The key to a successful business is a solid brand. Your branding is what will help people notice you in a sea of similar looking and sounding professionals.
You work so hard to run your business, so it can be heartbreaking when no-one even notices all your effort and the knowledge you bring.
You are a professional and you have skills and experience that will benefit people. Branding is all about bringing those skills to people, and showing them just how much they need your services.
Nowadays just about every industry and niche has multiple brands and businesspeople. Practically, it’s very hard to be completely original with our ideas and execution. With competition for attention at an all time high, how can we rise above?
Here are 6 tips to make people notice and remember your brand!
Think about your brand strategy or goals
Is your brand a random collection of logos, stock imagery, sounds, and quotes? You need to tighten up your brand image!
Ask yourself… What function do all these things serve, and how do they push forward the ideas of your business?
Just because you have a nice logo, doesn’t mean you have a strong brand. At the end of the day, your logo is just a mark. On its own, it’s not adding a whole lot of value.
What is your ultimate goal for your business? How can your marketing, your products, and the way you portray yourself bring you closer towards that goal.
Many businesswomen make the mistake of just collecting brand collateral together and presenting it as their brand. Of course, you cannot blame us. We’ve never done this before, so we don’t know any better.
But, now we do! What ideas does your business name convey to your audience? How does the logo help to further demonstrate these ideas and relate to your audience? What about your tone of voice, the colours you use, and even what your products or services look like?
Furthermore, all of these things need to come together. Just like different coloured threads all come together to tell a single story in a beautiful tapestry of knitted scarf.
Make your brand YOU-nique
How unique is your brand? I like to say make sure it is, YOU-nique. And by this I mean make sure that there is a small piece of you in your business and that others will be able to see it.
It is easier but don’t just copy what is out there and what is being done by others. Sure, we want to know what the industry standard is and what the influencers in our niche are doing.
However, we do not want to look like just another copy. You can see in any niche that when someone finds a formula or method that works, everyone will jump onboard and do the same thing.
You may start like this, but learn to eventually put your own personal spin on things. How can we do this? And what sets us as businesswomen apart from others?
You are the only one who has lived your life!
Draw upon your experiences, knowledge, and opinions to create something that is completely unique to you. These are our defining characteristics that separate us from others.
Appeal to the emotions of your audience
Sometimes it isn’t even the best product that people remember. It’s how using that product made them feel that sticks.
So, when you are advertising or when you are selling, think about your customer on an emotional level.
What emotional bond are they seeking from you? Here are some example questions that can help you determine which emotions your audience feels most strongly. You can then craft your branding message around that!
- Is you audience frustrated with where they are?
- Are they curious about potential new things?
- Do they need someone who can support them and offer kind advice?
Theodore Levitt once said … “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
What does this mean? We can learn that the product is not always the most important thing to an audience. It is their problem or their pain point that is the most important thing. The means by which you solve this problem is almost less important than simply getting the job done.
So, instead of promoting what you sell, you should focus instead on what you help people accomplish. Specifically, that means the job that you help them do — one they wouldn’t be able to do by themselves.
Are you having a conversation with your audience?
Or is it just an echo chamber for you own ideas?
Why do you create the products and services that you do? What makes you package them the way you do?
Do you create your own content? What is it about and how does this serve a benefit to your audience?
By now, it is a pretty well known concept for business branding that you need content marketing to help get your brand out there.
How you choose what to market and what to say is very important. We cannot treat our business pages like personal blogs or diaries.
Just because we like to share videos of our dogs going for a walk does not necessarily mean everyone else will. Ask yourself how will this benefit my audience, is this what they want?
If the answer is no, it’s time to re-think your method.
Conversation with your audience is important. Make sure you make them feel involved in your business. This can be done through QnA sessions, encouraging comments, and sharing valuable information. As the old adage goes; people love to buy, but they hate to be sold.
So don’t make your audience feel like they are being simply sold to, make them feel like a valid part of the wider conversation.
Be aware when people get “content-fatigued”
How long have you been posting similar content or branding?
While your overall brand can stay the same, be aware that every now and again your content will need a “face-lift”. It will need to be revamped!
If you are consistently putting out the same style of content, using the same formatting, colours, images, or even ideas, people will eventually get bored.
They will feel “content-fatigued”. You will notice your likes and engagement going down, and you might start to think that things have stopped working.
However it may not be that desperate, it probably just means the current style has stopped working and it’s time to try something new.
As humans, we get into habits quickly. So if your content is becoming habitual to your audience, it’s likely they are not really engaging with it on a deeper level.
The technical term for this phenomenon is habituation. Habituation causes us to see without noticing, and to acknowledge things superficially.
The absolute importance of knowing your audience and avatar
All these tips for creating a memorable brand relate back to this main issue. And this is something that I am passionate about and that I write about a lot here.
You need to understand your target audience and know your avatar.
What is a target audience?
This is the niche or smaller subsection of a larger group who you will target with your marketing, advertising, in the hopes that they will engage with your business.
Smaller subsection, niche, specificity.
These are the keywords here. If you think that you want to sell jewelry to women, that is not a target audience. That is not a niche.
Who exactly do you want to sell jewelry to? Not just women. What style is your jewelry? Is it bohemian, is it elegant, or is it vintage?
What kind of materials do you use? Is it gold or silver? Do you use precious stones? Are you more into sustainable materials?
How will you sell your jewelry? In a physical store? In an online store? Via a monthly subscription box?
Now your target audience has changed from just women who like jewelry (and how specific is that, really?) to a woman who wants new vintage style jewelry, that uses sustainable practices, that arrives at her doorstep every 2-months with a subscription fee.
If you want more advice on finding a niche check out an earlier article I wrote about mastering your niche.
Then… what is an avatar?
If you thought about your target market, or the wider group that you want to appeal to, than your avatar is that one person within that group.
Your avatar is your super fan, who will buy everything in your catalogue the moment it comes out.
Develop a personality for your avatar and think about what traits define them. What is their average income? Why are they seeking out your business? What are their problems that need solving? And how can you engage with them?
Try to think deeply about your avatar when you are creating your branding, marketing, and products. You have to make it appeal to them. And if it appeals to them, then you can be sure it’ll appeal to other who are like them.
If you want more information specifically about finding your avatar, I have an article about that too! You can read it here.
So, do you have the tools you wanted to boost your brand image?
Are you ready to create something memorable?
Dr Raja Yasmin is the founder of the EQBIZ Academy. She has both real life experience running businesses as well as 20 years of teaching experience. Now, Dr Raja Yasmin is ready to help women become empowered through business. If you would like to receive a free marketing resource for your business, sign up here.
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