The Branding Best Practices You Need to Know! With Beverly Cornell

Welcome back to the Spark & Ignite Your Marketing Podcast! In this episode, host Beverly Cornell explores the art of building a brand that truly stands out in 2024. Whether you're just starting or looking to refine your existing brand, this episode is packed with insights and actionable tips to help your service-based business connect with customers on a deeper level. 
This engaging discussion covers everything from understanding the true essence of branding to creating detailed customer personas and crafting a compelling brand story.

Key Topics

1. Understanding Your Brand: Beverly explains that a brand is more than just a logo; it's the entire experience your customers have with your business. Authenticity and emotional connection are key.
2. Knowing Your Audience: Creating detailed customer personas helps tailor your messaging and services to meet the specific needs of your ideal customers.
3. Crafting Your Brand Story: Sharing your journey, challenges, and victories makes your brand relatable and builds a deeper connection with your audience.
   
   

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P.S. Ready to spark your unique opportunities and ignite your marketing?

1. 📞 Schedule a Complimentary 15-minute Fit Call and let’s delve into your goals and answer any questions you may have.
2. 📘 Read Beverly's book Marketing For Entrepreneurs a quick guide filled with actionable steps to help make your brand and business shine even brighter. 🎙️Or listen to Beverly's Podcast where she interviews entrepreneurs to get inspired and gain new business and marketing insights.
3. 🎓 Learn more about marketing and Enroll in Our Courses designed to bring clarity to your business efforts. They're easy-to-understand and self-paced, perfect for busy entrepreneurs like you.

