Branding starts with the most basic elements of who you are.
The more sure of who exactly you are, the stronger your branding will be. The more likely you will cultivate your brand in the public and your target clients.
To know exactly who you are and why you matter, you need to define it. Sharpen it to the specific characteristics that really matter and give you a unique identity worth remembering, and worth following.
This means, “I am a doctor, I help people stay healthy, and my target client is anyone still breathing,” will not cut it.
Nor will, “I am a contractor, and I am the cheapest, best quality, best service, fastest, smartest, best design, best communication, best integrity, best professionalism, most personal, best environmentalist, best everything, and I cater to everyone.” Your identity becomes a muddy mess that no one will particularly remember or value.
It all may be true, at least for now, but you have no identity. You are generic. You have no distinct message to lodge into the mind of your ideal client. And you won’t be targeting the clients you REALLY want. The ones that help you reach your ultimate goals. The ones that increase your energy and make your business worth doing.
And I say for now, because someone may come along who can target cost and consistently undercut you, or go above and beyond your quality but charge more.
Someone may come along who specifically targets your ideal client and corners the market on them while you get stuck with the less desirable ones left over. You don’t want to be at the mercy of clients without any loyalty to you, and who run at the sight of someone a few dollars cheaper, or who targets their most core value in a way you couldn’t.
You don’t want to become a commodity scraping by with price cuts, or someone getting a random mix of clients, but not the ones you really want. You want the premium and distinction that will bring in and build your ideal client base, so you can focus on where you want your business to be, and the profit margin you really want. And above all, you want loyalty. A client base that sticks with you and trusts that you are worth sticking with is your goal, and is who we help you get.
That is where branding and identity design come in. The proper branding and visual design supporting your identity will build and build on itself, growing the business you want instead of just whatever you can get. Resonate Branding + Design specializes in this kind of strategic thinking, and can help you achieve your goals. But you can start now yourself, and speed up the process when you do come to us by thinking about it beforehand.
And to start you off, we have the most essential three questions of Branding Basics. Download the PDF, fill it out, and refer to it often! You can also send it to us to help with your identity, branding, or graphic design project. You need to remember and be consistent in everything you do to be most effective in your branding efforts. Ultimately, branding comes down to how the public feels about your company. However, through active branding, you can influence what they think from the start, pointing them to the things that really make you matter to them, and pull in your ideal clients!
