5 Pivotal Tings to Consider When Creating Your Brand Identity

Creating a brand is the fun part about starting a business. It’s where you get to pick out your brand colors, design a logo and get ready to show off your new shiny identity to the world. It’s easy to wanna dive into logo creation but it’s really important to really nail your concept first.

As with all business processes, there’s a strategy to creating a strong brand identity and skipping this step could lead to costly redesigns and rebranding in the future. As a professional designer, these are some of the questions I will have when working with someone to develop their brand. Nail these things and the design process will be much easier and a whole lot of fun.

1. Consider the concept of your business

What is the solution you’re offering and more importantly, who are you serving? Knowing the type of offering and the intended clientele will help to package your brand the right way. You wouldn’t attend a gala in a bikini and flip flops and the same goes for your business. You want to show up looking like what your audience would expect and connect with.

Are you occupying a fun, young hip space? Is your product premium and pricey or affordable and relatable? Knowing your product and the client base it will serve inside out is the starting point of all brand conversations.

2. Consider the colors that will represent your brand

Colors are fun but the thought process behind them is really important. The psychology behind colors has been researched widely and its established that different colors evoke different feelings and actions.

Blue evokes trust for example. While the colors yellow and orange are said to make people hungry. These colors combined with red, which can symbolize passion, lead people to become passionately hungry. Think about the logos of some of your favorite fast food joints. Are you hungry now?

There might be colors that mean something in your specific industry to consider. This may affect the color combination that makes the most sense for your brand. Bottomline, your colors should be cohesive, visually appealing and evoking the emotions and connections you want to build with your audience.

Grab the color handout to help you get started.

3. Consider your brand voice

This relates directly to how you communicate with your customers. Is your business very formal and straight to the point when communicating with your audience? Is the language more relaxed and casual? Do you want to come across as fun and playful? Sophisticated? Young and trendy? Mature and trustworthy? The voice, tone and personality of your brand in your marketing material will help to shape the development of your brand’s imagery.

Your brand designs should also reflect the personality and demographic of your target audience. This includes their age, their income level, their culture, their marital status and more. They should look at your packaging or marketing materials and immediately connect with your business or at least be curious and want to find out more.

Here's the 2020 mood board for my personal brand!

4. CONSIDER CreatING a Mood Board

A mood board can help you to visualize your brand identity and give you a better starting point to engage an artist or designer. Search the Internet for images and styles that appeal to you and begin to pull them together to create what you have in mind for your brand.

Pinterest is a great place to start. Save everything you love to your Pinterest account to help you build out every aspect of your business that you can think of, from your logo to your website, the type of images you share on social, the aesthetics associated with your brand and more.

Knowing exactly what you like and what you don’t before engaging a designer to build your brand saves you from having to redo your imagery as you grow, potentially creating confusion for your audience.

5. Consider Market Testing

Once you start to build your brand, test a sample of your target market to get their feedback. Put forward some of your designs and ask them to choose their favorite. Also ask them what thoughts they get from the images, what they feel, and what emotions come up for them when they see your designs.

This is important, you shouldn’t skip this step. Especially when it comes to your logo, this is something you want to nail from the very beginning.

Knowing and documenting every aspect of your business will ultimately help you to shape the brand like you envision it in your mind. Nailing your business concept, personality and colors gives your designer direction and sets you off on the right path. Without direction, you could potentially be back at the drawing board several times throughout the life of the business.

While it’s perfectly normal to make small changes as the business grows, as my husband Wallace says, do it right the first time.

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Brittnee N. Smith is a Graphic & Web Designer, Creative Brand Strategist, Speaker, and Author. She is also the founder and C.E.O. of Brittnee Smith Creative Company. Her mission is to help women owned business and entrepreneurs effectively promote and communicate their brand through creativity, design and media. Brittnee’s areas of expertise are Brand Development, Social Media Strategy, Personal Development, Motivation, Live Video & Digital and Print Design. Through motivational speaking, workshops, coaching and consulting, she helps her audience and clients transform their thinking, through authentic branding and excellent design.

Success During a Pandemic: 8 Ways to Crush it in Your Business

Living through a pandemic is new for anyone alive in 2020. It’s a new, scary experience that none of us have the skills or expertise to navigate but here we are several months later still existing.

Life goes on and businesses still need to operate while the pandemic rages on. Though it can be stressful to try and be productive in the world we’re living in, there are things we can do to go from merely existing to thriving in our new normal.

As the dust settles and we all try to find coping mechanisms to advance in a new world, here are some steps you can take to not only keep your business afloat right now but to truly crush it and be successful during a pandemic.

1. Visualize Your Business in Today’s World

It’s important for you to maintain a vision of what your business looks like in our new normal. Get specific about your financial goals, how your business will operate in our current society, and how your industry is changing. How will you position yourself in the life of your customer now that society has changed? What does your new work day look like? How will you market your business and remain profitable?

2. Redevelop Your Business Strategy

Your business strategy is what guides your actions and decisions on a day-to-day basis. In order to reach your business goals and remain competitive during a pandemic, you will need to revisit your strategy and develop new ways and means to remain profitable and come out successful on the other side of this.

