The Biggest Thing You Need to Know About Branding

When people think of branding, they usually think about graphic design, websites, cute logos, and punchy slogans, and while that is a part of branding, it’s not (in my opinion) the most important part. 

When it comes down to it, branding is a part of your relationship building funnel (if you don’t know what a funnel is, check out my blog post). Branding is actually your external messaging at each level of your funnel, and how and what you communicate at each level is going to act as an anchor for your branding and ultimately your business. 

One anchor that informs your business and brand is your values. One of the things that we don't often stop and think about as educators, are what are the actual values that are driving you and your work? You should have values as an entrepreneur, and values in your business. 

Another anchor should be your framework. When I say framework, I mean the content standards of how you do business. Let me give you a teacher example: Just like there's common core for curriculums, you should have developed your own common core within your business. Now, common core doesn't get into the minutiae of daily lesson planning, but it does provide standards that you can use to determine whether or not something is within the standards of common core. So, I can look at sixth grade math standards and also look at other grade levels, and I can tell you if something is not on grade level according to the standards. 

You should have some type of framework in your business that's going to anchor the content you're providing in your business. That framework also is the anchor in your messaging and in your branding. 

Another way you can think about this is also thinking about aspects of the problem you’re solving in your business, along with pain points of the problem. This is why market research is so important, even if you have been, or currently are, your target client, you still need to do market research because that gives you insight in terms of your messaging. 

Knowing the pain points that your target client experiences informs how you communicate and ultimately connect with your audience. You speaking their language about their problem is what stops them in their tracks and gets them to hit the follow button. 

And if you’re still feeling a bit stuck, I encourage you, as a little bit of exercise for you to be thinking about, is whether it's my page or someone else's page who uses social media for their business, read the posts and think about what the theme or core value is that the posts are communication. Even if they aren’t talking about their service, what is the throughline?

Now, you haven’t heard me talk about brand kits, logos, or colors yet (I’ll get to that in the next blog 😉), and that’s because I've noticed as a misstep for a lot of people, is that they overemphasizing the superficial branding metrics, or branding assets, rather than digging deep and developing the core messaging and funnel within their business. When you're thinking about your brand, it's deeper than your favorite colors. It's around deeply understanding your values, your message and who you serve.

When you’re early on in your business, you're still kind of experimenting to get really clear on your values, who you serve and your framework. Look, it took me almost a year to get clarity on some of my messaging because I was still clarifying what I truly wanted my brand to represent. 

Messaging, pain points and values are the anchors you should be focusing on when it comes to your branding, and I want to share a quick analogy with you about that. 

When people think of schools, they ain’t thinking about the school colors or the mascot, they’re thinking about the values, the community, how it feels, how people talk about kids, how people talk about parents. That's what hits us at our core. The colors and the mascot are just icing on the cake. 

That's the analogy I want you to be thinking about with your brand. A website and fancy logo are layers on top of your core values, who you serve, why you serve them, what the problem is, your philosophy on the solution.

I hope this encourages you to think deeper about your brand and branding. Your brand is the essence of your business and what you want your business to represent, so you better know the answer to that before you hire a graphic designer or start playing around in Canva! 😉

If you are ready to invest in coaching to help you grow your consulting business to six-figures and beyond, click here to apply for your invite to special training on how to build a six-figure consulting business!