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In each solo episode of this series of the podcast, I'm going to share with you one of the key elements of my bright framework, so that you can apply them to your business and make going from overlooked to fully booked easier than ever before, I promise. This first episode is going to cover B, which stands for brand, meaning that today's episode is going to teach you in very manageable steps, how to create a powerful brand that's going to get your business noticed,
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and is going to appeal to the people you want to attract, meaning that you can put clear and powerful messages out into the world.
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Welcome to this podcast with me, Nikki Hutchison, that's going to take you from overlooked to fully booked. I don't know about you, but when I'm listening to a business podcast, I don't just want nice stories. Stories are great. I love stories and I have huge respect for great storytellers. But for me, stories pretty much belong in books.
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When I'm choosing a business podcast to listen to, I want actionable learnings. I want to feel the excitement rising as I learn brand new information that I know is going to change things, either my way of thinking, my habits, my success, or preferably all three. So when I was planning out this new podcast, I was determined to make each episode valuable in this way. None of you are here to pass the time.
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If you've selected this podcast from the hundreds of thousands available to you, and thank you, by the way, for being here, then I want you to be glad that you did. With that in mind, every single episode will provide you with key actionable takeaways. As the DJs said back in the day, each episode is designed to be all killer, no filler. I've selected topics for my solo shows that are absolutely focused and crafted to provide you with what I know you need.
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to be able to get the sales you want. Each guest has been chosen because I've seen concrete evidence that they have absolute gold to share. Each series has been themed around the key topics you need to get your head around, to take action on, and make significant progress in today's online business world. So are you ready? Let's dive in to the very first episode of this brand new podcast, designed to take you from overlooked
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to fully booked. The desire to go from overlooked to fully booked is not about ego. It's not about a static end point either. Technically, it's not even a requirement to actually want to be fully booked. Rather, it's a movement, a mission, an intention. Allow me to explain. The act of becoming fully booked represents an achievement. It represents success.
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It's a reflection of the fact that you've managed to generate great levels of excitement about your services, to dream up and create offers that sell, to become in demand for what you do. It can also be a marker of success. You've accomplished something huge, whether it's selling out all spaces in your course or mastermind, or booking out all slots for your services. You've done it. Congratulations. And if you haven't achieved this yet, that's why you're here.
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and we're going to get you there soon. I help entrepreneurs go from being overlooked to fully booked using my tried and tested bright framework. This isn't about applying the same marketing methods to everyone, far from it. But all fully booked businesses have certain things in common. They've laid particular foundations from branding to marketing, and it's thanks to those strong foundations that they've managed to achieve this milestone. Don't be fooled by the word foundations though.
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This isn't a methodology that's only useful for new businesses. So, so many businesses operating online today don't have these foundations in place. I see it every day. Business owners wondering why their content isn't getting the traction they were hoping for when they share it online. Trying desperately to become fully booked, but their online presence is often messy, disjointed and inconsistent. Losing sleep over where their next sales are coming from, even when they have something brilliant to sell.
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because nobody's noticing it due to issues with their branding, marketing, messaging or more. When I launched my first business, off the back of a career spent in brand and marketing strategy, I wasn't even aware that I was applying this framework. I simply did what I knew how to do. I scaled that business, a kids hip hop dance company, from one teacher delivering one class per week to a team of 40 teaching thousands of children every week.
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in schools, private nurseries, after-school clubs, holiday camps, and at birthday parties all over the country. Having previously worked with large clients and corporates within the world of agencies, I wanted to get under the skin of running my own business, to make sure I understood the challenges facing small business owners and their unique needs before I started advising them.
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When I came to launch my marketing business five years later, I was inundated with inquiries from women who had watched me use my brand and marketing skills to grow that dance company. And they wanted me to teach them how to do the same. Nowadays, as well as teaching entrepreneurs how to become fully booked, I have an agency where we create the strategies and content that will do it for you.
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My big desire and the purpose of this podcast is for entrepreneurs like you to have the confidence to do things your way in business and to become fully booked. To be financially self-reliant and able to take decisive action, safe in the knowledge that if anything doesn't work out, you have the resources, support and self-belief to try again. Marketing is often needlessly overcomplicated, so my goal is always to simplify things, making marketing straightforward.
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and easy to understand. During each podcast episode, I'll be sharing my knowledge and behind the scenes of my business as openly and comprehensively as possible, so that you feel confident and supported to use marketing strategically and consistently, and so that you start achieving brilliant results. If you've landed here in search of new things to learn and try, new ways to get better results, then you're probably feeling some level of frustration right now.
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Perhaps you're not achieving the results you want, despite trying different approaches. Maybe you feel you're doing all the things when it comes to marketing, but not much is changing. You can't seem to get any sort of traction. Or perhaps your business is filled with peaks and troughs. You get things going, only to lose momentum, and feel that you're having to start pushing that snowball up the hill all over again. The good news is that there are key methods and activities that you can keep in your back pocket.
