Whilst consistency in messaging is important, you are allowed to contradict yourself. You are allowed to change this stuff as time goes by, and your audience deserves as much. \One, two, three, four. So you're building a brand online. You've got wild AF dreams. You know you've got the potential to grow your biz into something pretty, dang incredible, and you want to do it all the right way.
Hey, I'm Alex, your brand bestie, and this is Brandology, the podcast that feels like a coffee chat with a biz friend who's giving you all the tips and advice on growing your brand, because that's what it is. We're talking strategy, design, content, messaging, and more. So if you're ready for no BS brand advice from someone who's done it all before, this is the pod for you. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, Hello. Welcome back to the Brandology podcast.
And Merry Christmas, because if my calculations are correct, this episode should air on Christmas Day. Obviously, if you're listening in the future, it's probably not Christmas Day, but this is the Christmas Day episode. So Merry Christmas. I hope you have the most amazing festive season. And today I have a gift for you. Well, not really. It's just a normal podcast episode, but hopefully it's helpful for you guys, as I always hope that they are.
So firstly, I actually can't believe it's the end of the year already. It is shocking to me. So I'm recording this about a week in advance, so on the 17th of December. And my tree is still not fully decorated. I don't know where the time went. It was November, and then I blinked, and then it was the first of December, and then I blinked, and then it was 17th of December, and I don't understand how that happened.
And And yeah, I'm just always, I say this every single year, I'm always shocked when it comes to the end of the year, how quickly it came around. And I'm even a bit more behind this year in terms of my preparations for next year, as you would have heard if you listened to my last episode. I was sick recently, and it was my second bout of sickness in quarter four, which was a real pain in the butt. So it pushed me behind in everything, including setting myself up for next year.
However, that's fine. I am moving on. I will still get everything done. It's all fine. But what I wanted to walk you through today is what I really like to do with my brand, what I like to audit and look over and refine to make sure that I'm building a better, bigger brand for next year. So this is a process that I've done for the last few years and I've refined it year on year. And I'm going to be doing this year as well.
So there's three main areas that I personally really like to look at when it comes to making my brand better for next year, because that's always my goal. I always want my brand to be evolving. I always want my brand to be growing. It should not be stagnant. It should not be staying the same. And this is what I tell so many people. I tell my clients, I tell people in my audience, if your brand is staying the same year on year, you have a problem.
Like There's this misconception that people think, oh, okay, my messaging has to stay the same consistently forever and ever. My offers have to stay the same forever and ever. My target client has to stay the same forever and ever. And that's just simply not true. It really should all be evolving. Like, yes, we need consistency, but that can evolve. As long as you're consistent for a good chunk of time, then evolution is great. Evolution is fine.
And honestly, every Really, every 6 to 12 months, your brand should be undergoing a transformation and a metamorphosis and emerging from a cocoon and becoming a different next level version of itself. That is what a good brand does. That's what a successful brand does. And if you want to continue to see growth in your brand, it should change because just like you are changing year on year, you are not the same person you were last year. Things have changed, things are different.
You've got more knowledge, experience, all the things. Your brand is the same. Your brand needs to keep evolving. It needs to keep up with you. It needs to keep up with the landscape. It needs to keep up with how our audience is changing as well. So There's a lot of things that we can change about our brand year on year. Now, I'm not saying to change things just for the sake of it, because that's not ideal either.
But I mean, we need to audit these things, at least at the end of every year, in my opinion, in order to see, okay, actually this is sticky, this is not feeling right or this is not producing results or this is no longer in alignment with the vision for the brand, whatever it is.
We need to audit these things so we can actually see what does need to change for the next year, because I am quite sure that most of you listening should change at least one of these categories I'm going to chat you through. Really, if all three of these are staying absolutely identical in 2025, we probably have a bit of a problem.
So let me run you through the three categories that I want you to look at and that I will be looking at with my brand at the end of this year in order to make it bigger and better and bolder for 2025. Okay, so the first one that I want you to look at, it's an amalgamation of three different categories, actually. But I want you to look at your processes, your experience and your services. And obviously for a product based business, you can change Change that out with your products.
But I think this is particularly important for service based businesses because some of your services can probably be scrapped, honestly. Some can be tweaked, some can be made better. So when I talk about, let's look over your services and see where you can improve things, what you need to remove, all of that. I'm really talking about, okay, let's lay out everything that you offer. Even things like freebies and low-ticket offers.
