Branding your business as a Natupreneur comes up as one of the most commonly discussed topics.
Over the lifetime of my business, I have rebranded a few times, not only my business but e-courses as well as publications.
Let me share with you my experience I have built up over the last decade or so.
You could be a brand new business and be trying to figure out how you are going to present yourself to the world, what branding you’re going to use.
You could also be someone who has been in business for a long time but you’re reviewing your current branding to make sure that it is aligned with what you have going in your business at the moment.
Branding is a complex thing but it all comes down to one simple idea. What do you want your business to look and feel like? What is that you want to get across to your prospective clients about your business?
When choosing your branding, keep in mind that your business isn’t you.
How can you give it a personality and convey your essence? Your business will have a personality and that is what you want to get across.
The next challenge is to describe that to someone who can translate that into something visual for you.
This is when you can think about engaging a professional designer to create that visual for you. That can be a graphic designer, a website designer and you will need to convey that vision to all those people creating your branding for you.
Each of them will be asking you somewhat different questions. One questions will be the same though. What do you want your business to look like for your clients?
A great way to start getting some ideas about your branding is to look at other businesses that are similar to each other but with a different brand message and look. What is that you are drawn to?
If you had to describe your brand as a car, what kind of car would it be? Luxurious, comfortable, prestigious or something more functional, adventurous for example.
If your business were an animal, what would it be? What is it that you love about those animals?
If you are running an established Natupreneur business, you can apply the same questions. Do these reflect your current business as it is?
Create a branding document with the answers to the above questions, so when you start working with a designer, you have the starting blocks that will help kick off the whole process.
They will create a style guide for you that should represent your brand. This is where knowing your top 10 words that describe your business come in handy because you can compare your words with the style guide and see if it reflects your business the way you want it to.
The style guide will also have the types of fonts you use along with 3 main colours and your secondary and tertiary colours and how they are to be used.
You can share your final style guide with anyone and they will be able to use it as a baseline and create for you.
What you also need to think about in relation to your branding is what type of journey you want to take your clients on and what end goal you have in mind.
How would your clients describe you? How would your friends describe you? Use those words for your branding document also. They will also be part of your top 10 words.
If you happen to be a visual person, go and find images on Pinterest that represent that vision you have for your business. Think about what it can grow into and find pictures that give you that feeling.
You can create your own mood board for your brand. Think about the word “inspiration”. There would be specific colours, people and landscapes that would come into mind. Things that you personally associate with that word.
Gather at least 10-30 images that represent your business and convey the information you want to communicate to your clients. The more specific you are, the easier the creation process is going to be for the person working on your branding.
You can cut down on a lot of time by doing the groundwork beforehand.
You will also save money as well!
The more clarity you have on what you need, the clearer version of your brand your creative person will be able to give you.
That clarity will also ensure that you are able to get into the process of creating for your brand instead of going back and forth about what you like and don’t like.
Finding your branding will happen through these three questions:
What does it look like for you?
What feeling do you want to convey?
How can it be attractive to your potential clients?
This last question is what makes your branding about your client. Imagine they are looking through a whole list of practitioners. They will be looking for someone they resonate with.
When you are putting your authentic self forward through your branding and that resonates with them, they will pick you.
Now that you know more about the branding process you can take steps to create your authentic branding. What is it that you can do today to move your business forward?
Leave A Comment