>> HOLLIE: Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode. In this week's episode,
I want to talk to you about brand strategy and give you an ultimate guide full of kickass
techniques that you, as a creative, need, in order to create your brand strategy.
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Now, in one of the most recent episodes, I gave you a really brief breakdown of what
brand strategy is, and I described it as a plan for how you're going to
implement the rest of your brand. A plan for who your brand is, what you do, how you explain what
you do, everything that makes you unique. Today I wanna go a little bit deeper into that
and explain really what goes into a brand strategy, why it's important. And then show
you the three main steps that you need to create in order to build your brand strategy.
So, to me building your brand without having a strategy is like going to bake
but without having any idea what you're going to bake. You have no idea what ingredients you need.
You don't have a vision of what it's' going to look like in the end. You don't know the recipe,
so you don't know the steps that you need to take in order to bake whatever it is that you're
baking. You don't have - you don't know what it's supposed to look like, feel like, taste like,
you have no idea and so you go into baking this cake feeling really kind of lost and confused.
Maybe you open the pantry and you're kind of staring at that for hours thinking "Oh, maybe I
could use this ingredient, or maybe I'll just grab this, and this, and see what happens." And you
feel a bit like, lost, and chaotic. And if somebody came into your kitchen and saw you with all this
kind of chaos and no plan of what you're doing, and you're all over the place, and you're confused
then they're going to be a little bit like "Err... I'm not sure if I want to try whatever
it is that you're baking because you don't seem confident or like you have the experience
to make something delicious." right? Whereas, if you do have a strategy,
or in this case you do know what cake you want to be baking, you'll have a clear vision of what
it’s supposed to look like. You probably have a recipe to follow with step-by-step instructions,
you have goals, you know at what point things need to happen, you know what time they're supposed to
come out of the oven. You have these things to work towards, you know what it's supposed
to look like and feel like and taste like and you can see that in your mind, and then you can tell
the people who come into your kitchen "Hey, I'm making a... vanilla sponge, with raspberry and
cream and this is what it's' going to look like." and you will get super excited and pumped about it
because you know exactly what it's supposed to be, you have a clear vision of where you're going, and
you can share that cohesively and consistently and clearly with whoever comes into your kitchen.
So, that's a little baking metaphor that kind of explains why you really need a strategy in
the first place, because you need this clarity and the vision and the goals, and what's gonna
make your cake unique from any other cake. So this is why you need a brand strategy.
I also describe the brand strategy process as a little bit like Marie Kondo for your business,
if you've ever seen Tidying Up with Marie Kondo or heard about it surely, then you'll know that
it's all about kind of taking everything out of your cupboards, everything out of your house,
dismantling it, throwing it all in the middle of the room, analysing everything, picking up things
and seeing if they spark joy or not, and if they do you keep them, if you don't then you thank them
and you let them go. And, it's - brand strategy is like that. It gets a little bit messy because we have to pull
everything out of your business cupboards [laughs] and really get down to the foundations of your
house and see why was this built in the first place, what made you build this house, or your business,
in your case. And then we gather all these things and we look at what will get you the most fired up
and passionate about. And anything else we can, say, okay, thank you, that's not for me anymore,
or that's not for me, but these things are, so thank you, and we let them go. Then we bring
all of the things that have sparked joy back together and those are the things that form a
really clear powerful brand strategy. Hopefully, all those metaphors are helpful
and give you a little bit of an insight into what brand strategy is. So let's talk about how we do
brand strategy. I have a framework for describing the whole branding process, I call
it my Make Your Mark model, and brand strategy is all about the first pillar, which is Clarity. So,
brand strategy is really all about getting clarity for yourself and your audience
about who you are and what you do and why you do it and everything that makes you unique.
And there are three main steps within that. So, in order to get clarity, what you need to do is:
Uncover your Identity, Pinpoint your People, and Find your Voice.
Uncovering your identity is really finding out everything that makes you unique. Everything
that comes behind your business, everything that forms a really strong foundation of who you are
and what you do and why you do it. It covers your mission and your vision, your values which is so
important, your goals for where you're going in the future and the ones that you can share with
your audience and show them where you're going. Your story, because that's really unique to you
and who you are, looking at what's informed your values, or informed the business that
you've created because maybe you were creative as a child, or your parents were super creative
and that informed where you're going. All these things. Your story is really important.
Then, there's your unique selling proposition or unique selling point,
what is super unique about you? How do you stand out against everybody else? And your zones of
genius. What is it that you are really excellent at? What is it that people come to you for?
What is it that makes you super special? So these are some of the things that you can do
when it comes to uncovering your identity and getting really clear on, yeah, who are you?
and what are you all about? And how do you communicate that clearly with your audience?
