Branding is a journey. There is no easy fix or quick solution to building, developing, and scaling our personal brands. As time goes on and we grow and change, our brands will need to adapt as well. Maybe you made a major shift to your everyday look – you’ll want to document these changes within your personal brand! Have you made changes to your service menu? Your logo and website need to follow suit! Without further ado, here are 5 ways to upgrade and elevate your personal brand today so it can grow with you!
1. Get clear on your brand strategy
Your brand strategy is the heart of who you are. It’s your foundation that everything else is built. Here’s a run-down of what encompasses a brand strategy and how to uplevel each of the components:
Your mission: Your mission statement is usually summed up in a few sentences and establishes the foundation of your personal brand. Be sure to include in your mission why you started your personal brand in the first place and what you bring to the table that your competitors don’t. If your mission changes or you come up with an incredible new product or service, don’t forget to update your brand strategy to reflect these changes!
Your vision: Ask yourself this – where do you see your personal brand going in the long term? Make sure your brand strategy lays out the goals and aspirations you have and whether or not you want to scale or one day take your company public. Revisit your vision every so often so that you continue to create long-term goals for your brand to meet and foster growth.
Your values: What’s most important to you within your brand? These are your values and they’ll follow your brand even as your offerings change or grow. Your values ultimately encompass your personal brand statement, identity, and personality. Transparency with these values will boost trust amongst your audience and bring increased opportunities.
Your voice: Your brand voice is among the first impressions your potential customers will see. It may even be the reason they decide to choose to work with you! Think about how you talk to your audience – do you speak casually or do you tend to be more direct? Outline your brand voice within your brand strategy and detail instances to how this voice may change depending on the circumstances.
Your brand personality: Just like humans hold incredible personalities – so can brands! Think about how you want to come across to others. Maybe you want your audience to see a bright, cheerful disposition or you’d like to veer towards a more dependable and relatable personality. If you find a certain tone isn’t working with your audience, switch it up! Done correctly, your brand personality will shine through in everything you create!
At the end of the day, what you outline in your brand strategy will dictate each move you make, so think through it wisely and update it as you evolve!
2. Solidify your target audience
You can’t scale a successful brand if you don’t know who you’re trying to attract. The key to narrowing in on your target audience is nailing your customer avatars. This is a profile of your customer that encompasses their pain points all the way down to the nitty-gritty details of their personality. When creating customer avatars ask yourself:
Who are you trying to sell to?
What do these people look like?
What are their interests, hopes, and dreams?
What are their problems and how can you help solve them?
Here’s an example of a customer avatar:
Grace doesn’t know the first thing about yoga or how to begin. She loves working out and is an avid runner, but she wants to find a solution to help her wind down. She hopes to find something she can relax with and live a more stress-free life. She finds regular yoga classes intimidating and doesn’t know which studio to step foot in that can help her learn.
Once you’re clear on who you’re selling to, you’ll have a better idea of how to market your offerings to gain your ideal customer’s attention! From the above example, a yoga instructor can now market and shape their offerings to cater to potential solutions for Grace’s pain points!
3. Refresh your brand identity
Your brand identity is the face of your offerings, messages, and brand personality including your logo, brand photos, social media profiles, and website. I can’t stress this enough: work with a professional brand designer! A real pro will make an effort to understand your brand strategy or help you develop it before even touching your identity. Because your visuals are what communicate your essence at first glance, you want a professional to design your logo, color palettes, fonts, and more so that they actually communicate who you are to your ideal audience. If something just doesn’t feel right about your brand identity, don’t hesitate to change it!
4. Schedule a brand photoshoot
What’s the point of having a gorgeous brand identity and website if your pictures are all unflattering or outdated? Your photos will ultimately tell your audience a story (they’re worth a thousand words, remember?!) It’s important that you have a solid gallery of headshots, posed, and candid photos of you strutting your stuff and showing off the tools of your trade. You can even run down your offering processes through a video to post right on your website’s homepage. Hire a professional photographer/videographer to make sure your photos and videos effectively tell your brand story and complement your brand identity.
5. Get consistent and stay consistent
We can’t say this enough: consistency is the key to gaining trust and retaining that hard-to-reach customer! If you’ve developed a specific strategy and made the investment in your brand visuals, utilize them and utilize them consistently! Showing up is important, but if you don’t follow the guidelines you’ve set for yourself, you are likely to confuse your audience and send mixed messages. Follow your own rules and they’ll get the picture!
Are you ready to uplevel your branding experience? We’ve got you covered. At The Branding Babe, we have combo photo and video packages for those who really want to kick things up a notch!