My philosophy is that the whole purpose of marketing and branding is to create conversations and relationships with your potential clients, and current clients.
Your brand is the personality that your business or company has, and how the world views it. As a service provider, or solopreneur, your brand may also even be an extension of you and your business philosophy and style.
Your marketing message is the conversation you are creating to help clients understand what you do, and how you can actually help them.
Ethical Marketing
Ethical marketing (there are far too many unethical practices out there), is about understanding your ideal client – the client that your services best serve, and can fully address and solve their challenges to make their life better.
I love marketing for the psychology of it, in understanding people and how they think, but I feel that it is important to only use that to better serve your customers. Marketing & psychology is not about manipulating people or convincing them they need you; it’s about sharing authentically and connecting with them to truly serve them.
Branding Conversations
Your brand is the visual identity that your business has, but also the mood, tone and feeling it conveys to people when they interact or encounter it.
Is your brand traditional and grounded? Is it modern and cutting edge? Is it timeless? It is fun or quirky? Is it reliable, like an old friend? Every brand has its own style and mood, and an important part of branding is developing that message.
Your ideal client identifies with the look and feel of your brand, before their brain even registers the words they are reading. That split second is when they have already started to develop an opinion about your brand and business. Does your branding start the conversation and set you up for success?
Your branding should be based on your understanding of your ideal client, so that your brand identity can assure them that you already relate to them – that you are ‘their people’, so to say. What they are looking for, before they even read the words on a page, is that you are safe and they can connect with you.
With that said, branding is valuable to help your business stand out, but also to clearly portray the personality that your brand has. However, on its own, branding will not help your business. That’s where the marketing message you create is so valuable.
Marketing Conversations
Once a potential client has found your website, brochure, marketing material, they’re going to quickly scan your content to see what you say. The first line they read is valuable in building rapport and starting the conversation. You should clearly state what you do (especially on your website homepage), but in a way that creates a shared experience and understanding so that your clients can already relate to you. It should contain information about your beliefs, and why you do what you do, what your passion is to serve them as you are currently doing it.
Humans connect through emotion, not logic. We tell ourselves we do and justify our decisions from our brain, but in truth, it’s the emotions and how we feel in a situation that determines the decisions we make.
Understanding this means that you understand how to connect to your ideal clients, and actually take a stand for your beliefs so that they are attracted to you. You don’t want to be attracting everyone, you want to be attracting your ideal clients based on what you consider ideal.
Personally, I want to work with clients who care about their business and brand, who are making a difference in the world by doing their business (it doesn’t have to be earth shattering, delicious ice cream is just as important in making a positive impact as creating ‘world peace’ is). I work with clients who value marketing and understand how important it is to growing their business, and also come to me as an expert resource to help them handle it; I work with clients who trust me as the expert and we work together as a team to grow their brand.
I don’t want clients who want to just pay me to complete a logo as quickly as possible and disappear. I work with clients who value my marketing insight and expertise to guide and direct their vision of their business, whether it is in their logo, their website or any other branding material we are creating. I work with clients who want to truly connect with their clients.
Having a Conversation with Your Clients
Branding and marketing are both extremely valuable to your business, and both are required for starting conversations and creating connections with your ideal clients. There are levels of ways that this can be completed, but it all comes down to understanding your ideal client.
Every business and brand is different, which is why I encourage you to schedule a Marketing Consultation call so that we can just talk and discover what your goals are and whether we are a good fit to work together. I look forward to chatting!
