Why are you not showing up as that big brand, that dream brand now? Because you can. 1, 2, 3, 4. So you're building a brand online. You've got wild a f dreams. You know you've got the potential to grow your biz into something pretty dang incredible, and you wanna 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. And welcome back to the Brandology Pod Thank you so much for joining me today. It is an extra special day because it is the 100th episode of Brandology. Yay. I'm so excited about that milestone and really proud to have reached a 100 episodes.
Thank you so much for coming along on the journey, whether you have been here from the start, which I know a couple of you have, or if you've come in along the way or even if this is the first episode you're listening to. Thank you so much for being here and for listening in and I really hope that this podcast has been useful to you in some way. I really want you to be able to take something away from each episode you listen to and apply it straight to your brand. That is the goal.
So I really hope that it's done that for you. But, yeah, a 100 episodes. Wild. Very grateful. Also shout out to my podcast manager, Em, who edits all my podcasts and schedules them. She's amazing. Absolutely could not have done this without her. So if you need a podcast manager, check out Em from Studio Saloona. She's amazing. So shout out to you, Em. Keep doing what you're doing. You're incredible. So for the 100th episode, I wanted to give you a few of my biggest lessons in brand building.
And this is sort of a little bit of a combination of some things I've chatted about in previous episodes and also some just general things that I've picked up along the way and that I've applied to my own brand. So I've got 6 different little lessons that I want to chat you through, which I really encourage you to apply to your brand ASAP. Like these lessons for me, I didn't know all of these before I started my business.
As I said, these are things that I have learned along the way, whether it's through making mistakes, figuring things out as I go, or through coaching or mentoring that I have received. These are all things that I've taken, I've applied to my brand, and I have seen results from bringing these tips into my business. I'm not saying you're going to see overnight results from doing these things, but I can tell you right now that if you do apply these to your brand, it is going to strengthen it.
It's going to make it more sustainable and much more likely to succeed and turn into that dream brand that you've been wanting to build in the long term, which is what we want. Okay. So let's dive into the first lesson. And that is that what you do is the least interesting thing about you and about your business. So, so many people really just see themselves as, oh, I'm a designer or I do brows or I'm a wedding photographer or I do facials.
Like, whatever it is, so many business owners just see their brand as, oh, I'm a designer. I'm this. I'm that. And they focus a lot of their marketing, a lot of their messaging, a lot of their brand building efforts around the fact that this is what I do. This is what I offer. And that is not enough to make someone buy from you. Because, yes, you are a designer or you do brows, but so do probably 100, if not 1,000, if not tens of thousands of other people across the world.
So that in itself is not enough to stand your brand out. That in itself is not enough to make your dream client choose you. And this is when people start to compete on price because everyone's just saying, oh, I'm a designer. I do brows. I'm a wedding photographer. But there's nothing else to differentiate. ' So then what happens is you might go, oh, well, I'm not really getting bookings. Like, I have a lot of competitors and no one's booking with me. So I'm going to reduce my prices.
I'm going to put on a sale. Blah blah blah, whatever it is. And then your competitor looks at that and goes, oh, she's getting the bookings because her prices are cheaper. Well, I'm going to undercut her and make my prices cheaper so people come with me. And as you can see, that's just a race to the bottom from that point once you start looking at price as the main differentiating factor.
And that really comes from not having anything else to differentiate your brand because all you're doing is focusing on the services you offer or the thing that you sell and what you do when that is not enough. Honestly, it's the least interesting thing about you and about your business. So, yes, the people who are coming to you, your dream clients, are going to need what it is that you do. But that is not the reason that they're going to choose you.
They're going to choose anyone who does facials. Anyone who does wedding photography. Anyone who does interior design. But they're looking for a specific kind of person, a specific kind of approach. Something that speaks to them and the way that they want to experience things and the outcome that they want to achieve. So they need to see more than just, oh, here are my prices. Here are my services. That's it. So what I really encourage you to do is look beyond what you do.