So I want you to list out everything that you offer and look at, okay, how many people am I getting into each of these things? I also want you to list prices as well, how much you're charging for each of these things and how much time each one of them takes you. This is really important for us to be able to tell how profitable the offers are because this is something that I find very common. I do a lot of coaching with other designers. So even if you're not a designer, this is applicable to you.
If you are in a service-based business, if you are spending a lot of time on a project, even if it has a nice dollar amount attached to it, if we actually calculated it out, it's not profitable because you're ending up earning like $10 an hour. Just for example, I see this a lot in the design industry and I know it happens in other industries too. So we really need to look at the profitability of our offers.
We need to look at which ones are not getting traction, which ones are just stagnant sitting there. It's really hard sell people into them. And then we need to explore why that is. Why are people not booking into this offer? Why people are not buying this? Like, oh, I thought it was a great offer. I thought there was really something there. But then we need to look at, okay, if it's not selling, there's a problem with it. And the problem could be another one of your offers is cannibalising it.
It could be your messaging is trash around it. It could be the pricing is really off with that particular thing. It could be that service or that package is not really fitting anywhere in your business model. It's random or it's for a completely different target audience. Maybe we haven't identified that. So really looking at Okay, for my services, which ones are bringing in the most money, which ones are using most of my time, which ones can I automate or simplify more?
What can I remove to make my service suite more streamlined and simple? I love streamlined and simple. If you know me, I'm all about simplifying as much as possible because business is hard enough already. Building a brand is already hard. Let's simplify what we can. A lot of the time that can mean removing services. Now, we might identify a gap in our service suite when we're doing this, where we actually need some bridging package.
We might have a low ticket offer and then a really high ticket offer, but we're struggling to bridge that gap. And Maybe we're getting a lot of people into the low ticket, but no one's going into our high ticket. We might need something to bridge the gap there. So we could look at potentially filling the gap. But I want you to look at simplifying before you look at adding things, ideally. So that's the first area I want you to look at within the first category.
So as I said, there's like three subcategories in this first category. But that's what I'm going to be doing with mine. So I'm going to be looking at, here are all my services, what's selling, what's working. And also another Another thing I forgot to add in here. Do you actually like it? Do you like it?
This is so important because I already know I haven't done this audit yet, but I'm already thinking of It's not a whole service, but there's a part of one of my services that I don't love and I don't really enjoy. And when I come to doing it, I'm like, oh, I put it off, I procrastinate it. That's ridiculous. Why do I have that in there? It's my business. It doesn't have to be in there. I want all of my services to be so exciting, to feel so fun, so seamless when I'm completing them.
I want the clients to feel like that as well, obviously. But also for me, as the person who's fulfilling all of this stuff all the time. So I'm going to be laying all of my services out. I'm going to be going through this audit process, figuring out what needs to shift, what needs to change. Am I adding a new service? Am I removing something? Am I changing deliverables? Am I changing pricing? Probably yes to most of the above, honestly.
I am going to be doing a few changes for the new year, which is exciting. But I need to go through this order process to see what actually needs to change instead of just throwing spaghetti at the wall and changing things at the drop of a hat and not actually looking at it holistically, not looking at it top down and seeing how this service is working in the context of the rest of my offer suite instead of just going in and changing one service randomly.
So that's the first area I want to look at. Second one is processes. So how are we fulfilling work? How are we doing the work? How are we creating results for our clients? Where in these processes can we, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, where can we automate things? If you are still sending out like manual invoices or contract, you're still manually putting So the contracts. Can we automate that? Yes, we can. So we should. And there's many other areas we can automate as well.
But I want you to be looking at like, where can I reduce the time spent on this particular process while still getting the same level of result for my client? Because obviously we don't want to jeopardise the results that we're getting. But we want to ideally have your processes be, again, more streamlined and more simple because that's going to be better in the long run for your business and your brand and you as well as the business owner. So looking at your processes.
And while you're doing that, I want you to really look at, can I bring in, if I don't have one already, can I create or bring in some signature framework or signature process that people can then tie into my brand. This is about brand building here, having a signature process, signature framework that you take clients through. That is a big part of your brand because that's something that people will start to recognise alongside brand.
It's one of those brand anchors that can build loyalty and build trust. So if you don't have one, I would really encourage you to see if you can create some process or framework. And if you do have one, does it need tweaks? Does it need refined I want you to have a look at it and see if it's feeling good to you or not. So I'm going to be doing that as well.
I'm going to be looking at my processes for all of my packages and all of the things that I do in my business, front-end and back-end, but particularly front-end, the things that tie into my brand and that my clients experience as well. And that leads me on to the third point in this first category, which is the overall experience. So start to finish your client experience, what they go through, all the different touch points.