Transcript

Beverly: 0:09

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Spark Ignite Your Marketing Podcast. I'm Beverly Cornell, your host and founder of BC and Associates Marketing. And today we're chatting about something that's super close and near and dear to my heart and absolutely crucial for every service based business out there. Building a brand that stands out in 2024. Picture us having a chat over coffee, diving into the secrets of branding that can transform your business. So grab your favorite beverage, get comfy and let's jump in. We're going to start with understanding the basics of branding. Let me take you back a few years to when I first started my business or worked with a startup. I remember thinking a brand was just a fancy logo and a tagline. But oh, how I was wrong. You know, your brand is the entire experience your customers have with your business. Think of it as the personality of your business and the way it makes people feel, the story that it tells, and the promise that it delivers. And in 2024, more than ever, it is more important that your brand needs to connect on a deeper and more emotional level. It needs to be authentic. And the only way that you can do that is to really be you. No bones about it. You've got to get in there and really be you and sometimes be a little vulnerable and share some stuff about who you are, how you started your business, what you're struggling with so that your customers can connect with you on a very different level. The second thing that's really important about, um, You're, you're building a brand is knowing your audience. I once worked with a client who had an amazing service, but was struggling to find that connection with our audience. So we sat down and really, we really dug in deep and tried to figure out who their ideal customers really were. We created detailed customer personas. We gave them names and even imagined their daily routines. Where did they hang out? What did they do for a living? What did their house look like? How many dogs did they have? How many kids did they have? What kind of college education did they have? How much money do they make? It was like getting to know new friends for them. We even gave them names, names of customers that they knew well and could easily visualize when they were talking about different types of marketing. Or other business decisions. And if that was the right decision for that particular customer, this helped us tailor the messaging and their services to meet their needs, their specific needs, not just in general, but their customer persona needs. So Tim and Julie or Becky, whatever you decide to name your customers. So take some time and really, truly understand who your audience is. What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? And how does your service solve any of those problems? This deeper understanding will help you create the brand that feels like it was made just for them. You can't beat that. The next step is to craft your brand story. Every single great brand has a story and so does your small business. Why did you start your business? What challenges did you face and what victories did you celebrate along your journey? I decided to create a job for myself and from that job. As a freelancer, I grew it to a full fledged agency. There were many conversations along the way, many tears, many mistakes, and many celebrations, all part of our brand story. We were dreaming big. We were thinking of all the different ways that this business could succeed. You want to share these moments with your customers, be authentic and let your audience see this real side of you, that you're human, that they can relate to. People connect with stories that are genuine and relatable. So make sure your brand story is consistent across all platforms, your website, your social media, and even in the, in person customer interactions that you have at your facility or over the phone or even online. The next thing you want to think about with your branding is your visual identity and being super consistent with how you use that. So we're going to talk about your visual identity. Picture this, you walk into a beautifully designed. Coffee shop, the decor, the colors, the ambience, all perfectly aligned and super inviting and oh so cozy. Like you just want to sit and curl up with a book. That's the power of a strong visual identity. Your logo, the color scheme. The fonts, the textures, and the overall design aesthetic should create a cohesive and professional look that builds recognition and trust for your business. In 2024, minimalistic and clean designs are trending, but the key here is to stay true to your brand's personality and use these elements consistently across all of your marketing materials. Everything, including the design of your facility and where you work online, your packaging, your bags, everything should look and feel as though it is part of your brand. Number five, building a online presence. Imagine having a store. That's open 24 seven accessible from literally anywhere in the world. That's what a strong online web presence does for your business. You want to start with a well designed website that clearly communicates who you are, what you offer, and how you help solve. Your customer's problems, how you help your customers. You want to ensure your site is definitely mobile friendly because I'm seeing 50, 60 percent of visitors to websites right now are on their mobile or iPad devices. Tablets, and then you want to make sure you're optimized for search engine optimization, specifically locally. If you have a brick and mortar store that offers the services you have, you want to make sure that you are known in that city for what you do. So when people search massage near me, they're going to be able to find a massage, um, maybe some massage envy or someplace like that. That's going to be able to pop up for them to find your business. You want to be easily found. Don't make it hard for your customers to find you. And don't forget to use social media. I know it can be a little bit time intensive and the algorithms change all the time. But you want to be active on platforms where your audience spends their time scrolling. Takes 11 touch points now. 7 to 11, but 11 touch points now to really help somebody remember your brand. So you need to be consistent. Somebody said today on the, on the podcast when I interviewed them, persistent, consistent and relentless in making sure your message gets out there. But you want to share valuable content. You want to also make it entertaining and informational and educational. You want to engage with your followers. Don't just throw up those posts and not react and comment and create questions to engage with people. Go and other people's stuff in your community and engage as your business. You want to create a sense of community for your brand and you want to showcase Your specific expertise in the community and how you can help your customers and you want to be you. You want to share your personality. So be human and be you on social media as well. Showcase your expertise and showcase your humanity. You want to leverage reviews and testimonials. So let me tell you a story about one of our clients who, um, he was a little hesitant to ask for reviews, so we encouraged them to reach out to their happy customers, and the results were amazing. There's lots of ways you can do reviews now. You can do it after a transaction, send an email, send a text, but you also can get, like, little placards to put it at the cash register that encourage people to To, review you now makes it super easy. I can literally scan a QR code, put in a review, and maybe you have some kind of contest or some kind of, initiative to encourage people to review you. This also helps to serve and promote your local SEO. When you have more reviews, It looks like you are more credible. You have more trust. So after this customer reached out to their customers, positive reviews started pouring in and they were building credibility and trust. So when people came to the website or they came to the social media page, or they came to Google, they saw all of the customer love that they had, helping them know they're making a good decision by purchasing from you, your services. Social proof is incredibly powerful. It's other people talking about how awesome you are, and that doesn't seem salesy or swarmy in any way, and it just resonates much stronger to a customer looking for your services. You want to always encourage your satisfied customers to leave reviews and testimonials. You want to showcase them on your website and social media, obviously Google. But in 2024, Video testimonials are especially engaging and personal. We use a program called Vouch, that is incredibly powerful and easy to use for video testimonials and easy to put onto your website and your social media. These video testimonials allow people to see eye contact, see inflection, see body non verbals and really understand how your services help them and can be and make an even stronger impact than the written word. Last thing you want to think about with branding is to adapt and evolve. You want to remember that branding is not a one time task. Your website is never done. These are things that are completely organic and change with time as your business evolves, as you become more seasoned, as your industry changes, as the community you live in and work in and, serve changes, it's an ongoing journey and you want to make sure you're regularly revisiting and refining the brand strategy to ensure it remains relevant and effective for your business and to your customers. You want to stay updated on industry trends and really have the idea that you're open to change. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are not open to change. So you have to think like this is something that's going to always change. Even when you create the brand the first time, the second time, the third time it's going to continually evolve, change and grow with you and your business. And as you become more seasoned, I've seen businesses that thrived because they were willing to adapt and evolve. Those businesses are the strongest businesses. They're very resilient and they speak to the customer's ongoing changing needs. So this ability to pivot and grow is what will keep your brand strong and highly competitive. So to wrap up this chat, building a brand for your service based business in 2024 is all about creating a meaningful and consistent experience for your customers. Understand your audience. You want to make sure that you are crafting a compelling brand story. You're maintaining a strong visual identity. You're establishing a solid online website and presence and you're leveraging that social proof. That's so extremely powerful, but like with anything, always be ready to adapt. Thank you so much for joining me today and the spark ignite your marketing podcasts. I hope you found these tips to be helpful and you are now ready to take your branding to the next level. If you have any questions or needing further assistance, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm always open for a 15 minute chat. to help you look at your goals and where you're struggling. Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations and actionable tips. Until next time, keep sparking and igniting.