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specific strategies that you can lean into, levers you can pull so that when this happens, you'll be able to get back on the right track faster and stay there. Now, I promised you actionable takeaways and key results, so let's get started. In each solo episode of this series of the podcast, I'm going to share with you one of the key elements of my Bright framework so that you can apply them to your business and make going from overlooked to fully booked easier than ever before.
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I promise. This first episode is going to cover B, which stands for brand, meaning that today's episode is going to teach you in very manageable steps, how to create a powerful brand that's going to get your business noticed and is going to appeal to the people you want to attract, meaning that you can put clear and powerful messages out into the world. We're not going to focus on your visual branding, that's how you look online.
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That does play a key role in your success, but before you assess whether you need to work on that, it's important to think about your brand strategy. Defined as the emotional and physical connection your customers and potential customers have with your company, product or service, brand is something that's often overlooked, not given enough care or paid much attention to, or sometimes even ignored or taken for granted. Shot horror.
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Not anymore. Today we're going to work through why you need to pay more attention to your brand, convince you of its importance by sharing some real-world examples of when brand has made a huge difference to company success, and share the steps you need to follow to create or strengthen your own brand. Imagine coming across a company you want to work with online. Maybe you've landed on their Instagram profile and it looks interesting, so you check out the link in their bio, which takes you to their website.
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You click and head over there, but when you reach their website, it not only looks completely different to their Instagram account, but also sounds very different. Let's say it's a co-working space. On Instagram, it's all minimalist, urban vibes, wooden floors and desks, lots of greenery, and they're selling themselves as a relaxed, quirky place to spend time. You can drop in and out. It all sounds very casual and chilled, and it looks to be geared towards hip, edgy start-ups.
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But on their website, it's all pastel colors, the photographs are different, and they're selling you a vision of pink, fluffy female entrepreneurship. There's a group schedule that sounds organized down to the minute, and the whole site is giving girl boss vibes. How would you feel? Confused, right? That's how your customers feel if you're not clear on your brand values, on exactly what you offer and who it's for. This leads to confusion, and confused customers don't buy.
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They move on until they find an alternative brand that makes sense to them, appeals to them, and makes it easy to buy from them. Think of some of your favorite brands. They know exactly what they stand for, and you know exactly what you're going to get from them. Some of my favorite high street brands include Apple. I love their sleek design, the fact that all of my devices, my MacBook, iMac, and iPhone, can sync and share information easily via AirDrop, copy and paste, and so on, and the fact-
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I can keep track of each device and more importantly my kids devices if they get misplaced. Another favourite of mine is John Lewis. Very middle class and traditional I know but bear with me. The John Lewis brand is known for some unique and key things. Their Christmas ad sparks conversation and spending every year. Exactly what an ad should do.
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John Lewis take each ad one step further by creating a line of limited edition merchandise relating to each main character, from bears to cuddly fluffy monsters. This creates more urgency and excitement around the campaign, as well as brand recognition and reach. The tech department is also well known for providing a two-year guarantee as standard, and they don't quibble on this.
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I recently returned my daughter's faulty AirPods 23 months into the guarantee and was given a full refund. I'm also a lover of their app, one central place where I can find my receipts, browse the sale categories and be rewarded with treats in their cafe. When it comes to small businesses, I love the ones that pop with colour and creativity, those with social media feeds that have clearly had thought put into them, that make sense in terms of the way their products and services are represented.
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that are aligned and consistent when it comes to bios, highlights, website layout and communications. Those that are leading the way when it comes to collaborations and are really supporting other small businesses and sharing their expertise and skills in engaging ways. There are too many to single out, but check out some of the accounts I'm following on Instagram if you want to find out more about the brands whose content I enjoy. So how can you make it onto my favourite
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Brands List 2. This is going to take some time and effort, but it's going to pay off in spades because you're going to gain clarity, the opposite of confusion, and you're going to be able to share that with your audience, making it easier to generate sales, both from your existing and potential customers. By this point, hopefully we're in agreement that underpinning every successful business today is a strong brand. A brand is something that can...
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feel almost mythical at times and certainly feels hard to define. In actual fact, when it comes to your business, your brand is everything. Overclaim? I don't think so. Without a brand, you stand for nothing. Without a brand, nobody will recognize your company. It will be impossible to identify and recall. Without a brand, you may survive for a short time, but ultimately, your business will fail.
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Now let's unpick this further so that you can go about creating and strengthening your brand. I mentioned earlier that there's a difference between your branding and your brand. And in fact, there are three pieces to the puzzle. And this is where things can start to get a little confusing. So I'll try to keep it simple. The first piece of the puzzle is your brand. This is the perception of your company in people's minds. How they think and feel about who you are and what you do. Your products and services.
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It's what you think when you see the Starbucks logo in the distance, or take a brand new iPhone from its packaging. Then you have your branding, the way you share your brand with your desired audience. This is the process of bringing your brand to life. It's how you make people feel when they come into contact with your brand. Branding is a powerful marketing strategy and the best way to differentiate your business from others in the same or similar industries. Do you want to be Chanel or Primark?