And then, as I said, step number two is Pinpointing your People. So this is all about finding those
amazing people who are in your audience who love your work, connect with you,
want to buy your products, subscribe to you on YouTube, or follow you on Patreon, whatever it is,
we want to find those people and really get to the people who you want to be talking to,
who want to hear from you. And that is not necessarily always about kind of stereotypical things
like age, or gender or race, these things are really important to be aware of, especially if your audience
does include people who are minorities in any way. Then it is important to acknowledge
those things, but finding your audience is really not about building a stereotype of a person,
it's more about getting to the root of you know, what are their dreams and desires? What really are they
needing? What are their core struggles, what do they really struggle with? These things
are what's really going to be powerful and help you to communicate with them and connect with them
on a level that really grasps them, rather than saying "oh my brand is going to be pink because I
want to attract more women." it's like, okay, well, not every woman likes pink. I hate pink,
so I'm not going to be that woman. So rather than that, you can talk to “what are my struggles? What
do I dream about every day? What do I really need?” These things are what's going to connect
with me, rather than the colour pink. Also within Pinpointing your People you can look
at what other people around you are doing. I don't really like to call them competitors, because
I 100% believe in community over competition. There's not competitors. What are they doing,
what are they offering? What prices are they selling their things for? What marketing
techniques are they using? What people are they connecting with? What messaging are they using?
Looking at their brand and how they're doing that is really helpful and can help you to
position yourself maybe in a gap in the market, or maybe you can see "Oh, these people are doing
this thing up here and that's where I wanna be" so looking at these other people in your industry
who are doing similar things can be really helpful in pinpointing your people as well.
And then you can position yourself in terms of what offers you're gonna have, so are you
selling products, do you have a pattern, are you offering services of any kind? These things
are all going to help you position yourself and attract the right people, and for the right
price. So pricing is part of this as well. So finding your voice. This is all about finding
your unique personality, finding out how you speak and communicate with your audience,
and how you're gonna make them feel, what you're gonna talk about, what platforms you're gonna use.
Within finding your voice we need to find out your voice, your tone, your content and your platform.
Your voice is your personality, everybody has a different voice right? So, I speak completely
different to how somebody else is going to speak, and they speak completely different to the person
next to them. We all have a different voice. Within our voice, we have different tone. I
am not gonna speak to one person who maybe is coming to me about customer service, in
the exact same way I'm gonna talk to a client who has just finished one-on-one coaching with me and
we're celebrating. Those are completely different tones of voice, and it's important to think about
what those tones of voice are. Maybe you have moments where you speak in a way more like,
educational and teaching way, and then other moments you speak in a really inspirational,
celebratory and excited way, you might have your customer service tone which is a little bit more
serious and caring and personal. Then there's the content. So,
with your voice and your tone, what are you talking about? Are you teaching someone about
painting? A business as an artist - what are you talking about? What are your content pillars?
What are the things that are your main topics to discuss? These are the things that you want
people to get to know you for. Things that people will come to you because they know
that they're gonna learn about painting from you, or they're gonna think "Oh, that person,
they're gonna teach me how to build my business as an artist, that's who I need to talk to".
And then lastly is your platform. Where are you speaking to these people? This will come from
doing the research on who these people are, where they hang out, figuring out what platforms are
they gonna use. Am I gonna do a podcast, like this? Am I gonna be on Pinterest? Am I gonna be
on Youtube? Where are these places that I'm gonna be talking and communicating with my audience
that I can speak about these different content pillars that I've just decided on?
And I can use my different tones of voice, and I can use my personality and my unique voice.
Just to recap, we're talking all about clarity. To do that we need to uncover your identity and
figure out who you are, what your mission and your vision and your values are and everything,
then we need to figure out who your audience is and what are their desires and their struggles and
their needs. How are you gonna position yourself to attract those perfect people? Then we need
to find your voice and figure out what is your unique personality, how are you gonna speak to
these people and what are you gonna talk to them about and where are you gonna talk to them about?
This is a main overview of brand strategy and I really hope that it's helpful in
giving you some perspective on what goes into a brand strategy but also if you want to start
thinking about your own brand strategy you can think about where to start and you can
start with uncovering your identity, and then go through all the different other steps.
If you have any questions, or want to know any more about this topic, about brand strategy and
what goes into it, then I would love it if you joined me in the Black & White Studios Society,
because every week on a Thursday I am gonna be doing a mini-masterclass all about the topic
that's discussed in the podcast and so you can come and I'll talk a little bit more about it,
answer any of your questions. Come and join the group, it's
the Black & White Studios Society on Facebook and there will be a link somewhere below here.
You can also download my ultimate branding checklist which will outline all of these
things but also goes into the next two pillars of my Make Your Mark model which are creativity
and consistency and it will show you everything you need to think about in terms of your entire
brand. If you wanna do that you can, again head to the link and download that, it's free. Next time
on the podcast I'm gonna be talking about the next pillar. I'm gonna be talking about creativity and
giving you some brand design 101 tips. So, I hope you've enjoyed this episode,
if you have, please like this video, subscribe if you haven't already and I will see you next time!
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