Look beyond services you offer. Look beyond what you are, as in what your profession is. Because that's not what your audience is gonna connect with. Yes. They are looking for an interior designer. So they come to your Instagram profile, they see you're an interior designer. Perfect. We can leave it there. We no longer need to go on about our services and our prices and what it is that we actually do.
What we need to go on about I'm not saying the prices and and services and packages aren't important because, yes, people need to know those things. But I'm saying that is not the brand. That is not the focus of what we should be doing here. What we need to be doing and what we need to be focusing on is our approach, how we do things, how we help our clients get results. And this is where a lot of uniqueness can actually come into it with how we do things and what our approach is and our method.
Method, we also need to look at us as the human behind the brand and bring elements of us into it. So allow our audience to get to know us through social media, through what we're popping on there. So helping people get to know us, get to know our personality, and actually build a connexion with us as the human behind the brand because that is gonna do so much more to allow them to actually want to choose us than just by going on about, I'm a designer. Here are my packages. Here are my prices.
Because that in itself is not going to build any kind of connexion with your audience, any kind of friendship, any kind of emotional bond at all. There's none of that is going to be built just by talking about those kind of things. We really need to build authority and show our audience that we know what we're doing. We can help them get results. We also need to build a friendship level connexion because without that, we are not going to be able to get these clients over the line.
You can't have it all 1 way or all the other way. You have to have this mixture of both and that authority is really through, like I said, talking about your methodology, how you do things, your results, talking about past clients and how you help them get from a to b, all those kind of things.
And then to build that friendship level side of things, that's where we really want to bring in the personal branding elements and show people a bit more behind the scenes, what we get up to, who we are, our personality traits, so they can actually build a human level connexion with us. All right. So lesson number 2 is that people care about what's in it for them.
Okay. So this is what you really need to be thinking about when you are posting content, when you are talking about your brand, whatever it is that you're doing. People do only care about themselves at the end of the day.
And I'm not saying people can't care about others, but when it comes to purchasing from you or working with you or that, you know, your audience is choosing who they want to work with, they're thinking about what's in it for them because they are the ones really taking the risk. They are the ones putting a large amount of money down. They are the ones that, you know, are taking a chance on you, hoping that you'll be able to do what it is that they want.
And, you know, we all know you're amazing at what you do. You are going to be able to do what your client wants. But we need to show them that we can do that for them. We need to not convince them, but we need to prove to them that we are the correct choice.
So we are going to be the ones that can help them get from A to B. Because if we're not showing ways that we can do that, we're not building that trust with our audience, it is going to feel like a big risk, a big jump off at the edge of a cliff, basically, for your audience. And we don't want them to feel like that when they're investing in us. In fact, that's the last thing we really want them to feel. We want them to feel super confident in their decision. Like it's the right decision.
It's a safe decision. It's something that is going to get them results. I'm not saying you have to stand there and guarantee results of some kind for your audience. I don't really recommend anyone does that because there's always other factors that can come into play.
But what I'm saying is we really need to be showing our audience, sort of like I mentioned in the first lesson, we need to really be showing our audience, here is the process, here is the method, here is the signature strategy that I'm going to be taking you through. Here's how I applied this same strategy to another client, and here were this client's issues or struggles, and here's how I adapted the strategy to fit her brand, or whatever it is that you do.
You know, if you do facials, speaking about a client's issues, a client's struggles and, you know, how you tailored a particular facial or what facial you used on her and why and then how that helped, blah blah blah. What we're really trying to do is build trust here because your audience cares about themselves. They care about making the best investments that they can because the majority of you listening to this, you are more so in that high ticket service provider industry.
I know a couple of you are product based businesses and the same can really go for that as well, where your audience cares about what's in it for them. This really plays into messaging. I see this both with product based businesses and service based businesses where, like, for example, you might be explaining why something costs so much. I see this a lot with service based businesses. Like, here's why my photography services cost so much.
