Visual Brand

Your visual brand encompasses all aspects of your brand that are represented visually. From your logo, business card, and brochures, to your invoices and envelopes, to your Facebook photo, avatar, and Twitter background, to your website, email newsletter, and blog, and even the clothes you wear, every time your brand is seen it is sending a message.

Written Brand

Your written brand includes all aspects of your brand that are represented in writing, either on paper or on screen — from your website copy and email newsletter content, to your blog posts and articles, to your social media posts, emails, direct mail, and letters. The written word is extremely powerful and long-lasting, so it must be consistent and well-planned.

Verbal Brand

Your verbal brand refers to all aspects of your brand that are represented in the spoken word — from your voice mail and your 60-second commercial, to your teleclasses and introductions, to how you describe your business at networking events and how you answer the phone. It also includes the way other people talk about your brand and what they are saying.

Tactile Brand

Your tactile brand covers all aspects of your brand that can be touched — from your products and packaging, to your business cards, direct mail, and brochures. Each of these tangible elements puts your brand in the hands of your audience to touch, feel, and save — adding a whole new dimension to how they interact with your brand.

Your brand is like a house. The architecture, design, doors, windows, fixtures, and paint colors create something amazing to look at and experience. The building has strength, character, style, and even its own personality.

Some people are attracted to modern, minimalist-style homes and others will be attracted to country or Victorian-style homes. But when it comes to actually buying the home, they want to know that the home is well-built, that the foundation is solid and the structure is sound, and that the home is a perfect fit for them.

Your branding — the strategy behind your brand — is the foundation and structure of the house. It is everything that goes into building the home that you can’t see on the surface but is there supporting and holding it together. It includes your values, personality, promise, focus, differentiation, mission, reputation, message, offerings, target market, goals, and more.

Branding is how we market ourselves to others. It is what we do with our brand. It refers to the behind-the-scenes action that creates a unique position for your brand in the marketplace so it stands out from the crowd and communicates your value. It builds credibility and influence in your market, and motivates your ideal clients to buy.

A strong, clear, powerful brand with smart, strategic branding backing it up makes getting the attention of your prospects and clients easier and makes your marketing easier because it builds credibility and influence in your niche. It will also help you stand out among your competition, communicate your value, attract new clients, charge your worth, and stay top of mind.

In our first issue this year, I made a commitment to send our newsletter out every week and to never sacrifice quality to do so.

To protect our brand, it is more important to provide quality and value, than to send out something that isn’t great.

So this week, with some crazy, insane rush projects and last minute deadlines, I’ll be honest, I was going to try to crank something out yesterday to just make sure it went out on Friday. But then I started thinking about the advice I give our consulting clients.

Protect your brand at all costs.

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to share my story about my journey from “feast or famine” freelancer to multi-six figure brand with the Art Director’s and Artist’s Club of Sacramento. As I was speaking and sharing my story and the lessons I had learned along the way, I was reminded that my success has been due to the fact that I have been able to create a brand that is becoming bigger and more important than me.

Yes, I am the driving force behind the brand, but now that my brand is established, the focus is on maintaining the brand, presenting the spoken, written, and visual brand consistently, protecting the brand, enhancing and refining the brand… and even more important, managing the experiences my clients and my tribe have with my brand.

With every blog post, social networking post, or newsletter, I have the opportunity to do two things:

1. Wow you and build a stronger relationship with you
2. Disappoint you and lose a subscriber, follower, or tribe member

So I’m publishing on Saturday to ensure that our content is great and your experience with our brand is on par with the our own expectations and yours!

What to think about this coming week:

This week, I want you to think about your own brand. Think about the experience your clients and audience have with your visual brand, spoken brand, and written brand. If you haven’t taken the time to define your brand and how you want it to be perceived, set aside some time get started working ON your brand this week.

Remember, people are going to talk about your brand. If you don’t define your own brand and manage their experience, they will do it for you — and you might not like what they have to say!

To answer the questions, “What is a brand?” and “Why is branding important?” I must share the true goal of a brand:

The primary goal of your brand is to get your prospects, clients, and customers to see you as THE ONLY SOLUTION.

When you become the only solution, your competitors fall out of the picture completely and your marketing and sales become much easier.

With a powerful, passionate, purposeful brand, you will pull your perfect, ideal clients right to you – and you will finally be able to stop chasing them!

When I first start talking about branding with my clients, the first question I get asked is, “What is a brand?” Many mistake a brand for a spiffy logo design and branding as the design of their marketing materials like brochures and websites and business cards. But in truth, the design and visual look of a brand is only a small piece of a brand.

