7 Questions you need to ask before starting Your Brand

My whole mission is to help small businesses and startups create awesome branding and marketing that they can manage themselves, and that will help them succeed. We do that as a team by working on effective branding, messaging, web design, graphic design, and marketing strategies.

Most of my clients are over the moon excited to start their new dream businesses but are clueless about how to create an effective brand. That usually leads to some cringe-worthy and awkward choices that tend to hurt them in the long run. That's no fun! I want you to succeed!

I've discovered that most people forget to think about some really important factors that make a massive difference in the success of their new business. So I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about seven super important questions that you need to ask yourself when creating your brand.

1. How does your product solve someone’s problem?

No one buys anything without having a problem to solve. It’s just how it goes. Even if you’re just buying toothpaste there are a million problems that you could be facing that could cause you to buy that toothpaste. Your teeth are turning yellow. Your breath stinks. You've got sensitive teeth. It could even be something as simple as you ran out of toothpaste. You need to figure out what problem your product solves for your customer, otherwise, they have no reason to buy it and your business will be dead in the water.

If you're only in business to make money and are not interested at all in bringing value to your customers, guess what? You're a scumbag. Yeah. I said it. Everything we do as business people should follow the true north of bringing value and help to the lives of our customers. We should be making and selling things that solve problems for our customers. We should be making their lives better. If we're not doing that, we're just stealing their money and making their lives worse. No one likes that guy.

If you don't have a product or service yet, obviously go figure that part out first, but if you do, put some thought into this. What problems are your customers facing? What about your product will make someone's life better? How will their life be better after using it? The answers you come up with are going to guide a lot of what you do with your business.

2. How are you going to package your product?

I've done some work with life coaches. I mean like I've done some branding and marketing work with life coaches, though honestly, I wouldn't be sad about having a life coach help me out a little bit. The struggle is real sometimes. Anyway, a problem that a lot of life coaches have is that they eventually just have too many one-on-one meetings and they start getting burned out. It's a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. That's why we're seeing SO MANY life coaches and business coaches and other similar professionals creating online courses. The way they packaged their products initially worked for a while but didn't have the longevity and scalability they needed, so they repackaged their product to work better for them. That was a lot of businessy words and I'm very sorry about that.

Take a good hard look at your product and figure out the best way to package it. When I say "package" I'm not talking about packaging design. That's always super fun, and I'd love to help you with that too, but I'm talking about how you're going to go about selling your product. Do you need to build e-commerce into your website? Do you just need an Etsy shop? Are you going to make appointments with clients for a custom product or service? Really think about how you're going to get your product into the (sometimes metaphorical) hands of your customers. That'll help you figure out what kind of website you need, what kind of payment methods will be the most helpful, and what functionality you'll need to make your business work the way it needs to.

3. Does your branding serve YOUR product or your taste?

For some mysterious reason, clients love to tell me about their favorite color. "Yeah I'm starting this business and I super love pink, so I wanted the logo and stuff to be pink! What do you think?!" Yikes. Sometimes, against all odds, the color they so super duper love actually works for their brand. Most of the time it doesn't. Imagine that client who loves pink was starting a law firm. That design choice wouldn't do much to create trust between them and their future clients. Ain't nobody calling the "pretty in pink" law firm to help them win a serious legal battle. Maybe in Legally Blonde, but that's a very specific case and not very realistic.

Your brand's visual identity should serve your products and your customers. This means that it won't NECESSARILY serve your taste. If I made all my designs based on my taste, everything I made would look like it was made for a hardcore or metal band or something. I don't design everything like that because I want the work I do for my clients to help their products succeed. So don't ask the question "do I like this?" and start asking "Is this helping people understand, trust, and want what I'm selling?" You'll discover that the more you can make design and branding decisions based on how it serves your products and customers, the better. These design decisions are opportunities to help your customers subconsciously believe that your product is the best solution to their problems. It's like Inception but with colors, fonts, and logos.

4. How are you going to talk about your brand?

I work with a lot of small businesses on their marketing messaging. I've found that it's the best place to start. In these consultations, we tend to discover a lot of things about these businesses that the owners have never even thought about. I think it's because when you start clarifying the way you talk about your business, you instantly start seeing your business in a whole new light. Once you take the focus off of yourself and put a new focus on your customers, you start seeing your product in a completely new way.