And then there's, you know, all this information about all the work that goes into what you do and all the effort and the cost of the equipment and all that kind of thing. So you're trying to justify your prices and your audience doesn't care. Your audience does not care. I cringe every time I see that kind of content because your audience literally doesn't care.
Like, they appreciate the amount of work and effort that goes into it, yes, But they don't need to sit there and read about why it costs so much. If that is the reason you're justifying your prices, then we need to take a different approach because that is not how you should be justifying the prices that you're charging. In fact, you shouldn't need to justify your prices at all if you're building the rest of your brand correctly and showing value in other ways.
So we see that a lot with service based businesses trying to sort of justify prices or talk about why things take a certain amount of time, why things cost so much. Again, your audience cares about what's in it for them. They don't care about this. With product based businesses, I see it a lot where a business might be like, oh, we're just a small business and we really appreciate your support in purchasing from us.
And I see this a lot as well with little thank you cards that you get from small businesses when you receive the order and it says, thank you. You've made our day without with your purchase. I'm doing a happy dance. Like, your audience yes. That's very sweet. And your audience will probably feel a bit warm and fuzzy because they've made you happy. But do you see the issue here, where this is about you? You're making it about you.
You're making it about why you do things this way or how you're feeling, when it actually needs to be about the audience. It needs to be about the customer and how they are feeling and how they're going to experience the product or the service or why they're purchasing the product or service. We need to shift the focus to make it about them Because they are number 1 to themselves. Like, they're their own number 1, as as they should be. You know, everyone should be number 1 in their own eyes.
So the more we can make our brand about our audience and I'm actually going to touch on this in another lesson a little later the more we can shift the brand to make it about the audience and, like, put the spotlight on the audience in these kind of situations, the better it's going to be. Because that's why they're buying. They're buying to improve their own life. They're not buying to improve your life necessarily or do you a solid.
They're probably happy they can support you, but they're buying the thing or they're investing in you to make their life better, to improve their life, to solve a problem, solve a challenge, get closer to their dream version of themselves. And that's what we need to focus on in a lot of our messaging and a lot of our content. We need to make it about them because their purchase is about them. And without them purchasing, we don't even have a business at the end of the day.
So we need to make sure that we keep a focus on that. Okay. 3rd lesson. This is probably my favourite lesson of all, is that you have to show up as the brand that you wanna be before you are that brand. Okay? So this is like in a nutshell. If you're not into manifestation, I'm sorry. But it really applies well to branding from a very practical perspective. So it's really about thinking, okay. This is the kind of brand that I wanna be. Like, I wanna look like this. I want to sound like this.
I want people to feel this way about me. I wanna show up like this. Okay. So if you have this vision for your brand, why are you not showing up as that right now?
Why are you still showing up as the DIY, sort of thrown together in Canva brand and you know it's a bit of a mishmash of colours and fonts and you know that, you know, you're chat gpt for every caption and you don't have a unique voice or unique personality or, you know, people aren't flocking to you and seeing you as the leader in your space. People aren't buying from you like hotcakes. Why are you not showing up as that big brand, that dream brand now? Because you can.
Like, it's not going to happen for you before you start showing up as that. So if you're still showing up as that, like, side hustle energy, that hobby energy, that DIY thrown together, almost uncaring energy, your audience is going to pick up on that. Your audience is going to absorb that. They're going to see that. They're gonna feel that. And it's highly likely they're not going to invest in you when it looks like you can't even invest time or energy or effort into your own brand.
I know this sounds a bit harsh, but it is honestly something that I see so much where I like, there's a business owner with this big dream, big vision for how they want their brand to be. But their branding and their messaging and their visuals and everything still looks really half assed and really, like, we've just slapped it together. We don't really care. And I'm not saying you can't start like that and you can't continue like that because you absolutely can.
I'm just saying if you want a fast track to your success, this is gonna help so much because you can shift how your audience thinks about your brand and how they feel about your brand simply by changing how your brand looks and sounds. It is really that simple. It's not rocket science. You can make changes today to your visuals and your messaging that will shift how your audience sees you, how your audience feels about you.