This is a good thing. The pandemic is forcing us to look at new and innovative ways to operate in every industry and if your business can find ways to remain competitive and relevant then you have the advantage over those trying to use old strategies in a new world.

3. Systemize Your Business

Putting the right business systems in place will help you to streamline and scale your business. Business systems guide the process of what happens day-to-day and means your business can run without you.

It also means that when you’re not in the mental capacity to think creatively, you still have the proper systems in place to guide your actions. You won’t suffer mental and physical burnout because you’ll know what to do in your business without much thought. Things become automatic and processes become smoother.

This is important to keep your customers engaged and to ensure that communication flows smoothly. They’ll never be left wondering if you’re still operating through the pandemic and will be confident that you remain open and available to serve their needs.

4. Digitize Your Business

This has become even more important in our current climate. What aspects of your business can you move online? Perhaps you can create an app or mobile website to make the ordering and delivery process easier. Or maybe you can host online conferences and consultations instead of in-person meetings. Think of all aspects of your business that required physical presence in the past and innovate ways to make this a virtual experience.

5. Reorganize Your Product Offerings

Now is a good time to take stock of all your product and service offerings to make them more relevant to today’s climate. Focus on your most profitable and appropriate product offering to keep your business streamlined.

6. Prioritize Service

Go above and beyond for your clients right now to assure them that they are important to your business. As you market your products, be cognizant of the fact that our world is changing and reassure them that you’re in this with them too.Think of ways to catch their heart, make a lasting impression and show them that you care.

7. Sympathize with Your Customers

Some of your customers may have lost their jobs, homes, family members or friends or have caught the virus themselves and are now suffering from depreciated health. Be aware of this as you market yourself. Find ways to connect with your customers and let them know that you care and you are ready to serve them should they have that need.

8. Customize Your Products

You may need to customize your product offering to the needs of today. This may mean different things for your business, like putting in new sanitation stations and protocols, moving some product offerings online exclusively, partnering with more delivery services or changing locations to allow for better social distancing.

Focusing on these 8 critical steps to business success will help you to build and maintain a profitable business while finding balance in your life.

It’s important that we be kind to ourselves. Give yourself grace and remember that you too are experiencing a pandemic, just like your customers. It’s OK to be fearful right now but it's not OK to do nothing. The world still needs your talent and your services. Tweaking your business this way helps you to crush it in business and soften the blows of the pandemic to your business and your customers.

Need help strategizing for your biz? CLICK HERE to ask me any question about branding or strategy!

How to Create B.O.M.B. Visual Content for Your Brand

How can you quickly capture your audience’s attention, engage them with your brand and turn them into raving fans? With BOMB visual content!

In our fast-paced world, it has become increasingly important to create standout visual content that has the ability to capture your audience’s attention in a literal blink of an eye. The human brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster than text and studies show that presentations with visual aids were 43% more effective at persuading an audience than those that lacked superb visual content.

So what does this mean for you?

It’s time to start creating B.O.M.B. visual content for your business. Stop your audience in their tracks. Interrupt their mindless scrolling with images so amazing they have no choice but to pay attention to what you’re presenting on their timeline, in their social feeds, in their inbox or as they browse the internet aimlessly.

It’s widely known that our attention span is decreasing as we consume more and more content from multiple sources but the good news is that it only takes us 13 milliseconds to see and retain an image. This means you have tons of opportunities to create a strong and lasting brand presence with spectacular imagery that tells your unique story.

So how do you create B.O.M.B. visuals that light your brand on fire?

You follow these four steps:

1. Bring on the visual heat - you only have the blink of an eye to make a stirring first impression so make your visuals bold, bright, and appealing to your audience’s eyes. Don’t be afraid to go completely left field to create striking images that grab attention.

2. Open the mind of your audience - show them the solution you provide for them in quick and punchy imagery that instantly creates a need in their mind. Even the most obscure brands can create desire through the use of creative visual content.

3. Move them with emotion - knowing what makes your audience ticks and creating visual content that drives them to action is key. Emotions are the driving factors behind the most successful marketing campaigns.

4. Bag the client with a juicy offer - B.O.M.B. visual content drives home your solutions with a clear call to action that inspires your audience to movement, whether that be to buy, follow, share or subscribe.

Easy Peasy, right?

Why You Need Amazing Visual Content for Your Brand

You may already know the value of creating amazing visual content on platforms that are all about imagery such as Instagram or Pinterest, but visual content brings all types of information to life.

It’s important to have striking images on sales pages, blog posts, and informational pages. This will help to break up long blocks of text on a page, making the content more appealing. Images help to increase the interest on a page, retaining visitors for longer as they are motivated to continue scrolling down the page on their visual journey.

Images help to evoke emotion as your reader scans your sales page. Do you want them to feel happy? Sad? Scared? Angry or inspired? Images will help you to tell you your story and drive home your call to action, increasing the likelihood that your desired action will be taken.

Humans consume so much information on a daily basis that creating standout visual content for your business should be a top priority. Our brains have become wired to filter out the noise. You want your content to be elevated from the noise. Figuring out how to stand out from the crowd boils down to knowing your demographics and the type of content that appeals to them, then creating content yourself or with the help of a B.O.M.B.visual artist aligned with your brand vision and story.

Need help whipping your content into shape? CLICK HERE to ask me any question about branding or content creation!