Transcript
Welcome to the vision2success digital marketing workshops. These are a free regular marketing workshops that are designed to help you take your vision and realise it in a successful business.
The overall hour will be a short introduction from me as to who we are and what vision2success is all about. And then we’re very kindly joined by Lauren Weldon from Studio LWD, who will be presenting an educational workshop on an aspect of marketing. In this case, branding, we have expanded the content, so you have more to take away.
Prior to April, we ran a series of 10 workshops. And now we’re running them once every two weeks, one week being a guest speaker. And second, in the month is presented by myself using the app we’re using and various strategic tools that you can use.
So without further ado, let’s quickly run to my slides. And then we will get to the important bit which is Laura’s talk. So for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Peter Dickinson. I’m the founder and managing director of KUB and have been coaching businesses for over 20 years. I’ve worked with over 500 companies. I was joined by bCharleh, my daughter, six years ago. And we’re now up to a team of eight. And we’re all about implementing digital marketing. So working with people like Laura who will help with the branding, and then we’ll take the assets and make it work for you.
So why do we do this? There’s a lot of effort involved in running these presentations. Well, we work with a lot of companies who are trying to implement digital marketing and it is complex. And it is a real minefield and so you need knowledge in order to help you through that. You need the right amount of knowledge at the right time to do that.
We want to build a community that’s self-supporting so that if you need a supplier or somebody who can do this, we’ll also be talking about the Net Hub vision 2 success marketing hub that we’ve set up.
A little bit about vision 2 success – so these are the frequently workshops 11 to 12 which are running fortnightly.
We have got the book for those who like to read it’s only in digital format at the moment but does give you the basis for a lot of tasks or things you need to think about on implementation. We have online digital courses at learning.kub-uk.net We’ll be launching the app so will be showing you a tool that you can use to develop your own marketing strategy. And then obviously, we can help you as well.
This is the network we’re talking about. So if you go to mynethub.com, and you can sign up there, and then on the group, you’ll be able to see our group called Vision2success. So you scroll down to the networking directory, search for vision2success, and it will come up. If you click on that, then you can join. We’re looking to build this into a global community over the next 12 months.
So this will be a mixture of people who are practitioners, who are who can answer questions and people in business or any organisation who are trying to implement digital marketing so that we get a community going where people can share and collaborate. Because it’s not about competing with each other. It’s about finding ways to work together to move forward.
So we’re gonna be joined by Laurel Weldon from Studio LWD on how to develop an impactful brand to stand out with your target audience. Laura is the founder of studio LWD and in today’s marketing environment it’s ever more important that you have a strong brand that stands out and resonates with your target audience.
Laura has been involved in branding for the last 17 years and set up her business in 2013. Laura’s worked with some big brands like the NHS and Aldi, and very excitingly is now working with blockchain and metaverse. On Facebook, you may recognise the metaverse the name that Facebook changed themselves to because it’s all about becoming more immersive and more involved. And blockchain, if you’ve ever bought any bitcoins or any sort of digital currency, then blockchain is a technology that supports that. So very exciting times for Laura there. So without further ado, I’ll stop sharing. And Laura, if you’d like to take over.
Thank you, Peter, thank you for that lovely introduction. And good morning, everyone. It’s really nice to see some familiar faces in the room. So hi, hi to everyone. And hi to everyone new as well. Looking forward to sharing this with you. And feel free to, you know, during the chat, if you’ve got any questions, put your hand up, I’m happy to kind of go through questions as I’m doing it as well or happy to do those at the end as well. So I’ll just start sharing my screen.
Gonna do the obligatory Can everyone see that? Okay. Great. Okay. So today, we’re going to be looking at how to develop a strong brand to get your business impact and help you stand out to your target audience.
So we will say Brennan is arguably the most powerful business tool since the spreadsheet. What we don’t always understand either is business owners or businesses is how to harness that power and make it really work for us.
What we need to do is tell people what we do quickly and concisely. And we need to reach the right customers and reflect our values publicly. Because clear branding also helps us understand ourselves, we don’t always see when our branding is letting us down. And that’s so key. Especially if you’re a business owner yourself, you can be so close to that brand, it becomes your baby, you know, you’re so passionate about it. And you can’t maybe kind of take that step back and objectively look at it and say, you know, actually is this right? Is it connecting with our target audience? Is it doing what we need it to do?