And how your audience sees you and feels about you is going to determine whether or not they buy from you. And this is everything. Like this is brand in a nutshell. If you can influence and impact how they feel, you can influence and impact whether or not they're gonna buy. That's it. It's as simple as branding really is. And, like, yes, there's obviously a lot that goes into it and it's actually building that out. But you can absolutely start to make changes today to your brand.
And if you wanna do that, I would actually recommend jumping into The Brand Lab, which is my programme that takes you through my method of brand building. So we look at brand strategy, we look at brand messaging, we look at content, and we look at visual design. And it's self paced. You can walk through each module at your own pace. You can also purchase individual modules. You don't have to buy all the modules.
But if you want to start making changes to your brain today, grab 1 or all of those modules and start working working through that and applying that to a brand because that in itself is gonna make a huge difference to your brand when you start applying my methods and strategies to what you're doing.
Okay. So if you know that you are still showing up in that DIY slapped together hobby energy, but you have big brand energy that you want to tap into, or you have these big visions and dreams and goals of how you want your brand to look and feel and sound and how you want people to experience it, please start taking steps to show up as that big brand today because you can. There is no reason why you can't.
And until you start showing up as that brand, your audience is never going to see you as that brand. They're never going to see you the way you want to be seen if you keep showing up in this small energy. Alright. So lesson number 4 is visuals are the open door and messaging is what makes them stay. So there is such a huge interconnection between your visual branding, so logos, colours, fonts, patterns, illustrations, packaging, all that kind of thing and then messaging.
So messaging being what you're saying and how you're saying it. There is such a huge connexion between these and you must have both nailed down in order to have a successful brand.
You're not gonna find a successful brand that only has 1 half of the equation because what happens if your visuals, your visual branding, is on point but the messaging is not, is people are going to see the visuals, your ideal client or customer will see them go, oh, love, and like in their mind they're attracted to it. They're aligned to it.
But then as they continue reading because they're thinking about buying from you because you've hooked them in with the visuals, they're thinking about buying from you, but they're reading now. So they're reading your content or they've picked your packaging off the shelf. They're reading the box. Whatever it is. They're reading your website. That messaging, if it's not on point, it's not going to speak to them. It's actually going to feel a bit weird.
It's going to feel a little bit disconnected from the rest of the brand. It's going to feel a bit disjointed, and that's going to break a bit of trust with your audience, which is likely going to turn them off buying. They were thinking about it, but your messaging tipped them back the other way to a no. Let's go find somewhere else I can buy this from.
Okay. Now if you have visuals that aren't on point, that your messaging is on point, people unfortunately aren't even going to get to the messaging because they're gonna be turned off by the visuals. Your dream client or customer will see the visuals and go, oh, or, like, oh, that doesn't look very trustworthy. That is not very professional, whatever it is. So they're not even gonna get to the point of reading your content.
They're not even gonna get to the point of reading the amazing copy on your packaging because they've been turned off by the visuals. So the way I like to look at it, the visuals, that that's the open door to your brand. It's a welcoming open door. So we want people walking into your brand and then the messaging is sort of the rest of the house. You know, the furniture inside and the decorations on the walls, that makes them stay. Then they're like, oh, this is really nice.
Okay. I'm gonna hang around. I'm gonna stay. I really like it here. And then they buy from you. So 1 thing leads to the next. Visuals lead to the messaging, which leads to the purchase as long as you've done the other 2 things correctly. So this is why I really encourage people to look at both of these things together. And this is why with many of my clients, I work on visuals and messaging with them instead of just 1 or the other. There are some clients where I might just do visuals.
It all depends on timelines and budgets and what they want to achieve. But I would say 80% of my clients, we do visuals and we do messaging work because it is that important to have all of these things things in alignment, feeling really cohesive, to build that trust with your audience, to encourage them to buy from you. And as I mentioned before, I do have a messaging module inside the Brand Labs.