We really need to look at that year on year because every year there really probably will be some things that we can either add, we can remove, we can streamline, we can tweak to make that experience better. So I'm going to be mapping out my whole client experience from start to finish. Start being before they even inquire with me, when they land on my Instagram, what is the journey for them? What are they seeing? Where would they naturally go next?
And is that providing all the necessary information for them and making them want to inquire. So I'm really looking at pre-inquiry, and that's the start of the process, to the end of the process, which is leaving feedback, testimonials, all that thing. So from start to finish, what are all those touch points in between that the client is going to interact with and how can I make those better or how can I make them more simple?
Because a lot of the time I do see as well with people's client experiences. And I've witnessed this firsthand when I've looked to work with other people is the process can be really complicated, like way more complicated than it needs to be. And that's a huge turn off. So I really want you to map all of that out, look at all the touch points, see what needs to be refined.
And there might be some touch points in that process where you're like, oh, I send out this welcome guide, but it's in random colours and it doesn't match my brand at all. And I've just been sending this out to people. And now is the time to make a change and go, okay, I'm going to make sure this welcome guide is in full alignment with the rest of my brain and everything else I'm sending out to the clients. So that's a really good time to audit that. Okay, so that covers the first category.
That was a bit long, but the next two categories are not as intense, I promise. Okay, so the second one that I really want you to look over, and this one, honestly, everyone should be making changes on this one. Even if you don't make any changes to the first and the third categories, I fully believe that you should definitely be making some change to this one. So what actually is it? It is your messaging. Wow, I'm sure you weren't expecting me to say that at any point during this episode.
So with your messaging, I really want you to look at your overall messaging strategy, I really want you to look at, is it performing? You will know if your messaging is performing or not because it has a direct correlation on your sales. Obviously, there's a lot of things that go into why you might or might not be making sales. Obviously, we need visibility first and foremost.
But after visibility, messaging plays an enormous role in whether or not we are making money in our business, because messaging is the thing that community communicates with our ideal client. And if they're not feeling seen, heard and understood by your messaging, they're not going to buy from you. So if you are getting visible, so for example, you've got followers, you've got people looking at your stories, You've got people on your email list.
Your reels are getting pushed out like you're getting a decent number of views, whatever. But you're not seeing many people inquire, you're not seeing many people purchase from you, whatever it is. It's highly likely the problem is with your messaging. If you are seeing sales, but it's not coming from the right target market, it's probably your messaging.
And if you are seeing sales for some offers, but others aren't selling or you're not seeing the amount of sales you want, you are making sales, but you know it should be more, could probably be your messaging as well. Highly likely. So what I want you to do is go over your messaging strategy and you might be like, what is that? I don't have a messaging strategy. Well, that's a problem. Plane and simple. We need a messaging strategy.
And what a messaging strategy is, is basically a clear understanding of our target market. So a clear understanding of their challenges, what they're going through, their pain points, a clear understanding of their goals, dreams and desires, a clear understanding of how they're feeling and experiencing things, a clear understanding of their knowledge gap between those two things, like their pain points and their dreams. There's a knowledge gap. We need to know what that is.
And then we also need to know the personality and the language that they're going to respond best to. So how are we going to actually communicate our messages to them? What words are we going to use? What tone of voice? That thing. And then ideally, another part of the messaging strategy is incorporating ourselves into it. So our own personality, the way that we speak, the words, the emojis that we like to use, the way that we type, our mannerisms, all that thing, integrating that in as well.
And obviously this is only applicable if you are building a mixture of a business brand and a personal brand. If you have a large team and you are not the face of the business, all that thing, that's not going to be as applicable to you. But if you're a solopreneur or just have a small team and you are the face and you are the person that people are connecting with on socials, then I would highly recommend, yes, we integrate some of your own essence into your messaging strategy.
So that's what I would mainly be looking at in terms of developing a baseline messaging strategy. So if you don't have one, then I would look at those areas now that I just mentioned and start to put together a bit of a strategy there. But what I do want you to look at, whether or not you have a proper messaging strategy is, do I really clearly know about my dream client and am I communicating that properly to them or am I just Am I coming up with stuff randomly?
Am I making things up in my head? Am I just saying whatever pops into my mind? I'm not saying you can't do that, but if you want to be targeting the right people and have them feel really attracted and magnetised to what it is that you sell, we need to innately understand them inside and out so then we can actually infuse that into our messaging and show them that we understand them inside and out. They're not going to know that we understand them. They're not going to have any idea at all.
