Anything that you don’t do with intention, you do by default. If you don’t do it on purpose, then however it happens, it happens. And truthfully, what’s really weird about this is if you’ve ever noticed, most of the things that happen by default are not the good version of the thing we would like them to be. For example, if I don’t intentionally eat healthy, I tend to eat poorly by default. If I don’t have an active lifestyle, where I’m intentionally getting up and exercising, then I tend to be a couch potato by default.
When we apply this to your brand, it’s the same exact thing. If you are not creating your company’s brand intentionally, it is happening by default. Unfortunately, I see this far too frequently when I work with business owners. In this article we are going to discuss what makes up your business brand, how having a cohesive brand helps your business, and how to build an intentional brand of your own.
What Makes Up Your Business’s Brand
The first thing we need to make clear is that your brand is much more than your logo. People often mistake their logo or their website as their brand. Your logo and website are the visual representations of your brand. They are part of your brand. But that is just where your brand begins.
The second thing we need to make clear is that creating an intentional, cohesive brand doesn’t mean you have to be formal or fancy. Your business’s brand is a culmination of everything that you do, how you do it, how you talk about it, how it looks, and how you show up. Your brand is a combination of all of those things. Most importantly, your brand is ultimately how you make people feel. So it does not have to be formal if you are not formal, or fancy if you are not fancy.
A Cohesive Brand Helps A Business Break Through the Noise
Creating an in-demand, cohesive brand is more important than ever before because there is more noise than ever in the marketplace. The internet has given us this amazing platform where we all have the ability to reach people around the world for free. But that also means that everybody else has that ability too.
The Internet has basically removed the barrier to entry for marketing. We all have computers, we all have phones, we all have laptops, we all have iPads. We all have all these things that we can use to get our message out into the universe very quickly all day long. Everybody can do it. Having a cohesive brand is what helps you break through the noise.
A Cohesive Brand Helps Expedite the Know, Like, and Trust Factor
The current economic cycle is also contributing to the fact that having a cohesive brand is more important than ever. People are being more careful with their money right now. A lot of people have less money right now, which means they’re going to be more careful with their buying decisions. It might take them longer to even choose what to invest in.
Having an in-demand cohesive brand helps build the know, like, and trust factors that consumers require in order to help them make buying decisions. They are going to know that they are your person and that you are their person through your messaging.
The economic reality right now is that people are less willing to spend money, and they want to know what they are buying before they buy it. They are less willing to take risks. Having an intentional brand helps you break through the sheer volume of information in the world today that pervades everything. It helps people not just see but understand your solution among a huge breadth of other options.
Branding Should Scream to the World What You Do and How You Do It
The third piece to the puzzle of why having an intentional, in-demand brand is more important than ever is the idea that a confused mind always says no. If you don’t have a good, crystal clear sales process, people won’t buy from you because they don’t know what you are offering. That’s very true in sales, and it’s more true than ever in marketing as well.
Your brand should scream to the world exactly what you do and how you do it. Consider the first two things that I said: there’s more noise in the marketplace than ever before, and the current economic cycle means that people are being more cautious about what they’re investing. When you take those two things into consideration, you see why you need to have clarity in your messaging more than ever before.
Clarity in your messaging is going to help break through the noise. Right now being extremely specific is essential to create the know like and trust factor. If you are not clear with your brand, people are going to pass right over you and choose something that’s more reliable or something that they understand better.
How To Build an Intentional Brand
Building an intentional brand is like so much of what I have talked about before: you reverse engineer it. To do this, you first need to identify how you want people to feel and what you want them to know.
What is the experience you want people to have when they’re in your business ecosystem? Not just clients, but anyone who enters your world, or your ecosystem. How do you want them to feel? What do you want their experience to be like?
I’ll use my business as an example. If you are reading this, odds are you know a little bit about my business. The name of my business is Conquer Your Business. My tagline is Be in Charge, Take Action, Get Results. from a branding perspective, I’m not for the faint of heart. I’m not for the wishy-washy person who’s not sure that they want to do something. That’s not who I attract.
I want people to feel empowered. I want them to feel motivated. I want people to feel that they can go out and make things happen. It’s important to me for people to realize that they have the absolute right and the ability to create whatever reality that they want, that they’re willing to put in the work to create.
That’s a big thing for me right in my brand.
It’s not “dream about it, and it’ll just happen to you.”
That’s not what my brand is. It very clearly says to take action. My brand is for people who want to do the work. I want them to know that they can do it. I’m very motivational. I’m very high energy. I’m very, “Let’s make this happen.” And I also am very educational. I want them to feel not only that they can do it, but how to do it.
So how do I show up? I show up as an example of how I want people to feel. I try to show up in integrity and consistency with what I’ve deliberately chosen. I want people to feel as though they are part of my brand. I walk my talk to the best of my ability.
My Content is direct, because I want people to know that we’re not messing around. We are here to make things happen. My visuals support the feelings that I want to create. My hair has been different bright colors, I often wear chainmail jewelry and a lot of black. I wear a lot of leather, and have sleeves with studs on them.
It wouldn’t make sense if I showed up looking that way but then had a brand logo and visuals that were light and airy, or reserved and conservative. That would not be consistent, and consistency is something we said we need to have to break through the noise to increase the expediting of know, like and trust. So my visuals support the feeling I want people to have.
But at the same time, while people tease me about being a badass, what I don’t want is to be a hardass. So one of the other things that I’m very intentional about is that I’m very approachable and very casual on how I speak and how I write. I want everyone to know that if they’re willing to do the work, this is for them. There is nobody who cannot choose to be in charge of their business and in charge of their life. I want everybody to know that if they’re willing to do the work and are willing to take the action, they can make it happen. So in addition to being direct and straightforward, I also work intentionally to be approachable and empathetic.
Reviewing Your Own Brand
To review your own brand, it is important to go back through all of your marketing pieces. Go back through your visuals, go back through your content, go back through your processes. Go back through the way that you connect with people, and ask yourself if the way that you are doing all of these things is adding to how you want people to feel and what you want them to know. Or is it actually detracting from what you want them to feel? Are you showing up with the consistency of what you want to create? Or are you doing something a little different?
Here’s the important thing: if you are doing something different that does not reflect your brand, it doesn’t make you wrong or bad. It just means you weren’t paying attention to that piece, which is why you are doing the review. So, using my examples, think about what you want people to feel in your brand. How are you showing up to exhibit that feeling? What do you want the world to know?
In order to thrive in the current economy – instead of simply surviving – this is what it takes. It does not have to be hard. It just means that you have to pay attention. I put this under my category of “give yourself a break but don’t let yourself off the hook.” Give yourself a break because this is not easy, and you might not have ever thought about this.
So many times in business, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we have focused on making the sale, and paying the bills. Unfortunately, sometimes we have focused on an insta-tactic that we were promised that if we just “do this one thing” we would make a million dollars.
The truth of the matter is that we have to reverse engineer everything and do things intentionally. Insta-tactics do not work, so give yourself a break because it’s not easy. But don’t let yourself off the hook by avoiding this topic altogether.
Start with your reflection questions: what do I want the world to know? How do I want to make people feel? then go through the different components of your business to make sure that what you are doing, what you are saying, and how you are showing up is in alignment with what you’ve intentionally chosen. If you start there and use that as your litmus test, the rest of the pieces will fall into place much, much, much more easily.