If you want to explore messaging in more detail, you can either work with me directly on that or you can jump into the Brand Lab and start exploring that in your own time. And I'll have that all linked down in the show notes if you're interested. Okay. Lesson number 5. You are the centre of your brand's universe. So what I mean by this is I'm kind of counteracting a little bit of what I said earlier in the episode, but I have said this quite a few times in the past.
So bear with me, it'll make sense. Your audience is extremely important and we need to focus on our audience and a lot of what we do. So when I was talking about, you know, your audience wants to know what's in it for them, they're just thinking about themselves, they really just care about themselves. We need to consider them with everything that we're doing.
We need to make sure things are aligned to them and that they're going to be able to see the value, experience what it's going to be like to work with you, see what's in it for them. All of the things. But at the same time, I am a firm believer that you are the centre of your brand's universe. You are the most important person in your brand.
And I feel like not enough business owners realise this because what happens when you put only the focus on your audience and you take yourself out of the equation is you build a brand for your audience. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but the issue when we remove ourselves from the equation is that we aren't ourselves from the equation is that we aren't building a brand that we also love.
We're building something that other people are gonna love and other people are gonna buy from, but is that gonna be sustainable in the long term, especially if we are solopreneurs? No. Because you're going to fall out of love with what you've created because you haven't created it from your heart. You're creating it for the hearts of other people. And I just feel really strongly about this because I have experienced this myself in my own business a number of times.
Like it does happen from time to time where I realise, sort of, what I've been building. It hasn't, like, really been for me necessarily or parts of my business have not been centred around me. And so it's led to, you know, some kind of feeling of a little bit of frustration or a little bit of anger with my business and then I have to change things. Whatever it may be, a lot of us have experienced this from time to time, I'm sure.
But it's really about we need to think, okay, me as the business owner and the brand owner, the person who is the backbone here, why am I not building my brand to suit me? Why am I not building my brand into something that I love and I'm obsessed with first. So this is the way I want you to think about brand building. I want you to think about you at the centre of the universe. You're building a brand that you're obsessed with and that you love.
And then we start to look at, okay, now what kind of audience can we bring in that is going to be just as obsessed with this as me? So instead of building it around your audience first, we build around them second. You are first. We build around you first and then we identify the right kind of person who's going to come in and resonate with what we've built.
This is going to be so much easier when it comes to creating content, creating new services or packages, when it comes to showing up on socials with your own face, your own voice, when it comes to doing calls with clients, for example, on Zoom. When it comes to anything like this, having a brand that you have built for you first and that you are completely obsessed with means you can back your own brand and you can really stand up from the rooftops and go I am amazing at what I do.
I know I can get you results. I love my brand. My brand is gonna change your life. Blah blah blah. Like you can really back yourself because you love what you've built and you fully believe in it. And I just have seen this happen so much, particularly with past clients who've come to me for a rebrand. A lot of them had fallen so far out of love with their old brand that they just refused to market themselves anymore. They refused to shop on social media.
They don't want to show anyone their website. And can you imagine what that is doing to their brand? Like, they're not getting any interest. They're not getting inquiries. They're not getting sales, whatever it is, because they're not showing up because they don't love their brand. Because they didn't build the brand for them. That's when we have to go back to square 1 and go, okay, let's build this brand for me. I'm building this brand for me into something that I love and I'm obsessed with.
And then I'm gonna make sure that it's gonna suit the right kind of audience as well. So I look at it as the branding sweet spot. I've mentioned this a few times where if you think of a Venn diagram with 2 circles, in 1 circle we've got you and in the other circle we've got your audience. And we're gonna overlap those 2 circles. And in that overlap section in the middle, that is where your brand lives.
That is what we have to find because that's the intersection of what you love and what you're obsessed with and what your audience loves and what they're obsessed with. Because, again, if we go too far 1 way or too far the other, we're not going to have a successful brand. If our audience loves everything, but we hate it as the business owner, we're going to stop showing up. We're going to stop marketing. The business is going to die.
