How to create an emotional connection with your audience
So I am just going to say it: you need to start with your brand’s strategy before design or marketing.
If you didn’t start with your brand’s strategy some of the below might sound familiar:
Are you overwhelmed and feel like you are spinning your wheels but nothing seems to get you any closer to attracting those ideal clients?
Did you DIY your logo and/or website as one of the first things you did when starting your business? Only to tweak it, and tweak it and it still does not feel right or is not bringing in clients for you?
You are showing up on all social media channels, building an email list and writing blog posts (because you have been told you need to). So you have a never-ending to-do list to do all of this.
But you don’t know what to put in your newsletters and that weekly blog quickly turned in a monthly one because you don’t know what to talk about.
Your marketing does not attract a lot of clients. Let alone the ones that have the budget for your services.
You launched a new service because the current ones are not working
You are now at a point that you are asking yourself what is going to make the difference and get you attracting those ideal clients? You have invested in so many courses, workshops and memberships and while you know so much more, you’re still in the same place.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone - most of us have been here. There is just so much information out there on how to build and grow your business.
Do you want to know the real reason why this is happening? And what you can do about it?
I am guessing you skipped a couple of steps when you started your business. We are all in such a take-action-mode and want to get our business out there that we forget to spend enough time to build a strong foundation.
And just like you would not buy a plane ticket without knowing your destination your business will not create an emotional connection with your audience (and as a result with any or the right clients) without a strong foundation to guide you every step of the way. You could see having a clear brand strategy as having your own north star.
So, first things first: what is brand strategy?
To answer this I am going to start with the strategy part. A strategy is a plan of action to go from A to B. So when we look at brand strategy (and I am taking the definition from my brand strategy mentor Melinda Livsey thought us in her boot camp) you are trying to connect your brand with your customer.
You will need to build this connection to get your business from A to B. No matter in you want to sell services, courses, memberships, coaching or products. Without this connection, you will not get any closer to your goals.
If you are not a fan of the word strategy or if you feel like running every time you hear someone say you need to build a strong foundation you can see it like this; you are trying to make your brand attractive to your ideal customer.
You might ask yourself what the difference is between brand strategy and marketing. Great question!
With how marketing is developing there is definitely more and more overlap between brand strategy, branding and marketing. I like the explanation from Tom Ross Media:
Your brand is what people say about you
Branding is you intentionally influencing what people say about you
So you could see it like this: with brand strategy, you are establishing things like your positioning, how you differentiate from your competitors, the customer journey and how you are going to talk to your audience so that you appeal to your ideal client, your visual brand (like logo colours, fonts, website) is helping you express your brand's message and your marketing is used to get your brand's message out.
Now you know this, let's to go back to my first point; you need to start with your brand's strategy before design or marketing. So if your marketing is to get your message out, and your visual brand needs to represent or express your brand's message how do you do any of these 2 things if you don’t know what your brand's message needs to be to build that emotional connection with your potential customers.
Let’s dive more into what brand strategy is.
What is brand strategy?
First, you need to look for those corner pieces of the puzzle to get you started and that will be the driving force behind your business: your foundation
Your purpose or why - and no, this is not to make money. This is about why are you starting this particular business.
Your vision and mission. Your vision is how you would like things to be in the future. You can see this as your big dream for your business. What success will look like for you? What do you aspire your business to be? So your vision is not about how you are going to do it, but about what you want your business to become. So where your vision is related to the future, your mission statement is about what you currently do by combining what you do and who you do it for.
Define your values and beliefs as this will drive your businesses behaviour. And as a result, this will impact your client journey and client satisfaction. And who does not love great testimonials that will help persuade your next clients?
Positioning and differentiation
Now you need to build those outside edges of your puzzle:
How you can make your business stand out. Here you are going to combine your foundational elements, to help you stand out in the market.
How you do market research on your audience and find out what they are struggling with. You will need this to create your messaging and to determine the topics you will talk about in your blogs posts, newsletters, videos and social media posts.
How to perform research on your competitors. Competitor research can be used to see who is already solving your ideal client's problems. But instead of looking at it from your point of view, you're trying to look at it from the audience point of view. What can you take away from what these designers are currently doing? And learn where the gaps in the market are when it comes to brand positioning. You could, for example, see that a type of service is missing, or a niche that is not served. Or all your competitors are using the same type of messaging, and you need to pick a different angle to stick out. But you can also notice you really need to step up your client experience as your competitors are getting a lot of good feedback about this in their testimonials.
Ideal client
Now you have those outside edges of your puzzle you can start working towards the middle:
How to define your ideal client. Firstly you have to decide who you want to work with and who you don’t want to work with. And I don’t mean which niche you want to work with but which kind of people you want to work with. Because do you really want to work with every copywriter? Or every copywriter that works with coaches? Probably not. You might work best with people who are organised like you, or who respect your expertise because you don’t want to be an order-taker.
Creating your ideal client profile. In this profile, you are combining who you want to work with and what their demographics and psychographics are. As well as their goals and what is holding them back. Because, as mentioned above, you will need this to create your messaging and content.
Brand Messaging
Now you know it’s time to combine everything that you have worked on and get your message out by creating your brand messaging. This step is so important. You can know everything about your client, but if you can not convince them off all the value that you have to offer, you will still struggle with converting these ideal clients.
Client Journey
The last step is to define the customers journey. This means how you are going to get them from following you on social media to becoming your client.
Where do you start when you want to add more strategy into your business?
If one of the examples I started this blog with sounded familiar to you and you want to add more strategy to your business, you need to start with defining your goals.
A great question to ask yourself is this one from Jonathan Stark: if it would be 3 years from today, and you were looking back over the 3 years, what has to have happened in your life both personally and professionally, for you to feel happy with your progress?
It might not be a question where you can give an answer immediately but think about this. Then look at where you are at this moment and write down milestones or goals in between where you are right now and where you want to go. What goal can you set for yourself in 3 months that will help you get closer to your 3-year goal?
Be sure to define how you are going to measure success. How will you know if you have reached this goal?
Before we go too far into goals setting I want to mention one last thing about the benefits of starting with your brand's strategy. When you start with strategy it will give you clarity, confidence, focus and motivation because you know where you want to go as a business, who you want to target, what topics to talk about and how to talk to your audience.
You will have your brand's north star and there will be no more shiny object syndrome because the only thing you need to do when you come up with a new idea is to ask yourself these questions:
is this new idea, service etc going to get me closer to my 3-year goal?
Is this new idea, service etc something my clients or audience have been asking for or have you validated this idea with them?
Is it in line with my purpose, mission and values?
If you answer with a no, it might still be a great idea, just not for your brand.
If you thought this post you might also like:
LOOKING FOR ANYTHING?
Popular items in the shop
FOLLOW ON INSTAGRAM
FAVOURITE RESOURCES
*Below links are affiliate links and I get a small kickback if you use these links to sign up.
