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Episode 206 - How to Elevate Your Brand
992 Plays1 year ago
There's a lot to think about when it comes to running a small business. Especially if you want to stand out.
There's a delicate balance business owners must walk between resonating with potential clients or customers, demonstrating their uniqueness and delivering on promises. Add to that the noise of social media and generally crowded markets, and it can be hard to feel like you stand out.
This is why so many businesses have started putting more emphasis on branding: creating an identity that people will recognize, connect with, and ultimately want to patronize.
Maybe you’ve already thought a little bit (or even a lot) about branding. Still, something seems to be missing, even if you can’t figure out what it is.
Not to worry—we’ve got a few tips so you can elevate your brand and stand out among your competitors to your target audience.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check 'em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/tips-elevate-your-brand/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
The Science and Strategy of Client Gifts
00:00:00
Speaker
But point being is I do think that client gifts is sort of a science and really thinking through how this can elevate part of the client experience, maybe including gifts around the time that somebody has to take an action that doesn't maybe enhance the client experience. Like when somebody pays, I mean, even if somebody is excited to pull out their wallet and pay you to do something, you know, it's still money out of their account. So also them receiving a gift in the mail a few days later or a week later, that kind of thing can offset maybe a less positive aspect of the client experience.
00:00:30
Speaker
You're listening to the Brands That Book show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies for building engaging brands, crafting high converting websites, and creating reliable lead generation systems for their businesses. I'm your host, Davy Jones, co-founder of two agencies, a brand and website design agency, Davy and Krista, and the digital advertising agency, Till Agency. And I ask questions so you can find answers.
00:00:59
Speaker
Today we are chatting about how to elevate your brand and we're discussing tips that range from client gifts to brand voice and everything in between. We really tried to put together a list of things that you can implement on your own and cover more than just brand visuals.
00:01:14
Speaker
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at DaveyandChrista.com.
Elevating Your Brand: Voice and Consistency
00:01:19
Speaker
And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. Now, on to the episode. All right, we are continuing our brand design theme today. And today we're talking about how to elevate your brand. And these are things that you can do without a designer. Yeah. You know, I think having a brand designer helps, but these are things that you could theoretically do on your own.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I think this list is kind of interesting because there are a lot of things that I don't think people necessarily think of first when they think about elevating their brand. I think everybody thinks of images and visuals and fonts and color palettes and all of those things, but I think our list today is kind of unique.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think it and it approaches, you know, one of the things that we talked about during our brand guide episode, and we'll be referencing that I think a few times today is how, you know, it's not just a visual brand, right? Like your brand, there's brand language, you know, there's a whole brand voice, you know, and so we'll speak to that a little bit as well. Cool. Well, should we just dive in? Hopefully, we don't disagree as much with each other as we did in our last episode that we just recorded.
00:02:20
Speaker
I don't know if we disagree that much. We didn't. It was just one thing. It was just one thing. I wonder, you know, if you're listening, I'd be curious to hear if people appreciate hearing that. I would hope so. You know, I mean, it's not like we're arguing, you know, but I would. Yeah. Anyways, we'll keep going. We'll stay on track here. So let's start with the brand guide.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that if you haven't listened to our episode yet about creating a brand guide to help create consistency within your brand, I think that's a good place to start because we talk about exactly what brand guidelines are and what the benefit of a brand guide is. And so long story short, a brand guideline or a brand guide is a
00:03:00
Speaker
a set of rules and consistencies within your brand. So it's probably going to outline the different use cases for your logo or various logos and give examples of color palettes and variation within those color palettes. It's probably going to talk about fonts and maybe even get into brand voice and imagery styles. And having a consistent brand and a brand guide can really help elevate your brand because it's going to make sure that things are consistent regardless of the platform that you're using.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah. And it can get really specific, right? You know, so for instance, like you could have a brand guide that specifies exactly what colors you use for your call to actions, you know, like the buttons on your website or an email or, you know, whatnot. You can talk about things as specific as like what punctuation you use and don't use or how frequently use it. So, and we talk a little bit more about that in the brand guideline episode. So I'll leave that there for now.
00:03:52
Speaker
But I think at the end of the day, having some sort of brand guide to help you stay consistent, especially if you're growing your business and you're bringing on admin assistants or team members who might not be familiar with exactly the way you do things, it can really cut down on one, training time, but two, on the various mistakes that they might make in representing your brand.
Updating Content for Credibility and SEO
00:04:12
Speaker
Right. And the same is true of working with different designers.
