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Hey guys. I'm Sandy, and today I'm going to talk about three simple steps you can take to create a client-winning brand.
This is for you, if you are creating a brand from scratch, or if you already have a business and brand that you love, but you still find yourself struggling to get clients.
If this sounds like you, you are not alone. I have worked with coaches who are amazing, yet they were struggling to get clients and many of these coaches were also enrolled in business mentorship programs. And they were the superstars of their class.
They were doing everything right, setting up Facebook funnels, networking, and showing up on social media consistently, and yet they were still struggling. So when we took a step back and looked at their branded websites, I noticed they all had one thing in common.
It turned out their brands were missing the mark.
Even though these solopreneurs had brands that they loved, their logo, colors, and images, their brands were missing the secret ingredient. To make them successful.
Sadly, their branded websites were actually costing them and losing them potential business and sales.
Don't fret though. I've got your back because today I'm going to share with you simple steps that you can take to turn your brand into a client-winning brand so that it works for you and not against you.
So are you ready? Let's dive in.
Today I'm going to talk about how to design your brand visual identity, your logos, colors, fonts, et cetera, so that you build the know, like, and trust factor with your ideal audience.
First of all, let's talk about what is branding? A simple way to think about your brand is to think of it as the persona of your business. People connect with people. So naturally, if you have a business and you wanna create connection, it's a great idea to give your business a persona with a personality that has its core values, it has beliefs that it takes a stand for.
And then we create brand visuals that convey the emotions and the personality of your brand's persona.
Here are some great questions that you can use to think about how you want to shape the personality of your business. First of all, what is the reputation you want your business to have?
How do you want people to feel about your business when they think about it? How would you want them to describe working with you and what they say about your business when they talk about it to their friends? These characteristics will help you define your brand's personality, the vibe and the overall tone of your brand.
Now we wanna dress your brand. This is your brand's visual identity. It includes things like your logo, your colors, your images, your fonts, graphics, et cetera, and we want all of these visuals to work together to tell one brand's story, which is what is the essence and purpose of your business? What does your business do and who do you serve?
So while you may already have a brand, you wanna take a step back and look at it and see what is the brand story that I'm telling?
Because if you're growing an audience on social media, you might have tons of followers. But is this an audience of your perfect, dreamiest clients, ones who are searching for and want the product, the service or the transformation you provide? , and more so are they willing to invest in your program to achieve these results?
You might be thinking to yourself, this sounds great, Sandy, but how do we actually build a visual brand that is going to capture the attention of my ideal target audience and build that no, like, and trust factor?
The first step to creating a strategic brand is to use the attract and connect method. This is the number one key to turning a brand that's not working into a client-winning brand.
And to be honest, not using this method is where I see a lot of solopreneurs are missing the mark.
These entrepreneurs are smart and intelligent, and they've done their homework. And most of 'em have even gone through Marie Foley's B School or worked with Amy Porterfield. And they have clearly identified their ideal client avatar.
So after they complete this step, they go on to create their brand visuals. And this is where things go a little awry because there is a lot of guidance out there. There are a lot of people saying the secret sauce to creating a brand is you,
and so then what they do is they follow this advice . Okay. So to set myself apart, my brand needs to be all about me and showcase me and my personality. So then they go on to create their visual brand identity. They choose logos, colors, and images that are personally meaningful to them.
And they successfully create these beautiful personal brands.
That doesn't mean though, that it's a client winning brand.
Let me give you an example. I worked with this wonderful, amazing life coach who came to me because she was struggling to get clients
She told me a bit about her business. She named her business, Yosemite Life Coaching. She told me that she chose that name because she has a special connection to Yosemite National Park.
And she loves mountain climbing and rock climbing. So she decided to base her brand visuals on this Yosemite mountain climbing theme.
For her logo, she chose to use a line drawing of a person climbing a mountain. And she felt this was a powerful choice because it was the perfect metaphor to illustrate her personal life journey and transformation. In addition, the imagery on her website were images of Yosemite and Half Dome, et cetera.