I've had loads of marketing messaging consultations where my client ends up changing something about their business or how they package their products because of what we discovered about their products in these meetings. You could discover that the audience you're going after isn't the right audience after all. Or that the way you've been selling your product isn't going to give you the results you ultimately want. When you clarify how you talk about your business, marketing will be a lot easier for you and make a lot more sense to your customers.

Figuring out your marketing message is one of the first things you should do when creating a brand. You want to talk very clearly about what you sell, how your product can make your customer's lives better, and what they need to do to get it. You'll be shocked how much you discover through this easy, painless, and fun process.

If you want to work on this stuff with someone who knows what they're talking about, I'd love to help you make your messaging awesome.

5. How are you going to say all that on a website?

Once you've got your new messaging figured out, it's time to put it to the test! The best place to use your awesome new messaging is on a website. Admit it, most of the time you're looking to buy a new product, you're gonna check that junk out online first.

Studies have proven that people interact with websites in very specific ways. If you don't know what needs to go where on your website, you could be losing a surprising amount of sales. Even if your messaging is amazing and says all the right things, if you put it in the wrong place on your website, you could lose the customer's attention. Patience and attention span are surprisingly short when it comes to reading a website. So make sure you know exactly where to put things on your website to captivate your audience and get you the best results.

Your customers need to know what you sell, how it makes their lives better, and how they can get it within the first three seconds of looking at your website. That's right. Experts say it only takes three seconds to lose a customer's attention, so make your header count! After that, you need to hit them hard with the problem they're facing and show how you are the best person to solve that problem.

There's a lot that goes into making an unforgettable website, but it would take way too long to write here. If you want to make sure your website is captivating your customers and get step-by-step instructions on how to make it awesome, let's talk.

6. How are you going to tell people about your brand?

Now that your awesome captivating website is up, how are you going to get new people to look at it? And when new people are looking at it, how are you going to get them to decide to buy your product?

You need a powerful way to promote your business and ensure you're converting customers. The best way to do that IMO is with a sales funnel. To make that work you'll need an awesome lead generator. This is an underused strategy that will give your audience a ton of value and build trust with them in a powerful way. The idea here is to give them some seriously valuable information "for free" that will set you apart as the expert in all things "your industry." The only thing it will cost them is their email address. Your lead generator can be a free pdf document, a series of exclusive videos, some kind of epic special offer, weekly recipes for a delicious dinner, or anything like that. The point is that it has to be free, and truly valuable to the customer. Make your lead generator exciting, intriguing, and fascinating. The key here is to get as many email addresses as possible.

Once you have their email address, you can create email campaigns that will ensure they're seeing your name in their inbox over and over again. Once they've seen your name in their inbox a couple of times, you'll be the first person they think of as an expert to solve their problem. The more email addresses you get, the more results and conversions you will see.

Once you have your great sales funnel in place, you can use proven tools like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and even social media to promote your business and get people to opt-in to your lead generator. The secret here is to advertise your lead generators, not your business. Once you hook them with that lead generator, bring value, and build trust, they will be much more likely to convert into a sale. That may seem a little sneaky, but it genuinely works.

7. Where Are You Gonna go Next?

The last thing I want you to think about is where you want to go. Don't just get lost in dreamland thinking about all the amazing ideas, possibilities, and piles of money you'll be swimming in once your new successful business takes off. Be bold, but be realistic. Think about how to scale your business. Think about the awesome future you want for your business and make a plan to get there. If your business skyrockets, you might have to change your product, create new strategies, and update your processes. Your website could need a complete transformation. Your messaging could need a complete overhaul. Try to build your brand and your strategies in a way that will survive the storm, and work for a long time. If you want to succeed, plan for success.

Talk to an expert businessperson that you trust and get an honest-to-God reality check. Ask them what possibilities and pitfalls they see. Ask them what they would do. If they're worth their salt, they'll give you the truth, tell you everything you need to know and poke a bunch of holes in your plan. At least then you'll know where all the holes are.

I hope this list was valuable to you and, as always, if you want someone who knows what they're talking about to help you figure out the best way to do all of this stuff, I would love to help you. We can create a custom plan just for you so you get everything you need to succeed and nothing you don't. So if you're ready to take the next step and make your brand awesome, hit that big button and start your project today.