So how can you order all the elements that make up a brand into a concise and unique expression of your business? You need a brand that’s going to resonate with your customers clearly, is going to guide your vision and make a real difference to your business. You know, it’s not just about pretty pictures and logos and colours. You know, if you get this right and now it can make a real impact on your bottom line.
When a brand is broken down into separate parts, considered creatively from every angle, and then bought together with both personality, colour and tone of voice, it can transform your business with market shares a 50% or higher and able to command price premiums.
So, how can branding benefit your business? So think firstly, it’s really good to understand how important it is to your business. Like I said before, it’s not just thinking about kind of the fluffy pictures and all the nice bits, it’s actually you know, how important is it to the business and the bottom line.
So currently, these might be some pain points that you’re experiencing, you know, or your clients are experiencing, or you and yourself and your business experience. And so what is not quite working? It might be deciding how to market yourself can seem really difficult and complicated.
Over time, you might have gotten mixed up with other companies you may be blending in, and you might be relying heavily on loyal customers rather than being able to generate new ones. And I think this is really key, especially if what’s going on with a pandemic, you know, things might have changed. And it’s making sure that that’s out there. You’re not sure how to sell yourselves as a business. And you can also be unsure of your actual worth and value that you’re giving to customers or clients.
Some of the staff struggle to feel connected with the business. And again, this is huge now working from home, you know, how are we creating that brand employee culture, when you know, potentially everyone’s working from home in the dining rooms or home offices? How are we going to build that connection to the big wider brand?
We might miss opportunities as we don’t have a suite of marketing materials ready to hand. So how many times have you maybe been past an amazing opportunity, or if you get an alert maybe from a tender, you know, a tender site with an alert that you think, oh, man, that sounds amazing. But we don’t have a suite of materials ready to hand. So it’s too much hard work to kind of put that together to go for that opportunity of go for that contract.
Different people in the company may describe the vision in different ways, and it can be hard to explain. So it might be that you asked to sum up in 30 seconds or two sentences, what your business or what your brand is about. If everyone says something slightly different shows that you’re not quite aligned.
And also, you might be in a really busy marketplace. And sometimes you’re overspending or spending in the wrong way to try and compete with the competition.
So how can branding help all this? And this is just a snapshot obviously, there are lots of other ways. But branding can improve recognition. And that can both be internally and externally. It creates trust in either your product or service. It supports your advertising, it can help generate new customers. It builds value both financially and emotionally. It can inspire your employees, it can help you generate referrals, provide clarity and focus, it can get across your business philosophy, and help to build sales. And above all, Branding will set you apart and transform your business.
So it’s really easy to kind of tell you like this is what you need. This is what branding does, but what do you need to consider when developing your brand? So you might be at a point where you know, you want to do this in house, you don’t want to get an agency like ourselves involved. So what can you look at doing in house and internally to help you consider when developing your brand?
We’ve broken it down into six key areas. Now there’s more than this. But obviously, we don’t want to overwhelm everyone at this point. And this is the six top-line areas.
So you should always start with strategy. It should always be led from a strategic point of view. And then you’ll look at developing your values, your personality, defining your audience. And that is key. If you don’t know who your audience is, how do you know how to talk to them? you need to have a really clearly defined target audience, then from that you can develop that tone of voice of how to speak to those people. And then lastly, it’s creating the brand identity.
So the actual visual side of it is the very last part that’s kind of just a visual representation of all these other parts. So I’m just gonna break it down and hopefully offer some of my insight from over the years and some tips on how you can achieve this yourself.
So brand strategy, I’m sure you’ve all heard this kind of term banded about quite a bit. But basically, it’s your long term plan to turn your brand into a huge success. After all, a well defined and well-executed brand strategy can make a big impact on your brand and business. So I’ve put together some little tips on kind of what you can do and how you can start to look at your own brand strategy.
So ask yourself how, what, where, when, and to whom do you plan to communicate your brand message? What messages were you put out there? What’s the timeframe of your plan? How can you effectively monitor the results? And what does success look like to you? Everyone has a completely different take on this, so what is success for you?