And she did a great job of creating a personal brand.
However, if you are a personal brand that is in business, for example, you're a coach or you're a consultant, or an artist that teaches online courses, then your brand needs to do double duty.
It needs to represent you, and it also needs to clearly communicate the essence and purpose of your business...what your business does, or the problems that it solves. And the biggest part is it needs to attract and connect with your ideal client. The intersection is where the brand magic happens, and it's from this place that we want to consciously create your brand messaging, your brand visuals, your tone of voice, and the copy for your website
Today we're going to specifically focus on choosing brand visuals to tell a powerful brand story that does reach all three of these goals. It communicates the essence and purpose of your business, what you do, and connects with who you serve.
Let's go back to the example I just told you about with Yosemite Life Coaching.
This brand's visual identity was missing the mark for a couple of reasons. The first is that just by going off the visuals, it was unclear what her business actually was.
I know personally that when I visited her website and I scanned through it and I saw the images, I thought she was actually a sports climbing coach for mountain climbers, when in fact she's a life purpose coach for high-achieving executive women.
As you can see, it's really important to choose brand visuals that tell a complete story of your whole business. Why? Because you only have two to five seconds to make a first impression and capture someone's attention when they land on your website or your social media feeds.
When they are scrolling through. Your brand needs to visually communicate super clearly what you do, who you serve, and the transformation they will receive by working with you.
The second area that needed to be improved on was that her personal brand was all about her. It was completely missing the key ingredient of being able to attract and connect with her ideal client.
The hero of your brand story is actually your client. So we want to create a brand with your ideal client in mind. and a lot of the solopreneurs I have worked with that have done their homework and defined their ideals. Have come to me feeling like I really understand my ideal client, and that is true.
There's a lot of information out there about how to clarify and define your ideal client.
They will walk you through clarifying the demographics and the psychographics. But there's one special question you need to ask when you are creating visual elements for your brand.
So you'll go through, you'll define your client's demographics. For example, their gender.
What income bracket are they in? Where do they work? et cetera.
Most likely, you'll even go through their psychographics and emotional wants and needs. You'll think about what are their struggles and what are their hopes and desires?
Alright, so the third missing question that is part of the brand magic formula is to ask how does my product, service, or course, or the transformation I offer help my ideal client and in which aspect of their life are they going to use and implement what they learned from me to make their life better?
Let me give you an example to bring this to life,
Let's suppose that your niche is that you are an executive coach who helps high achieving women in their 40's. Develop and grow their executive leadership skills so they can land their dream job.
This has clearly answered what you do and who you serve.
Now I see a lot of coaches out there in this particular niche that use the color hot pink for their main brand color. This makes sense because pink represents the emotion of the feminine, and hot pink is bright and strong and powerful,
However, using hot pink as is most likely not going to attract your ideal client. Why? Well, let's take it a step further.
You know who your ideal client is and you know the transformation you offer. Now we need to consider the brand magic question, how the transformation you offer shows up in their life and in what capacity?
Since the ideal client is a corporate executive, and you're teaching her leadership skills to up-level and land that dream job, the transformation that's happening for her takes place within that area of her corporate professional work life.
Therefore, you will wanna choose colors that not only represent women, but also convey a very professional tone.
If you are in love with the idea of hot pink, because it attracts women and it's powerful and it pops, my recommendation would be to use a shade of hot pink that is toned down and a bit deeper and darker, not so flashy and bright.
Something that feels more solid and professional. Then when you're designing your brand visuals, I recommend using hot pink sparingly because it's a powerful color and it can be overwhelming if you use it too much. A great way to use hot pink in your website in branding would be to use it for your call to action buttons. .
Just to recap, we clarified what you do, who you do it for, and how your transformation will show up in her life. That intersection where the brand magic happens. And then you create your brand from this point, choosing your colors, your images, et cetera.