00:04:15
Speaker
The second thing that you can start doing is publishing content regularly. And I know that's an interesting thing to bring up or I mean, maybe, maybe not what you would expect to be mentioned in an episode like this. But I do think it makes a big difference. Whenever we're thinking about working with a business, one of the things that we'll do is we'll go to their blog and we'll just see like, when was the last time they published a post?
00:04:36
Speaker
And there was somebody I was considering working with actually earlier this year. And it was a business that focused on a specific social media channel that we wanted to give more attention to. And I can't remember how the business might have been referred or something like that. But I went to the blog and it was like two years since anything was published. And then we went to Instagram and nothing had been published in like six months. And we're like, are they even a business anymore?
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think that kind of stuff makes a big difference. I'd say sort of something related to publishing content regularly as well is going back through your content and doing some sort of content audit. You know, I think this is especially important if you are, let's say in the wedding industry, you know, if you have every wedding you've blogged ever on your blog and you've been in business for 10 years, chances are your work has evolved over the last 10 years.
00:05:24
Speaker
Right. So going back through that and this actually can be a good thing for a search engine optimization as well. But going back through your blog and deciding, OK, what content needs to be updated, what content can be deleted and only including your very best work on it. Right. The kind of work that represents your business well, either from just showing that you're competent in what you do or being up to date work, you know, related to the kind of work you want to do now.
Utilizing UGC for Trust and Credibility
00:05:46
Speaker
That kind of stuff can make a big difference.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yes, it can. It also makes your site easier to manage. We have a site that is going to go live on show it right now and they have 300 blog posts on Wix. And that's just very expensive to migrate. So we had them cut out some of their old web content. And so not only does that make their site go faster, it also just makes it more manageable with different hosts.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot more that we could say here. I really do believe that publishing content regularly is one of the best ways to demonstrate your competent that you're good at what you do. That doesn't necessarily mean that you have to blog specifically, although I do think blogs are a valuable resource when it comes to business, you know, for search engine optimization reasons and so on. So I would try to publish content across all your channels at least once a week. Right. Next up, use user-generated content, UGC, to start conversations.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah, so this is another one that I added. And I think that one of the reasons I wanted to add this is because I think that people trust other people, right? And so when we're making purchasing decisions, when we're making booking decisions, oftentimes we're going to hold the opinion of a friend of ours over maybe a review we find online.
00:06:57
Speaker
Right. And so because people trust other people making it as easy as possible for people to share that either they're working with you or share your product is important. Right. And, you know, depending on what kind of business you are, this may be easier than you think. Right.
00:07:15
Speaker
I mean, I think that, you know, even if you're in the wedding industry, like thinking through things like client gifts, you know, and not just what the gift is itself, but how it's packaged, you know, like people when they receive, you know, nice packages and there's a nice unboxing experience, right?
Refreshing Brand Imagery
00:07:31
Speaker
They want to share about those things.
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, especially if there's like something that is useful to them. There's like a note that is personalized. I also think about when we were wedding photographers and the way that we delivered prints after a wedding day, we wrapped them up in a pretty box and I tied a bow and we had a handwritten note and there was like a linen-y card. So it was just a beautiful experience for them. And a lot more people shared about those prints and those tagged us than they would if they just got like a dropshipped box of prints or I don't know, a package of prints.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm thinking about some of our other client gifts back in the day too, like things that people would want to feature prominently in their homes that other people would ask about. Those are the kinds of things that we wanted to do. And there's other ways to, I mean, user generated content, I think it's its own topic in and of itself, but trying to encourage others like your actual users or clients to share is one of the best things that you can do in marketing your business.
00:08:27
Speaker
All right, this next one is yours. Invest in new brand imagery regularly. Yeah. I think that having fresh up-to-date images of you and your products can go a long way in giving you a fresh presence online. We actually recently had our brand photos updated from Erica and John, who are phenomenal brand photographers, because we realized our brand photo is really five years old. And so our business has changed. We look a little different.
00:08:52
Speaker
We had one kid then and now we have two kids. So we recently had those updated and I think that just like in going through, it gives you fresh head shots for social media. It gives you fresh content to share about and it gives you fresh images for blog and your blog if you're sharing like content type posts. And so I think it just goes a long way. And so this might be something that you set aside in like budget for every year or every other year.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, I would say at least every other year, you know, just because so much changes from year to year. And it kind of feels like spring cleaning a little bit. You know, it's like nothing to really changed, but you know, I think it's energizing for us as a business to be able to go back through and look at the different places, you know, where we're representing our brand visually and take a second look, you know, and give those updates. So, you know, I think it's good for us too.