For the majority of businesses, it’s best to keep things simple, you need a workable plan to create a unique brand. And that’s going to inspire your customers and also your employees. To start your brand strategy, you need to get to know your customers’ needs, review your competitors, and work out how your friend how your brand fits into the market.
Is your brand, the expensive high-quality option, or the low-cost value option? You can’t be both. And you can’t be all things to all people. We have this a lot with clients that we talk to, we say, Who do you want to talk to? Who do you want to sell? ‘I want to sell to everyone’, you can’t sell to everyone, you need to own something you need to own a position in the marketplace. Make a plan that moves your brand from where it is now to where you want it to be. I know that sounds easier said than done, but it is really worth the effort.
Okay, so brand values. So like your own personal values, brand values are a set of guiding principles that affect the choices you make and the actions you take. So again, how can you look at developing these yourself? So what does your brand really stand for? What is not non-negotiable? What does it really stand for? So, internally for us, one of our brand values is transparency. That’s both of clients. We’re extremely transparent with our clients, but also our partners that we work alongside. So for me, that’s completely non-negotiable. Everything we do has to be transparent and honest.
So what’s the non-negotiable for you? Think of your brand as a person, what values do they have? Are these values really unique to you? Or is it just business jargon? Would your customers also agree with the choices?
So having well-defined values helps create a clear sense of purpose and direction for your brand. They’re so simple to create but often overlooked. Often business leaders know their values deep down and find it hard to share them. document in these brand values can help with your organisation’s marketing and business activities.
Let your values guide your marketing. It will show through and help your customers connect with you. Aim for three to five distinctive and authentic values that reflect your core attitudes and principles.
Brand personality. So a brand’s personality is a set of human personality traits that apply to your brand. Ask yourself, are you the latest Maverick to set change in the world or a trusted leader with decades of experience? Again, that that examples so you can’t be both. So make sure you really know who you are or who your clients are.
To review or change your brand’s personality, you need to understand what your customers think of you. If you are unable to carry out customer research, ask your frontline staff, partners, and people you work alongside what they think. Again, write down four to six words or sentences that convey the personality of your brand. They should be distinctive, authentic and honest. Craft your marketing messages to convey your personality, your brand will be a lot more successful as a result.
And then I’ve just included on this one a little kind of thing that we do a little exercise that we sometimes run with clients to kind of get this working. So either get your team together or if you are a self-employed solo entrepreneur, maybe get people that you work alongside with or trusted colleagues, or maybe even speak to each other, you know, people that are in this group, maybe set up a little peer group that you can maybe work together on and ask them to list three words that describe each one of themselves. Obviously keep it clean, because it’s for your brand and we don’t want anything dodgy.
Once you’re in the flow, then turn that same thought process to your brand. It really helps if you start thinking on more of a personal level and describe as a person that really helps rather than sometimes it’s this kind of big brand that it doesn’t make sense, so bring it back onto that personal level.
Target audience. So defining your target audience will really really help you to create a brand that’s going to really speak to your customer. Essentially defining that target gives you direction for your brand. And it shows more consistency in messaging so you can build those stronger relationships with customers.
Again, I think it’s super important and we say to clients all the time, if you don’t know who you are talking to, it’s really hard to know how to talk to them. And that’s not also just from a tone of voice and messaging point of view. But it also then flows into the identity.
So again, sometimes people might, you know, look at something like, oh, I don’t like that. But if you’re not the target audience of your own business, or the client isn’t the target audience have their own business, but it’s not necessarily for them to like, so everything needs to constantly come back to this target audience in this persona. So, you know, we might create, we’ve got John and Sally, they’re our two audiences. We know that John and Sally buy into our product and love everything about it, – this is who we want to target.
And then everything you do should constantly come back to that, will this resonate with John and Sally, will they buy into this? Is this something that they are interested in? And then this could even flow that is when you start to do social media, LinkedIn posts, you know, direct mail campaigns. Is this adding value to this target audience?
Is this something that they’re going to read and buy into? Or is it something that they’re just not going to be interested in? If it’s the latter, don’t do it, don’t kind of get into the trap of thinking, we constantly need to be doing things. And let’s just do anything and everything. Because we just need to get something out there.