Let's move on to another example. In this example, we're going to say that your ideal client is the exact same woman demographically. She's a high achieving woman who's had a lot of professional and corporate success, and she's in a high income bracket, so she can afford your services.
It's the same woman demographically, however, let's say that the business and the transfer you offer is that what you do is you teach online courses on how to do beekeeping and make your own homemade honey from scratch.
Now let's think about how these two components come together to discover your brand magic, which is how your product service, or course in this case, a course on beekeeping and honey making show up.
In this busy corporate executive's life, in which aspect of her life is the transformation going to take place and play out?
So we imagine we have this corporate executive woman, likely shops in high-end specialty boutiques. So even though your business is about teaching people how to do beekeeping and make homemade honey, the overall tone of your brand will wanna be high-end and have a specialty feeling to it. Why? Because you want to feel comfortable and known to her.
Okay. Second. When you go to design and choose the actual brand visuals, you'll also do that from the brand magic sweet spot. So since she's a high achieving woman and she's interested in taking a beekeeping class and making honey, you'll wanna think about what is the emotional driver there. For her, it could be things like, she wants to find more life balance, she wants to get out in nature, she wants to do something creative.
And perhaps, if she's a working mom, she wants to um, she wants to spend more quality time with her kids having fun, and she wants to spend time with her friends and family enjoying life.
This paints a beautiful picture of how she's going to use what she learns in your course and how it's going to play out in her life and transform it for the better. . Therefore, I would recommend using imagery on your website that tells those stories. , for example, one of those images could be of a woman outside enjoying the summer sunshine, tending to her bees.
Another image could show a picture of the woman and her kids having fun jarring honey together. Another picture could be a picture of her drizzling honey on toast with her kids in the background, like all smiling, happy, excited to eat what she has made for them.
And then for the friends and family, it could be a picture of her having a cocktail party with a beautiful charcuterie board laid out. And in the center is that homemade jar of honey that people can drizzle on their brie cheese and crackers.
The whole feeling of the picture will convey this sense of her being surrounded by her friends and family, all enjoying this beautiful homemade honey that she has made from scratch.
As you can see, by really taking the time to hone in on that brand magic sweet spot, we can then carefully choose images that tell one brand story.
If I saw these images on a website, I would instantly know: What does this business do? They teach beekeeping and how to make honey two. Who's it for? Well, in the images, this woman is enjoying life with her kids and friends. So if I am the ideal client and I see myself in these images, I will instantly be attracted to it and I will connect with it.
I will feel that sense of, oh yeah, that's me. Third, these pictures show me the transformation of what's possible if I sign up and take this course. As you can see from this example, choosing the right images for your brand is essential.
It is the most powerful storyteller that there is. Colors and logos are also important because your colors are a great way to evoke feelings and emotions. So for example, if I really wanted to go with Pink for my brand color palette because I wanna attract women into my program, then what I would do as a strategy is to begin first by creating a brand image board featuring the images that we just talked about.
Then I would go through that image board and choose the right shade of pink that is harmonious with those images because you want your brand colors and your images to look great together.
Then when it comes to choosing and designing your logo, again, you will look for that brand magic sweet spot and create a logo from there.
I usually recommend creating word mark logos because they're recognizable. They build brand awareness because it's the name of your business and they're timeless.
And then you go on to choose your fonts and build your website from there.
And that is how you build a strategic brand that uses the attract and connect method that is based on discovering your brand's magic and working and creating from that point.
Let's take a step back and recap the steps that you go through to create a strategic client-winning brand that uses the attract and connect method based on discovering your brand's magic.
1. Clarify the essence of your business and what you do.
2. Define your ideal client.
3. How will your ideal client implement what you teach and what they learn in their lives and the transformation that they will experience
The intersection of the above three is the zone of brand magic.
Once you discover your brand magic, you can go for it. You can consciously create your brand visuals such as your logo, images, fonts, graphics, colors, et cetera, your brand messaging, and the copy for your website so that all these elements work together to tell one brand story. Yours.