If we love it, but our audience doesn't, we're not going to make sales because they don't connect with it. They don't align with it. So we have to have that overlap, but I want you to start with you first. Always with you first. And then my last lesson is focused around your audience and it is your audience is more than an age, location, and a hobby list. So the traditional way of identifying your target audience is, oh, how old are they? Where do they live? How much do they earn?
What what are their hobbies? What are their personality traits? Do they have kids? Do they have pets? All these kind of things that just almost dehumanises them in a way. And I know this way has been used for so long and it's not wrong. It's just not enough. It's not going deep enough into the human that they actually are. Because when we do it the traditional way, like I said, it feels a bit dehumanising.
It just feels sort of like we're filling in a form for the government or something and we're just filling in basic details about ourselves. Like they don't actually care about who we are and what we're all about. They just need basic details. And your audience is so much more than that. There's so much more that goes on in their mind and in their world that you need to tap into in order to create content, create services, create a brand that is gonna speak so deeply to them.
That is gonna actually change their lives. So what I really want you to think about when it comes to defining your dream audience and your dream client is what are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are they experiencing? 3 really simple categories. Thinking, feeling, experiencing. And then I want you to do that with what are they thinking, feeling, and experiencing before they work with you, before they buy from you.
Okay. So in that before state and then in the after state of how they want to be feeling, how they wanna be thinking, what they wanna be experiencing after they work with you, after they've achieved the result. Because what this is gonna do is give you a really clear idea of what they were thinking before and after, what they were feeling before and after, what they were experiencing before and after. And we know that the after hasn't happened yet because they haven't yet worked with you.
But we want to tap into how they want that to look. We want to tap into the dreams that they have for themselves, the dreams they have for their life or their business or their skin or their kids or whatever it is that you specialise in and you do. And this is how we actually create content that is gonna really speak to your audience rather than just going, oh, alright. You're 30 years old. You're a woman. You live in Sydney.
You love breakfast and hot Pilates and going out for coffee and spending time with your dogs. Versus, this is how you're thinking and feeling right now. Like, I understand what you're going through. I know the challenges and the struggles. Like, here's what you're experiencing. But I also know that this is how you want to feel. This is how you want your life to look. And you can visualise doing this in the morning instead of what you're doing right now.
Like, that's going to be so much more powerful and speak to someone so much more deeply than just surface level, here's a little bit about this person and what they like to do in their spare time. Like, that is not going to attract people in.
Knowing things like their age and their income and, you know, things they might like to do can help when it comes to thinking about how we want to say things, what words we want to use, or what references we might want to use in our content, but that's not deep enough. That's just like a little sprinkling on top kind of thing.
The real juice of it and the real crux of it is getting into their brain, getting into their head and understanding how they're thinking, how they're feeling and what they're experiencing right now. That is what is going to be the biggest difference when it comes to attracting the right people into your brand. And if you want to explore this 1 further, I have a master class called Audience Attraction. It is an epic master class.
It's super cheap as well and it goes through my whole process of identifying my target audience and how I do that. And it also comes with a spreadsheet as well so you can apply it straight to your own audience. So if you're interested in that, jump down into the show notes. The link will be there to grab it.
And what I'm also gonna do in the show notes is pop in some links to some of my other podcast episodes that go into some of these topics in more detail because I've got a few episodes where if you were interested in, like, 1 or a few of these lessons and you wanna learn more and hear more of my thoughts around that, jump down into the show notes and you'll find those podcast links below so you can dive even deeper. So I hope this was helpful.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and these brand building lessons. As I said, these are all things I've applied to my business over time. I use all of these lessons on a daily basis in my business. And as I said, I highly recommend that you start to bring some of these into your brand if you haven't already because these brand building tips are going to really, really help you build into that brand that you wanna be. So thank you so much for listening in.
Thank you so much for being here on the 100th episode of Brandology. I'm so grateful to have you here. I hope you have an amazing week, and I'll see you next time. 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 Podcasts.
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 Fearless 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.