It’s about making sure that your brand is connecting with your customers. So one piece of well thought out communication that’s really going to connect with that target audience is going to be so much more valuable than 10 pieces that you think they might be interested in.
Okay, tone of voice. So the tone of voice isn’t what you say. But it’s the way that you say it. It’s the style and the language you use when you’re communicating. And it’s a real key part of your brand identity. So again, can ask yourself, How do you sound to your customers? Is your content interesting? And does it sound authentic? Does your tone of voice echo your personality and values? And is your tone of voice consistent?
So the way you write and speak can affect how your audience perceives and interacts with your brand. So Are you friendly or formal? Are you dynamic and exciting, or are you steady and calm? And again, this is going to be reflective of what you are as a company, what products or services you’re offering.
So if it is something that say, I don’t know, a medical service or product, that obviously needs to come across very formal and authentic. Whereas if you’re maybe a social media agency, then it can be a lot more fun, you know, you can be a bit more fun, you can have more personality coming through. So you need to think about what you want to portray for your brand. Getting your tone of voice right really will ensure that your brand sounds authentic, and will help your audience believe and buy into you.
So again, a little exercise that we sometimes run with clients, is you can create a mood board of celebrities who have the right tone of voice for your business, how do they sound? And what words would they use? So you can think of it again, as a person. So if you were to summarise your brand and think about who am I going to pick, I’m going to pick x celebrity or politician, or a public figure that you think would really sum up the way that you would like to speak, you know, break down, how do they sound? What words would they use? How would they speak to somebody?
And then finally, it’s your brand identity. So I think there’s a massive misconception in branding that it’s this bit. So it’s just, it’s your logo, and you know, its colours and photography, there’s all that other work that needs to go into it first. You need to nail that strategy, you need to nail that target audience.
Otherwise, when you’re going to do this part of the exercise, you just create, if you’ve not done that first bit, you just create something that looks good for the sake of it. There’s no kind of background to it. There’s no reasoning for it, it is just a case of going I like that font. I like those colours, let’s put them together.
Whereas if you do the strategy first it means then that you can then again so going back to John and Sally, would John and Sally like this is this what they like is this is similar to other brands that they buy into, is it something that’s going to connect with them and make them pick my products off the shelf or put my products in their basket or want to use my service?
So it’s all about kind of creating obviously there is a logo but beyond the logo, what does your brand look like as a whole? So imagine that your brand identity is a suit that your brand wears, everything that’s visual about your brand comes together to form your brand identity.
So I think always a really good example of this is Apple. So you can go into an Apple Store if that did not have the Apple logo above the door. And even if you took the Apple products out of that store, you would know that’s an Apple store, you can go at Apple stores all over the world, they’re exact same. You know that that is that brand, again was like Nike shops, you’re going to like Nike town in New York, and some of the others might London again, if you took that product out there, you would know that that’s a Nike shop. And that’s all through brand.
I know it’s not a popular brand at the moment, but Abercrombie and Fitch did it with smell. You know, Lush do it – if you walk past a lush shop, you can smell it before you even see it. So your brand isn’t just this is my logo on a business card. And I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t remember when I last gave a business card out. You know, if you do your website, it’s this tiny little logo at the top of the screen, you hide that logo, what else is selling your brand on that? Is it consistent?
So again, ask yourself these questions. What does your brand identity say about you? Is it applied consistently? If you did a brand audit of your, you know, website, any of the marketing materials you have your emails that you send out, your social media presence, is that all consistent is all the fonts the same? All the colours the same? The style that you’re talking to people is that all the same? It needs that consistent touch points throughout.
And again, looking at the big brands that do exceptionally well, there’s a consistency and a customer journey and flow that flows throughout every single touch point and piece.
And then finally, is it inspiring? You know, do people look at it and think I really like the look of it, I love the look of it, I love what they’re saying, I want to know more about these guys, you know, they’re interested in me. And it just to enhances your business image, you know, a lot of the work that we do with these clients is that they know they’ve grown to a certain level. And then they want to kind of level up say want to go to that next level, they want to be competing with the big boys. But the brand doesn’t actually reflect their kind of quality of level and service that they are offering you know, and so that’s real key that we need to make sure that it’s reflective of what you do and the quality of the product or service that you’re offering.