So we really need to go, okay, Even if at the start of 2024, I was really clear on my messaging and what my dream client needed to hear, that's likely going to change for 2025 because your business has evolved your clients may have evolved. You might have gotten a deeper understanding as the year has gone on about your dream client because you've had more conversations, you've had calls, you've had sales, you've had feedback, all those things that have happened over the the last twelve months.
We'll play into how we adjust our messaging moving forward. And I also want you to think, okay, how has my point of view changed over the last twelve months? What knowledge have I gained? How has my knowledge changed? What experiences have I had over the last 12 months? All these things that can and should play into your messaging, I want you to think on and see how that's changed over the last four months.
And if you haven't even thought about this at all, I just want you to think about that now. What is my point of view? What knowledge do I have? What experiences have I had recently that I can bring into my messaging? Because these things absolutely should be changing as you grow and as you experience more things in business and with your ideal clients, as you learn more things, as you evolve in your own business, your messaging should reflect that as well.
Because looking back at my Instagram, for example, my Instagram content, I'm contradicting a lot of things that I said two years ago. I no longer believe some of the things that I was talking about two years ago. And I'm saying different stuff now because I have learned, I've evolved, I have more knowledge, I have more experience. My point of view has changed because of that. And I'm obviously going to let that show in my messaging.
I'm not going to keep keeping on with the same messaging I had two years ago, even if deep down I'm not feeling attached to it anymore and I'm not fully believing it because that's doing a disservice for my client. So Whilst consistency in messaging is important, you are allowed to contradict yourself. You are allowed to change this stuff as time goes by, and your audience deserves as much.
They deserve to be kept up to date with where your head's at, what your experience have taught you, what knowledge you've gained, what you can pass on to them. So please don't be afraid of, like I said, contradicting things you used to say or going off and talking about things that you never used to speak about. I want you to feel very aligned to what you're talking about in your messaging.
It needs to feel like you could talk about that stuff all day, really, because your audience can pick up on if you're just talking about stuff for the sake of it. So like I said, this is one area where I really feel like every brand can make changes year on year to their messaging. And honestly, even more frequently than that, like every six months, your messaging can and probably should be changing because you're evolving and changing. I mean, every day you're evolving and changing.
But definitely, if you look at over a period of 6 or 12 months, you have grown, you have changed. Your business also needs to do the same. So it continues to feel really aligned with where you're at, your perspectives, your point of view. So you can authentically communicate all of that to your audience And they're going to better connect with that. Now, the last thing that I want you to audit and that I'm also going to be auditing is your dream client. So this is really, really important.
And I touched on this in the last point about messaging. But the knowledge we have of our dream client really should be changing at least a little bit year on year, because of every year that passes, we should be learning more about our dream client, because ideally we've worked with some of them over the last year. And even if we haven't, even if they've not been ideal clients, that teaches us something, too.
That teaches us about what we don't want and what we don't want to target, who we don't want to target. So we can then make that with our messaging and our content and our brand and everything that we are repelling those people. The more we know about the non-ideal clients, the more we can repel them. So no matter who you've worked with over the last year, you can learn from that. But I really want you to think about the things I touched on before.
So the pain points, the dreams, goals and desires, how your audience is thinking, feeling and experiencing things, what their knowledge gap between point A and point B is, how you help them bridge that knowledge gap, what they need to be hearing right now. So this, as I said, infuses into your messaging, infuses into your content, infuses into your brand, infuses even into the services and things that you're selling.
So it's really important to have a very clear understanding of your ideal client. Even if you had a very clear understanding at the start of this year, 2024, I really want you to go back and think, has this changed over the last 12 months? Have I learned new things about my ideal that I can now bring into my content to keep it feeling fresh and make sure that I'm really highly targeting those people. I need to be targeting them with a laser, basically.
That's how accurate and precise it really needs to be. So thinking back over conversations you've had, over emails and inquiry forms you've had submitted over the last year, over feedback forms you've had, conversations, whatever it might be. I want you to think back and see what can change and shift a bit, what you've learned that you can then apply to everything in your brand to make sure we're attracting that right person.
And now for some of you, your ideal client is actually going to change. You might have realised over the last year, I actually don't really love this client. Or maybe you did at the start of the year, but you've evolved now, you've grown. Maybe you want to attract a higher calibre client. You want to attract a different personality. You want to attract a different niche, whatever it is.