Others, who want to skip branding and move right to developing their website ask me, “Why is branding important?” Usually the purpose or goal of a brand is misinterpreted to be getting your target market to choose you over their competitors and see you as a better choice. But unfortunately that really isn’t accurate.

You are the engineer of your brand. Just as an engineer must always start with immaculate plans, you must always start with a well defined brand

When you invest time into building and defining your brand, and you lay a solid foundation for all of your marketing and communications, you will gain a complete understanding of where your business is now, where you want to take it, and why you will be able to achieve your goals. This alone will increase your confidence in your brand and make your business introductions and commercials more effective and it will make your marketing presentations more effective.

Branding is important in defining your target market and niche as well.

Just as an engineer must understand every tiny nuance with the land, environment, materials, and plans he or she is using, to truly succeed in business branding, it is critical that you understand every nuance of the wants and needs of your prospects, clients, and customers. Your brand is the whole of their experiences with you and perceptions about you. Your true brand is what lies in the minds and the hearts of your audience.

Only after you have done the work to define your brand, create your message, develop your own unique compelling story, and understand your target market, can you begin on designing your visual brand.

Your logo, business cards, website, and other marketing materials are the last step in the branding process.

I know it’s hard because as a new entrepreneur, you are so excited about your business that all you want to do is get out there fast, help people, and make money following our passions. So you skip the brand development work and jump straight to working with a designer to design your logo and marketing materials.

But here’s the problem… when you don’t take the time to develop your brand, it is going to be a lot harder to get where you want to go, because your marketing materials won ‘t be doing the heavy listing for you. They may look pretty, but there isn’t going to be a strategy or clear, concise message behind them.

When I work with my Elite clients – even those with established businesses  – on increasing brand visibility and growing their business, we start with branding. We evaluate what already exists, identify what needs to be worked on, and we get work.

Your brand is the cornerstone of your success… Do you really understand yours inside and out?

In week three of my Online Marketing Acceleration Bootcamp, I be walking you through the branding process step-by-step in a 90 minute training session, and I’ll be answering all of your questions about your own brand in a 60 minute Q&A session. Plus, you’ll get several worksheets to help you accelerate the process.

I’ll share with you tips, techniques, and strategies to create a brand that will stick in the minds of your target market and keep you top of mind, including how to craft “commercials” that make people want to learn more. We’ll talk about your offers and packages, and how to market them with emotion. And, we’ll discuss how design effects the success of a brand.

After week three of my Online Marketing Acceleration Bootcamp:

• You will have a powerful commercial for your business
• You will be able to powerfully communicate your own unique story
• You will understand your target market like never before!

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, but you’re tired of the hypey calls with big upsells and you just want someone to show you what to do and how to do it in a clear, easy to understand format – my Online Marketing Acceleration Bootcamp is for you!

Register by July 27 and participate in the Bootcamp for only $199! That’s not only a $50 savings, but it is exactly what you need to transform your business for less than a day at the spa or a trip to a major league ball game!

I hope you’ll join me!

Your small business brand is made up of three branding elements:

1. The written brand
2. The spoken brand
3. The visual brand

As you can see a brand is so much more than a single logo design. The visual portion of the brand is the most well known and is made up of the brand logo design and support marketing materials such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, email newsletters, websites, blogs, and more!

The key to and starting point for all of your marketing materials design is the brand logo. A small business brand logo is made up of three different parts:

The Graphic
The graphic element of a logo can be an icon, an illustration, a texture, a pattern, or even a well designed line. It typically can be used both as a part of the entire brand logo and on its own. The graphic element for your brand logo should have a reason for being included and it should hold meaning and purpose in the communication of your brand logo.

The Typeface
The typeface is the style of type or font used to typeset the name of the business and the tagline for the logo. The typefaces are usually complimentary and are limited to two different typefaces. The typefaces, whether you are using a serif font, a sans serif font, a script font, a display font, or a handwritten font, should also have a reason and meaning associated with its use and your brand message.

The Color Palette
The color palette should be chosen based on the emotions you want your brand to evoke in your audience and the story that your brand tells. “I used blue because I like it,” isn’t good enough. The colors palette, when chosen correctly will help reinforce and enhance your brand communications.

Each of these three parts of a successful small business logo, the graphic, the typeface, and the color palette, are designed to work together to represent your unique point of differentiation and brand personality. Together these three components communicate your overall brand message to your ideal client clearly and simply.