00:09:40
Speaker
At the time of recording, I have not had a chance to update our website yet because we had kids out of school. By the time this episode goes live though, you will see schools need to start again. Just for some dedicated work time. You all know what we're talking about. All right. So add client gifts to your client experience. Yeah. And we talked a little bit about this, but I think that gifting can really elevate your client experience, especially if it's done intentionally. I would say gifting is a science.
00:10:08
Speaker
There's a book that we read, The Art of Gifting. Yeah, I think it was The Art of Gifting. And we'll try to dig it up and include a link to it in the show notes. I bet there's other books out there now about that same topic. And the book that we're thinking about, it wasn't that long, you know, it was probably less than 100 pages.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, it was really little, but one of his big points is that you should give intentional thoughtful gifts, ideally not ones with like your logo on them. I remember when we sold our house or we bought a house, our realtor gave us a really nice knife and a cutting board, but both of them had his logo on them. And so I feel like in seeing that we were kind of like,
00:10:44
Speaker
We might not pull this out in front of guests. We don't. I mean, we use it. Like we still have that knife, but the interesting thing, right, is that we'd be more likely to pull it out and put it on like a cheese board. And then people ask us about it. He's like, yeah, our realtor is amazing. He sent us this like super nice gift.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, you know, like I'm thinking back to, we used to do this like printed calendar. It was real nice though. From artifact uprising, the magnetic ones that like have a little clipboard. I don't even know if they make them anymore, but you could, we'd put their engagement photos on the pages of the calendar and it's not like a,
00:11:17
Speaker
So it wasn't like a cheap calendar. It was a really nice calendar and everybody would put it in their home. And I think we got bookings because of that calendar. We get comments at weddings, you know, that people mention it and it didn't have our logo anywhere on it. You know, but when somebody comments on something like that, whether it be a nice cheeseboard knife or whatever.
00:11:33
Speaker
You know, like people are going to say, oh yeah, you know, so-and-so got this for me, you know, you don't necessarily, and that leads to a conversation. So you don't necessarily have to slap your logo on everything. You know, we have about a bajillion mugs and we've done this before too. Oh, yeah. I was gonna say we did order a lot of mugs with Davey and Krista on them, but we got rid of them because we're like, no.
00:11:54
Speaker
Nobody wants these. Yeah. And you know, it's like something that we realized is we get a bajillion of them as well. And so most of the time those just find their way into the recycling simply because we have so many, we have so many of them now, you know, we keep a select view as like backup. But point being is I do think that client gifts is sort of a science and really thinking through how this can elevate part of the client experience, maybe including gifts around the time that somebody has to take an action that doesn't maybe enhance the client experience. Like when somebody pays.
00:12:23
Speaker
I mean, even if somebody's excited to pull out their wallet and pay you to do something, it's still money out of their account.
Consistency Across Social Media and Email
00:12:30
Speaker
Also, them receiving a gift in the mail a few days later or a week later, that kind of thing can offset maybe a less positive aspect of the client experience.
00:12:39
Speaker
Another way that you can elevate your brand is by staying consistent on social media. So if you already have brand headshots and brand images, having those go a long way towards making sure that the images that you're sharing on social media are consistent.
00:12:54
Speaker
I think it's also important to use the same either headshot or brand icon throughout your social media profiles and make sure that the URLs are the same. And then like any graphics or things that you share in social media should be consistent with the brand. And it's great that things like Canva exist now because I think they make it really easy to keep things consistent when you're sharing about new products or new things. I know that we have a free set of customizable Canva graphics, but then Canva also has a lot of great templates within their library.
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, coming up with some sort of strategy on social media, like these are the types of things I'm going to share on social media. Again, just go back to make it easy to stay consistent. Going back to what we said earlier, where like people will check your social media handles, you know, and they'll use that as a form of social proof. And so hopefully that verifies everything they see on let's say your website, or they, you know, verifies what they learned about you in a conversation they had with you.
00:13:47
Speaker
So paying attention to that I think goes a long way. Having a designer come up with templates that you can use for your social media, I think is relatively inexpensive. You know, you can do that relatively inexpensively and something you can use day in and day out. All right. So that make it a lot easier to show up consistently on social.
