Top 5 Tips for Building A Strong Brand

Hilary Young, Content & Brand Marketing Consultant – https://www.hilaryyoungcreative.com

One of my greatest joys in life is being able to help my clients find clarity in their brand messaging. Many of them have struggled for months, or even years, to describe what they do in a clear and concise way that allows them to connect with their audience. And when we finally come up with their new brand messaging, there is always this moment of joy and relief in having found the words that escaped them for so long. Then, without fail, they all ask me, “how did you do that?!”

Here is my secret: I simply listen. I pick up on the little things that people don’t usually find interesting or important about themselves and I make a note of it. I ask questions about other aspects of their lives, because so rarely does our professional life give us the full picture. In fact, I often have clients tell me that working with me is more like having a “career therapist,” because I’m not afraid to go deep with them. While I strongly recommend doing this kind of work with an expert, it’s not impossible to do it on your own. This is what you should keep in mind as you continue to build and refine your brand messaging:

1. Be Authentic. Don’t try to be your competitor, don’t try to be who you think people want you to be, don’t be anything but yourself. It can be easy to see other people doing things successfully and think that you should do what they’re doing in order to be successful too. But that’s often a recipe for disaster. It’s one thing to be inspired by what others in your field are doing, and it’s quite another to co-opt their ideas or marketing strategy. I once worked with a CEO who wanted me to create thought leadership content for him, but all the ideas he brought me were ideas from other successful CEOs. We worked together to figure out how to apply the thinking of others to his specific industry and put his own spin on it. Helping him find his own, authentic voice allowed him to adopt a unique point of view that others hadn’t considered, which is what true thought leadership is all about. 
2. Narrow it down to what you’re passionate about. I’ve met a lot of entrepreneurs who have multiple ideas for businesses, or business owners who are good at many different things. But just because you’re good at everything, doesn’t mean you have to do it all. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. When I first started my business, I was handling a lot more than content strategy and branding for clients; I was being hired to help with social media, PR, and even advertising campaigns. Although I could do it, I learned over time that I didn’t enjoy doing it as much as I enjoyed the content and branding part of the work. And so, I just stopped offering those other services to clients. If my heart wasn’t in it, I wasn’t going to pursue it. Although it was scary to cut off that side of my business (and income), it ended up being the best thing I could have done because once I specialized in one or two areas, I was able to build my business exponentially.
3. Nail your elevator pitch. I recently started working with a new client who has a relatively complicated service offering. But when it took him about 30-minutes to explain to me what he does, I knew we had a serious problem. It’s important to be able to explain what you do in about 30 seconds to a minute, or 3-5 sentences typed out on the computer. If it takes longer than that, you have to do some serious soul-searching about what it is that you actually do, or turn to an expert to help give you a better perspective on it.
4. Feel good about how you’re presenting your business. Similar to the first tip about being authentic, feeling confident about how you’re presenting you or your business on your social media channels or in your marketing materials is the only way you’ll achieve success. One of my clients admitted to me on our first call together that she loved the way she had created her business, but the marketing part made her feel “icky.” We worked together to find ways to work around what felt uncomfortable for her and it was incredible to watch her confidence grow in the process. She turned out to be one of the best innate marketers I’ve ever met. All it took was helping her figure out how to market on her own terms and then stepping back to let her fly.
5. Know that done is better than perfect. Striving for perfection can be both helpful and limiting. I have a client who I started working with about a year ago to help her rebrand and rework the content on her website, and she kept putting off the launch because she wanted everything to be perfect before unveiling the new direction of the brand. But in waiting for perfection, she may have missed out on opportunities because for over a year (!!) what she was selling wasn’t in alignment with the information on her old website. You can always find a reason to keep putting off important things, but that won’t get you very far on the road towards accomplishing your goals. Stuff the doubt down, do the hard thing, and if you want to keep tweaking and changing things along the way you can. If you keep growing and evolving as a person and a business, your work will never be finished and perfect will never exist. 

I always say that strong branding is like the foundation of a house, you have to make sure it’s sturdy before building upwards. If you haven’t examined your branding and messaging in a while, now is a great time to do so. And if you need a little help, feel free to contact me through my website at https://www.hilaryyoungcreative.com/.