What Is Branding?
Firstly, your ‘brand’ is the relationship that your publics (‘publics’ not ‘public’, ie customers, potential customers, stakeholders, local community, online community etc) have with you and how they see you.
You drive that partly through your branding.
And your ‘branding’ is the outward look and feel (identity) of your brand.
It will include (but is not limited to) your colours, designs of digital and physical marketing collateral (eg website, sales pages, leaflets etc), looks and feel, style of imagery, style of copy, tone of voice (in written and spoken word), and so on. Of course, your logo is part of your branding, however this is just one element. A solo logo does not a brand make (slightly quoting Yoda, if Yoda made quotes on branding).
How It Applies To You
When you are building a business, the importance of creating and building your brand should not be under-estimated, and companies with a strong brand tend to be worth more than those without.
Some people tend to think that ‘brands’ and the associated branding purely belong to the big companies, but that’s not true: a brand is just as important to single owner businesses. Creating a strong brand through clear and consistent branding will help your publics (particularly your customers and target customers) to have a good relationship with you, know what you stand for, build their trust in you and, especially in the case of consultants, therapists, coaches etc, will allow you to charge higher fees.
Get Serious About Your Brand and Branding
Whilst you need to decide what it is that you stand for, what kind of clients you want to attract and what kind of relationship you want them to have with you, I would always recommend leaving the design and copy part up to the professionals.
Look for a designer who is well experienced in graphic design and specialises in brands, and a copywriter who is experienced in writing content for your size of business and/or your sector.
Professional graphic designers and copywriters will happily send you examples of their portfolio (their work) and will discuss your business and what you are trying to achieve with you at length. You should be asked lots of questions before work is commenced; be wary of anyone who offers to dash you off a logo over the weekend for £50. Maybe fine to get you off the starting blocks when you are starting your business, but not so fine when you’re nearing the six figure revenue mark and beyond.
Final Advice
As a last piece of advice, only work with a graphic designer and copywriter that you like and have built a good rapport with. Get plenty of recommendations from people you know (rather than recommendations from a forum where you don’t really know anybody) and talk to two or three before you make your choice. The relationship you have with your designer and copywriter should be a long term one and it’s a relationship that definitely gets better with age.
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I teach all aspects of marketing to coaches, consultants, course creators and B2B professional service providers (not to mention those hard working crafters) — so that they can go on to be recognised as a leader in their field and enjoy both financial freedom and the freedom to spend time with their family and on the things that they love doing.
I offer real world, practical and fun tuition pulled from my 31 years experience as a professional marketer both in the corporate world with ‘household name’ clients and through helping my clients in the small business world build six and seven figure businesses.
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