So the identity is also it’s a combination of the colours, the font, you might have a tagline. So you bring that in, and any graphic devices that you may have. So a graphic device could be like a shape or a pattern. But something that’s ownable like ownable kind of asset to you, I think it’s really key to have things like that. Because the danger can be you just have a brand that’s just the logo, what you put on a brochure cover what you’re putting on your social tiles, what goes on your website? We can’t just, we call it logo slapping, we can’t just bang a logo on everything and think that people are gonna be like, Wow, let’s give them all the money, you know, let’s buy them, let’s buy that service.
So each element has a significant effect on the whole identity. And you need to build and develop this brand kit of parts that you can then bring together and use in various different ways. So a good brand identity can transform a brand, it can help communicate your brand’s personality and its value to your customer.
Above all else, it helps to differentiate your brand from your competitors, and will start to build recognition well beyond that of your logo. So I could say if we you know, you blanked out your logo on the top of your website, would people know it’s your website? Would they know it’s you? Would you read it and yeah, this is this that’s their tone of voice, the way they’re speaking to me, the photography style? Does it all sit together? Or are you so heavily relying on that logo to give it that stamp of oh, by the way, guys, it’s ours, here’s our mark of our logo to say this is us.
So one of the things you can do as well is kind of think of it like we’re saying before about that whole holistic approach. So you can think of you know, how does your brand again we sometimes think it’s silly, but how does it look? Feel? How would it you know, music would be music for it? What would that music be? How would it taste? How would it smell? How would it speak to people?
So have a think about all those things together. And again, that gives you that full brand. We worked for a company once we did develop to brand and we developed a scent for them. And they had that in their offices and they had data centres and then we even had that scent in the car so that if a key top clients, they would get driven to these data centres. And that centres in the car. It was everywhere. Sounds a bit much but it was it was a very immersive experience.
We did a lot of work for Virgin Australia when I went over there, we developed Sonic idents for them, so there was sound and lighting, you know, certain lights were applied at certain times to make people feel a certain mood. Those lights were then the same in the lounges as they were on the aircraft. So it’s so much more than that logo on a page.
And depending on what you know, kind of product or service you’re in, if you have a physical outlet, a physical presence, you might have a physical store, or a physical office that you want people to come in. What you want people to feel when they walk into that store? What they feel when they walk in the office? That feeling that they get should be a representation of your brand.
So above all else, you need to be consistent in all of your branding.
So all of your touch points should be consistent across the board. So your LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, if you’re sending out email campaigns, if you’re sending out direct mail campaigns, you know, every single day, you should be able to lay it all out on the table. And there’s a consistency throughout.
You want to be different to stand out from competition. What’s going to make you stand out? What’s going to make people part with their hard earned money to either pay you for a service or buy your product?
You want to be professional, we don’t want to cut corners with this, you know is really key. It’s it is the foundation and cornerstone of your business. You want to be authentic, to connect with your audience. And also just be bold and brave. Just Just go for it. You know, it can seem really daunting and quite intimidating. But just start somewhere, you know, start somewhere it will absolutely pay dividends.
And then finally, so yeah, we’ve only just obviously covered the basics. And this half an hour chat. You might realise that the band needs more care and attention that you can spare yourselves, or you’re maybe struggling to see the big picture with fresh eyes.
It might not be the backbone of your business at the moment, but it is ours. And that’s our specialism. So we’ve got over 18 years and here. So as an offer for everyone in this group, but offering a 30 minute free one to one brand consultation, where we can discuss your key brand challenges. And then give you one thing to take away to help you implement yourself or look at how we can get involved to help you.
We’ve also just developed our brand Bible, which is some of the information from that has been put into here. So if you’re interested, I will drop my email into the chat if you’d like to receive a copy of the brand Bible that’s got loads of tips and hints in it. Like say I’m 18 years of kind of doing these projects. I’m happy to email that out to anyone that would like that. It help you to develop your own brand and help you with kind of tips and tricks on what you need to do. And that’s me. Thank you all for listening. I hope you found some value in that