00:14:07
Speaker
Another thing that I think it's great to do is to switch to a brand focused email builder. So if you are regularly sending email communication and not just like one-off emails to a client, but I'm thinking like newsletter type emails or content emails, I think something like Flowdust can go a long way because it really lets you customize the visuals within the builder and add some fonts and images. And I think it just makes it look better than like a MailChimp kind of email.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say this is true even of just regular Gmail, right? There's something disorienting I think about, you know, maybe going to someone's website, it has this very luxurious look and feel to it and then getting an email from somebody and it just feel like not right. You know, like maybe, you know, obvious mistakes like typos and spellings and things like that.
00:14:57
Speaker
but also maybe you're using like really big font or a color other than black, you know, in your email, right? Like as your font color, those kinds of things can feel off. You know, I think like, I can't remember what conference it was. I can't even remember who. Maybe it was Abby Grace. She used to give a whole keynote. An email etiquette, right? Yeah, an email etiquette, but then also even talk about like styling her email footer, you know, so that it had the same look and feel as everything else that she does.
00:15:24
Speaker
Those things are important. But yeah, I would say, especially if you are doing some sort of newsletter, making sure you put the same care and attention into that as you do your website, let's say.
00:15:34
Speaker
And then lastly here, finding your brand voice. I think this is something that develops over time and it's okay maybe to not be totally sure about it right out of the gate, but making sure that you're listening for the things that people say about you and the things that you end up saying over and over and over again and trying to really, I don't know, zero in on exactly what your brand sounds like. And that might be a little bit different than what you sound like.
00:16:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that we kind of like what you just mentioned, it can feel disjointing when maybe you visit a website and they have these beautiful images, this beautiful aesthetic, but then there are typos or grammatical issues or just like the voice of the brand doesn't seem to match everything else.
00:16:16
Speaker
I think one of the examples that we used to use, so when back again, back in our wedding photography days, we used to go to McDonald's after every wedding and I would get fries and a McFlurry. That was kind of my treat.
00:16:31
Speaker
for shooting a wedding. And it was one of those things where it's like, we shot like luxury level weddings, you know? So it was like part of our brand, but it wasn't something that we like slapped on our website, you know? And it would have been one of those things where it's like, we see, I think people do that on their about page because it does make you relatable. But we were struggling with like, on the one hand, you know, we want to reach a luxury level clientele,
00:16:57
Speaker
but like sharing about me hanging out in sweatpants, you know, most of the day or going to McDonald's after weddings, like that doesn't match, right? However, we'd share about that kind of stuff on like social media and you know, just in like stories, places where it makes more sense. And so then people would give us like gift cards to McDonald's for afterwards.
00:17:18
Speaker
Sour Patch Kids because those were also Davey's favorite. If you want a different kind of example, I think that if you're familiar with Reese Witherspoon's Draper James brand, that voice is like steeped in Southern charm. It's feminine. It's pretty. It probably sounds like a mix of your best friend from a sorority at like a Southern college, such like guru guide for style.
00:17:41
Speaker
versus like the Harry's brand, which is like more manly, it's warm and friendly, but there's just different audiences. And so I think you can tell with brands like that. Yeah, there's congruence, right? Between how the brand looks and feels and then also how the brand acts, right?
Aligning Brand Appearance and Behavior
00:17:55
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, going back to my example, it's not that people who are like, like nice things don't also like McDonald's, you know, but it's like, there's a time and place for that in the relationship. So like those clients like already knew us and maybe that came up during their engagement session or something like that.
00:18:11
Speaker
So that's like something they learn about us along the way that, you know, for a lot of the guys especially was like endearing, right? But your example though is better than mine. I'll give you that.
00:18:23
Speaker
Anyways, we hope you find some of these tips helpful. I think, you know, highlights for me in that list, I think the things that can make the biggest difference, client gifts is a big one, right? I think that paying attention to your brand voice can also make a big
Episode Summary and Listener Engagement
00:18:37
Speaker
difference. And so getting clear on that, you know, and really just like creating an avatar for your business and going through some activity like that, I think can really help you create that congruency between how your business looks and feels, but then also how your business acts and speaks.
00:18:52
Speaker
And it might give you ideas of four things like client gifts, like maybe in going through the avatar activity, you realize your ideal client shops at a particular place and they're interested in this. And so that gives you a better idea than like a coffee mug with a logo on it.
00:19:07
Speaker
Absolutely. All right. So anything else we need to add to this? I don't think so. All right. Awesome. As always, we love hearing from you, you know, so if you found some of this feedback helpful, feel free to let us know. But especially if you have a question, let us know that too, because your questions make for the best podcast episodes. All right. Thanks for joining us. Until next time.
00:19:29
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Bransa Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DavianChrista.com.