If you're feeling the pull to change who it is you're targeting, this is the time to get really clear on that and start doing your research and put together a bit of a document really outlining the thoughts and processes and feelings and experiences of this new ideal client. So again, we can really highly target them in everything that we do.
I have a masterclass which can be super helpful if you haven't done it or if you do struggle with identifying your ideal client instead of getting into their head. It's called Audience Attraction. It is $37, which is an absolute steal. And it goes through my whole process on how I get into my audience's head, how I start to pull out what they're thinking, feeling and experiencing, as well as a spreadsheet to help you.
So I would highly recommend grabbing that if you are struggling with identifying your target client, because that can really, really help. And that's the thing as well. When it comes to getting into the mind of your ideal client, you need to be writing this stuff down. You need to be documenting it. You can't just have it all up in your brain because I guarantee you things are going to get lost in translation. You're going to paraphrase things.
You're going to just start coming up with stuff off the top of your head instead of following the document and the guidebook that you've ideally put together, which goes into to, here are the things my audience is struggling with. Here's the things they want to achieve. Here's how they want to feel. Here's how they feel right now. All of that. If we don't have it written down, I mean, we've forgotten it, basically. It's never going to come across the right way.
And I'm not saying you have to copy and paste this stuff every single time or making a piece of content or writing some messaging. But having that foundation there that you can then rephrase, rework, change things up a little bit, add a bit of storytelling around, for example, to make it different each time, that is going to be invaluable. So I really want you to think, has my ideal client changed this year? Have a look at who you've worked with over the last 12 months.
And I really want you to think, okay, do I like what I've worked with? First of all, like coming back to yourself and how you feel. Do you like the clients you've worked with? Have they been dream clients to you? Have there been areas with a lot of these clients or similarities or patterns that you've noticed? For example, are they late on payments? Is that common with your clients? Or do they have too many questions?
It takes a long time to get them over the line to actually make that sale, for example. Are there areas with these clients you've worked with that you would like to change? Because this is your time. This is your time to change these things. But you have to actually know what you want to change first to be able to then come up with the solution to actually fix that problem. So I want you to think, looking at who I've worked with over the last year, do I like these clients?
What would I change about them? If anything, has my ideal client shifted or changed? Maybe those clients were dream clients, but now looking at them, I'm like, actually, for who I am today and who I am right now and where the brand is, they're no longer dream clients. So something has to shift. So let's rework who these people are. Let's go back to square one. It doesn't have to take 100 years. It doesn't have to take you a long time to do this.
So I don't want you to put this off because you think it's going to take a long time. It really doesn't have to. I would say like an hour maybe for this category. Obviously, as time goes by, I would expect this to be refined more. But initially spend like an hour doing this. Let's go back to square one and redefine who this person is, where they're at, what they're struggling with, what their dreams are, what the knowledge gap is, all the things I've already said.
We really need to go back, make sure we've identified that if we're making any changes to our ideal client, and then make sure we're able to funnel that through our messaging, our services, our content, our brand, all of the things. So I know for me, my ideal client is going to be shifting a little bit.
Again, I haven't done this audit yet, but when I do it, I know I'm going to have some refinements there on the client that I want to be working with in 25, both from the perspective of my design work and also my design coaching as well. So I've got two different clients that I'm looking at here for that. But I think this is exciting. This should be an exciting thing to work through because it's making your brand bigger and better for next year.
It's going to make sure that you are set up and more on track to achieve the goals that you have planned. Because if you're just staying stagnant, staying where you it's going to be really hard to hit bigger goals for next year if you're staying the same, plain and simple. Something has to shift and change in order for you to grow bigger, get better, have a bigger brand.
And these are the starting points that I really want you to look at, which will have a flow on effect to the rest of your business. So category one being your processes, your experience, your services, category two being your messaging, category three being your ideal client. That's what I want you to look at at the end of this year to set your brand up for 2025. That's what I'm going to be doing in the last few weeks of the year as well.
So here's to 2025 being our biggest, boldest, best brand year yet. I'm so excited. I hope you have an amazing Christmas It's an amazing New Year, and I will catch you back here for the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Brandology. I am so happy to have you here. I hope you got something out of this episode. If you did, I would so love it if you could hit that follow button on your podcast platform.
And if you really loved it, it would be so amazing if you could leave a review on Apple podcast. It really, really helps. I would also love it if you could share this podcast with your business besties because I'm dropping new episodes every week all about the soul and strategy behind building feel-less brands. And I would love to spread the word to as many entrepreneurs as I can. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll be back in your ears next week.