Meg Mothershed On Five Things You Need To Build A Trusted And Beloved Brand
Visual consistency, or lack thereof, is one of the most important factors in building a trusted brand. Inconsistency creates distrust; if the way you’re visually presenting your brand within your website is vastly different from how it’s displayed on your social media, your audience won’t know what to expect or which is representative of your true brand. Creating and maintaining visual consistency is crucial to managing your brand.
As a part of our series about how to create a trusted, believable, and beloved brand, I had the pleasure to interview Meg Mothershed.
As a branding expert and Co-owner of Mothershed Design Co., Meg Mothershed knows firsthand how to build trusted and believable brands. For the past eight years, Meg has helped service-based businesses from diverse industries connect with their audiences, increase brand awareness, and build brand loyalty.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
After years spent working as a graphic designer for agencies and in-house teams, my husband, Josiah was feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Having been involved in every step of the design process, he knew what it took to run a project from start to finish and felt he could do it better. So, in 2016 he struck out on my own and formed Mothershed Design Co. shortly after we got married.
At the time Josiah started the studio, I was working as an in-house graphic designer at a nonprofit. While it was a great job as a recent graduate, it left me craving more. Having always wanted to own my own business since I was six years old, joining Josiah at MDCo. was a no-brainer! I quit my job and joined him in the business full time in 2016 and we’ve never looked back.
Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Looking back at our first company holiday card, it’s not very pretty. In fact, compared to the efforts we make to connect with our customers and thank our clients during the holiday season, our first year’s efforts are a bit embarrassing in comparison. However, it’s fun to look back and see just how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned over the years!
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Mothershed Design Co. isn’t your typical design studio. We’re not a big agency and we’re not flaky freelancers. We’re the best of both worlds: we’ve got the multi-faceted skills of an agency and the flexibility of freelancers, without the expensive overhead or unreliability.
We’re a tiny but mighty team that believes in the power of staying small. With too many cooks in the kitchen, your message can get lost in translation. We keep our operations small to ensure clear communication. That’s why we only take on projects that we can do using our own skills to provide the best service possible.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes! In addition to our custom client work, we’re also preparing to launch a line of branded t-shirts and merchandise that resonates with small business owners and other graphic design nerds. Stay tuned!
Ok let’s now jump to the core part of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define the difference between brand marketing (branding) and product marketing (advertising)? Can you explain?
I often tell clients to think of their brand as their company’s reputation. When someone thinks of your company, what specific thoughts or ideas come to mind? Ensuring that your company’s reputation aligns with how you’re positioning yourself in the marketplace is key to developing a strong brand.
Marketing, on the other hand, is the act of promoting your products or services to your target audiences. It’s a continuous effort to spread awareness about your brand and ultimately drive sales. Similar to building your brand, marketing requires constant effort.
Can you explain to our readers why it is important to invest resources and energy into building a brand, in addition to the general marketing and advertising efforts?
Marketing or advertising your company without first developing your brand is like making chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips — you’re missing the key ingredient!
By investing the right amount of time and resources into first building your brand, you create a strong foundation to base all of your marketing and advertising efforts on.
Can you share 5 strategies that a company should be doing to build a trusted and believable brand? Please tell us a story or example for each.
The old adage “people buy from those they like, know, and trust,” is well-known for a reason. Ensuring your company’s brand is both believable and trustworthy is crucial to attracting the right people and converting leads into customers. Companies lacking authentic brands can miss out on huge growth opportunities while being left in the dust by competitors.
Take a look at the five strategies below to create a trusted and believable brand:
Strategy #1: Define an Authentic Brand Voice
A brand’s voice is the personality that’s reflected in all of your communications. From the words used on your website to the overall tone of your social media posts, defining a voice that feels authentic to your brand is key to ensuring your brand is both believable and resonates with your target audiences.
Strategy #2: Create Visual Consistency
Visual consistency, or lack thereof, is one of the most important factors in building a trusted brand. Inconsistency creates distrust; if the way you’re visually presenting your brand within your website is vastly different from how it’s displayed on your social media, your audience won’t know what to expect or which is representative of your true brand. Creating and maintaining visual consistency is crucial to managing your brand.
Strategy #3: Making the Right First Impression
As they say, you never have a second chance to make a first impression. It’s crucial that your brand is immediately apparent and an accurate representation of what your business stands for. Are you a high end, luxury brand that thrives on exclusivity, or a down-to-earth, mom-and-pop business? Whatever the case may be, make sure your brand makes the right first impression with potential customers.
Strategy #4: Stay True to Your Brand Values
Brand values are more than feel good words, they’re the principles your business stands by. In order to build an authentic, believable brand, it’s incredibly important that your company not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. If your products are made in the USA and that’s an important buying factor to your customers, shout it from the rooftops! However, if you outsource production, don’t mislead customers into thinking you’re something you’re not. Trust is difficult to build and even more difficult to fix when it’s been broken.
Strategy #5: Nurture Your Customer Relationships
You’ve started building a loyal customer base, but now what? Don’t leave your biggest fans hanging. Make sure to continually connect and engage with your customers on a regular basis to solidify your brand and encourage them to refer your business to others.
By following the strategies above, you can continue to build your brand’s authority, create loyal customers, and grow your brand awareness.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job building a believable and beloved brand. What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
Target is the first brand to come to mind who has done an impressive job building a beloved and believable brand. The Target brand strikes a successful balance between having mass appeal and staying true to their core values. I love that they use inclusive representation in their brand imagery, while offering diverse products — they truly capture the idea of “something for everyone” while maintaining a unique brand identity. The concept that a brand is about balance is something that’s always right on target (pun intended).
In advertising, one generally measures success by the number of sales. How does one measure the success of a brand building campaign? Is it similar, is it different?
Unlike marketing or advertising, quantifying the success of your brand is much more of a gray area. It’s not something that can be measured in terms of clicks or sales, but rather how your brand is perceived by the public as a whole. While this can vary greatly, conducting market research or simply surveying your current and past customers can be a great way to measure how well your brand is performing and discover opportunities for improvement.
What role does social media play in your branding efforts?
Depending on whether your company is B2B or B2C-focused, social media can play a significant role in building your brand. For B2B businesses, I view social media as a way to continue to build brand awareness and remain relevant. By posting on social media, you’re able to connect with potential customers and spread the word about your brand.
For B2C businesses, social media can be a valuable sales tool. By harnessing the power of social selling, you’re able to drive sales directly through your social media channels, in addition to visually demonstrating the value of your products or services.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
At Mothershed Design Co., we believe in small, sustainable growth. We have found that’s the key to our success, both professionally and personally. Constantly doing creative work can be both incredibly rewarding and challenging. It’s easy to quickly become burned out doing something you love.
Our goal as a business is to support other small businesses through branding and web design while maintaining the motivation that made us want to start a business in the first place — freedom over our time and spending that time doing something meaningful.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Something I constantly remind myself is to “be comfortable with being uncomfortable.” As both entrepreneurs and creatives, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is crucial to achieving your dreams.
If you only pursued what you were familiar with, you’d never experience anything new. You would stay in the same place with the same people in the same situations. It can be downright scary to go after what you truly want, but life is too short to be left wondering, “what if?”
We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Hands down it would be Marcus Lemonis! I’ve been a huge fan of his for years. From watching every episode of The Profit (several times over), to following his journey online, I find him to be an amazing source of inspiration as a small business owner. He offers practical, realistic advice on running a business that anyone can learn from and I love his focus on “people, process, and product” to achieve success.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
You can learn more about our story at MothershedDesign.com or follow along with us on Instagram at @mothershed_design.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
