which posts in the Brand Foundation Series relate to each of these topics.
The first steps.
First, you need to look for those corner pieces to get you started and that will be the driving force behind your business:
- Your purpose or why – and no, this is not to make money. This is about why are you starting this particular business.
- Your vision and mission. Your vision is how you would like things to be in the future. You can see this as your big dream for your business. What success will look like for you? What do you aspire your business to be? So your vision is not about how you are going to do it, but about what you want your business to become. So where your vision is related to the future, your mission statement is about what you currently do by combining what you do and who you do it for.
- Define your values and beliefs as this will drive your businesses behaviour. And as a result, this will impact your client journey and client satisfaction. And who does not love great testimonials that will help persuade your next clients?
In the series, I am starting with your vision and mission, followed by defining your why. And it might seem logical to start with this one instead of your mission and vision. But I have found that business owners do have at least some idea of where we see ourselves in the future. But when asked about your why there is a block. And I guess this is why a lot of businesses skip these steps. It’s such a ‘large’ thing too narrow down and can be so overwhelming. And I feel that because of this, it is good to start with something that is familiar and, at least, partly known before diving into something that requires a bit more work and thought.
But once this second step is clear, you can go back to your vision and mission to make sure it is still aligned.
Use the 3 blogs below to work on these first steps
The Brand Foundation Series – Why having a vision and mission is so important
The Brand Foundation Series – How to bring out your Why
The Brand Foundation Series – How to write the core values of your business
The next steps: How do you want to position your brand?
Now you need to build those outside edges of your puzzle:
- How you can make your business stand out. Here you are going to combine your foundational elements, to help you stand out in the market.
- How you do market research on your audience and find out what they are struggling with. You will need this to create your messaging and to determine the topics you will talk about in your blogs posts, newsletters, videos and social media posts.
- How to perform research on your competitors. Competitor research can be used to see who is already solving your ideal client’s problems. But instead of looking at it from your point of view, you’re trying to look at it from the audience point of view. What can you take away from what these designers are currently doing? And learn where the gaps in the market are when it comes to brand positioning. You could, for example, see that a type of service is missing, or a niche that is not served. Or all your competitors are using the same type of messaging, and you need to pick a different angle to stick out. But you can also notice you really need to step up your client experience as your competitors are getting a lot of good feedback about this in their testimonials.
In the series, these are steps 4,6 and 7. Step 5 is about your ideal client, but of directly creating a client profile, you are looking at who you want to work with first. So, therefore within your brand strategy, this is part of your ideal clients. But I would suggest that you do this before researching your market. As it will give you a better direction as who to survey for your research.
Use the 3 blogs below to work on your brand positioning
The Brand Foundation Series – How can you make your business stand out
The Brand Foundation Series – How to do research on your competitors
The Brand Foundation Series – How to perform Market research
The next steps: Your ideal client
Now you have those outside edges of your puzzle you can start working towards the middle:
- How to define your ideal client. Firstly you have to decide who you want to work with and who you don’t want to work with. And I don’t mean which niche you want to work with but which kind of people you want to work with. Because do you really want to work with every copywriter? Or every copywriter that works with coaches? Probably not. You might work best with people who are organised like you, or who respect your expertise because you don’t want to be an order-taker.
- Creating your ideal client profile. In this profile, you are combining who you want to work with and what their demographics and psychographics are. As well as their goals and what is holding them back. Because, as mentioned above, you will need this to create your messaging and content.
In the series, these are steps 5 and 8. Be sure to only start with step 8; the client profile after you have done the research. This step is key. If you don’t see a lot of engagement on social media posts, blog posts or newsletters your messaging is probably off. And there is a large chance this is caused by not knowing what your ideal audience is really struggling with.
Use the 2 blogs below to work on your defining your ideal client
The Brand Foundation Series – How to determine your ideal client
The Brand Foundation Series – How to create your ideal client profile
The next steps: Your brand messaging
Now you know it’s time to combine everything that you have worked on and get your message out by creating your brand messaging. So be sure to keep going back to your answers and double-check if the way you are speaking is in line with what you want to achieve.
This step is so important. You can know everything about your client, but if you can not convince them off all the value that you have to offer, you will still struggle with converting these ideal clients.
Use the blog below to work on your brand messaging
The Brand Foundation Series – How to craft your Brand message
In the series, the brand messaging was the last step. Off course, there is much more that comes with building a complete brand strategy, but these are the initial steps that you need to take.
So you might be thinking; I did all the exercises but now what? What are the next steps?
First things first; you need to implement all of this. This might be quite some work depending on if you already have a website, freebies, funnels, welcome sequences etc. because you will need to make sure everything that you do reflects the same messaging, the same values and the same pain points. Take your time to do this.
But before you do, take note of all your statistics if you are not already doing that. Then, start tracking the results of all your changes. Is your engagement going up? Do you see more traffic to your website? are they staying longer? Does the conversion of your lead magnets go up? Don’t start changing after one week when some of these numbers go down unless they go way down. Then teak one thing at a time. If you change 5 different things on a landing page, you will never know what made the difference.
Nothing that you do in your business is set and forget. Always track your results and keep adjusting to make it better!
I really hope I was able to give you some more insights into building your brand from the ground up, how everything is connected to each other and that if one piece of the puzzle is missing this can affect everything that you do.
