How To Improve Your Brand

If you’re looking for ways to improve your brand, the problem probably isn’t that you need to improve it, it’s that you’ve never taken the time to actually define it.

Now you find yourself struggling because:

• You’re not connecting with your customers beyond a transactional level.
• You’re not sure why your website doesn’t convert browsers to buyers.
• You’re embarrassed that your marketing collateral and website isn’t as good as your competitors and they’re taking all the marketshare.

To improve your brand, you’ve got to take control of it and that starts by defining it.

Defining your brand is an iterative process which needs routine checkups to ensure it continues to ring true even after you experience significant growth or you decide to pivot in a different direction.

Here’s a 7-part framework to build a great brand:

1. Vision
2. Mission
3. Core Values
4. Customers
5. Narrative
6. Voice & Tone
7. Visual Identity

Once you’ve taken the time to clearly define each part, you can filter everything through this framework to ensure it’s “on brand.” Let’s dig into each part.

1. Vision

Your vision is simply your Why. Why does your company exist?

As Simon Sinek states in his best selling book “Start with Why”:

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe”

Your brand’s vision should be big enough to inspire but not too big that it is out of reach and no one will buy into it.

Microsoft’s original vision was “a computer on every desk, and in every home.”

Bill Gate’s vision for Microsoft was big enough to start a movement but not so much that the people around him didn’t believe it would be achievable.

For inspiration, check out these 20 examples of vision statements of successful companies.

2. Mission

Your mission is the How to your Why. How are you going to achieve your vision?

The mission statement is all about action. What needs to be done to successfully realize your vision?

A simple way to approach this is to take your vision statement and reverse engineer it.

For help and inspiration on crafting a powerful mission statement, check out this article from Process Street.

3. Core Values

Your core values are like the moral compass for your company. They are internal and should align with your vision and mission.

We’ve all heard the saying “actions speak louder than words” and that’s true for your company’s values.

Think about your friends. They all know what your values are but not because you’ve explicitly told them, but because of how you’ve acted and behaved around them. The same can be said about brands.

It can be easy to write a list of noble values and plaster it on your website or company lobby but the value comes from the actions behind it. Living and acting out those values on a day-to-day basis takes a lot of commitment but can have a tremendous payoff.

4. Customers

Now that you’ve identified your company’s vision, mission, and values its time to shift to who you’re doing it all for, your customers.

It’s paramount to your brand that you identify your customers. If you’ve got multiple customer types, create profiles for each of them.

There are several ways to gain insights into your ideal customers. Here are just a few:

1. Look into the past and create profiles or personas based on the repeated patterns in types of customers that have already done business with you.
2. Survey your existing customer base and ask questions like “what did you like the least/most about our company?”
3. Go to where your potential customers are having conversations and listen. Facebook or LinkedIn groups, Reddit forums or Quora questions, or Amazon reviews. Listen to what your customers or potential customers are talking about and pay close attention to the language they use to talk about it.

5. Narrative

This is the part of the process where you begin to combine everything from the previous parts to create your unique narrative.

The method I’ve found that resonates with me and that I use with my clients is based on Donald Miller’s StoryBrand.

The basic concept is: a character who has a problem and needs a guide, who gives the character a plan and calls him/her to action that either ends in success or failure.

So to bring that into terms to help your brand:

1. A character = your customer as the hero of the story
2. Has a problem = this is broken into 3 types. I’ll use an example of a lawn care business: External problem (ie. Overgrown grass), Internal problem (ie. Embarrassed the neighbor has better grass), Philosophical problem (ie. We all ought to be proud of our lawns.)
3. And needs a guide = your company as the guide or mentor to help the hero find a solution their problems
4. Who gives the character a plan = a simple 3 step plan that is easy for customers to understand
5. And calls him/her to action = a direct call to action (ie. Schedule an appointment) and a transitional call to action (ie. Download our free PDF on 5 techniques to a beautiful lawn your neighbors don’t know about)
6. That either ends in success = you’ve got to tell your customers with visuals and text what life would look like if they use your product/service.
7. Or failure = you’ve also got to let them know what they risk losing if they don’t use your product/service.

On the StoryBrand website, you can gain access to what is called a BrandScript where you can begin fleshing out the narrative of your brand.

The beauty in this is that you can use this BrandScript as a filter for all your marketing collateral. From the copy you use in social media, to blog topics, to website copy, to videos.

6. Voice & Tone

It’s important you develop your voice and tone from the insights gained from the Customers step. If you’ve used my suggestion about going where your customers are and listening, you’ll get a sense of the language they use to communicate.

You’ll want to take some inventory on words or phrases they use and integrate that into your voice and tone. So if you hop onto Reddit and see comments going back and forth that are very sentimental and serious then you’ll know you shouldn’t add too much humor to your collateral.

At its core, branding is about making a connection with your customers and being remembered. A great way to achieve this is by resonating with who they are on a personal level in addition to a demographic level.

A great example of a brand that has established their voice and tone well is MailChimp. They’ve even published their voice and tone guidelines for all to see. I don’t recommend copying them but use their example to get a sense of how they created it and adapt something similar to your business.

7. Visual Identity

Most business owners think that branding is done once they put their logo all over their marketing collateral.

Your logo is a very important element to your overall visual identity but it is still only a part. You may even have a great logo and all it needs is a refresh. To understand the difference between a redesign or a refresh, check out this article by The Brand Insight.

Your visual identity is often referred to as the look and feel though most stop at the look and forget the feel. The purpose of creating an identity for your business is to trigger brand recall. These are the memories and feelings people experience when they’ve interacted with your brand.

It is one thing for your brand to make an impression, but it is another to make a lasting impression.

In order to create a visual identity which creates an experience that crosses over multiple mediums and touch points, you need to take into consideration the following:

Logo

• Graphic mark + word mark
• Logo variations: stacked, horizontal, favicons

Color palette

• Bold, complimentary, neutral, dark and light

Typography

• Headlines + body copy

Patterns and textures

• Website backgrounds, packaging materials

Photography style

• Staged versus lifestyle

Illustration style

• Isometric, flat, line only

Iconography

• 3d, flat

Once you’ve decided on all these elements, it needs to be put into a manual that can be referenced when any piece of collateral is created, just like your narrative. It can also be handed to contractors or freelancers to ensure what they create for you is “on brand.”

Check out these 5 powerful brand style guide examples from New Breed.

As you can see, improving your brand starts with properly defining it. If you’re struggling to connect with your customers beyond single transactions, it’s likely because you created a logo, chosen some colors, a couple fonts and stopped there.

You’re looking at your competitor’s website and collateral and thinking all their stuff looks great, that’s why they’re getting all the clients and taking all the market share.

The reality is, you can do the same and they can be envious of your brand. You’ve just got to take control of it by going beyond just the visuals and define it.

For information on how to structure your website homepage to turn browsers into buyers, head to thebrandinsight.com and download the free PDF.

This will be an ongoing process because, as your business grows and new products and services are released, your mission or vision might pivot to a new direction.

Instead of waiting until your brand doesn’t make sense and starts doing you a disservice, make it a point to check each of the 7 parts that make up your brand and make small adjustments along the way towards the new direction your business is going.

This will ensure your brand is in a constant state of improvement. Making small adjustments along the way will cost you far less than hiring an agency to go through an overhaul of your entire brand when it’s veered too far away from your original vision.