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or waitrose, or somewhere in between. Branding is the strategy you use to bring your brand to life with the purpose of exerting influence over consumers' decision-making process. And finally, you have your brand identity, the look of your brand. These are the visual elements, the fonts, the colors, logos, visual style, the tangible aspects. What you need to work out before you do anything else in relation to your brand is the deeper side, the non-visual elements.
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The intangible magic ingredients that are going to help you decide where and how to position yourself. Your brand strategy. And that's what I'm going to help you with in today's episode. At one of the first agencies I worked at, we used a tool called the Brand Wheel, originally credited to Bates from 1995. And it's something I still use as a starting point with my clients today. Creating your Brand Wheel is the first step in creating any sort of marketing.
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Without this, you're doing the equivalent of jumping into your car and setting off with no idea who's in the car with you, no set destination or directions, and no soundtrack for your journey. If you've worked with me directly on one of my programs or one-to-one, then you will have your own brand wheel that you can update whenever it needs a refresh. If not, then you can create your own brand wheel today.
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What is the brand wheel? It's simply a one-sided piece of paper divided up into sections according to key elements that must be clearly defined to enable you to strengthen your brand and create impactful marketing. There's deliberately only so much space on the brand wheel and it is in the shape of a wheel. This helps to keep things succinct and focused on the really key aspects of your brand. The brand wheel is a perfect example of less is more.
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So the key elements that I mentioned on your brand wheel are your brand values. These are the key beliefs and priorities that underpin your brand. The benefits of doing business with you. These need to be hard facts, not just things you think or hope are true. An example of this would be that you are more likely to still be in business after three years if you've been through my group program, Fully Booked Bootcamp.
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Next section is Substantiation. This is where you add in your evidence to prove that the benefits that you've mentioned are real and tangible. Continuing with the same example, here I share that participants in Fully Booked Bootcamp are over 50% more likely than the UK national average to still be in business after three years. That's a fact. It's not a vague claim, and we have the evidence to back it up. Next is your Personality. This is your brand's tone of voice, how you come across in your messaging.
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Then it's onto your communication proposition. And this is about how you position and communicate your brand to consumers. This is usually the only part of your brand wheel that would ever be consumer facing and can often be used as your strapline. For example, my communication proposition is around taking you from overlooked to fully booked. Now also the name of this podcast, your brand essence. This is what's at the very heart of your brand.
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What is your brand's very reason for being, the key thing that you set out to do? My brand essence is just one word, oomph. My goal is always to add oomph to my clients business, making them more visible and growing their bottom line. So where should you begin when it comes to populating your brand wheel? So that you can develop a strong brand based on solid strategy. The first thing you'd need to do is go detective modes.
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If we've met before, then you'll likely have heard me recommend this. In my previous career as a brand strategist in ad agencies, I spent roughly 50% of my time on the road, interviewing people to gather insights for my clients. For example, social campaigns for the government. I spent two years gathering information from parents, carers, youth workers, teachers, and children themselves to discover how our government could reduce antisocial behavior
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amongst children and young people and keep them on a positive path. If you're interested, the findings were that they need at least one and preferably both of a strong role model and an activity that they love. This is where the idea for my hip hop dance company originally came from. But back to you and your business. Going detective mode doesn't have to mean spending two years on the road, gathering insights or conducting primary research, such as face to face interviews with hundreds of people.
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At its simplest, it can simply mean paying more attention. Your customers, potential customers, and previous customers are dropping clues all of the time. They are subtly or not so subtly giving you hints about what they need and want from your business. And if you want to establish a brand that is loved by your ideal clients, then it's your job to pay attention and pick up on these clues. This can involve conducting secondary research.
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using information that already exists, that you're not having to generate, you're simply finding it and using it to your advantage. Or you may want to opt to include some primary research too, where you're generating new insights. I developed and trademarked the Strapline from Overlook to Fully Booted in 2021, based on feedback that came directly from my one-to-one clients who I was listening to. They were telling me that before they worked with me, they didn't have enough clients
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And by the time we finished our work together, they were fully booked. What are your clients and customers telling you that you could use to stand out and position yourself in the marketplace? We'll alternate between solo episodes and guest episodes throughout this season of the podcast. And on my next solo episode, I'll be sharing how you can dig for data and use the insights that you uncover to become more relevant to your ideal clients, making you more in demand.
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to today's episode. Once you're clear about your brand and what you stand for, how you want to be perceived online, it's time to set up your online profiles to be consistent. This means working on your messaging, being very precise about the words you use in every bio, every about section, on every page of your site, in headlines and body copy if you're running ads, and in comments when you're responding to call-outs for support, sharing how you can help on other people's posts and pages.
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Lots of people sell services to help with this, and I do too, so take a look at those if you'd like my help. The link to my website is in the show notes. But you can absolutely start to tackle this on your own too. Here's how to do it. Step one, spend time researching and thinking about how your customers talk about the benefits of working with you, how they describe it, and what they get from your work together. Then start to streamline it into short, snappy pieces of copy that you can share.
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according to character counts, on each of your online platforms and channels. I recommend starting with a strapline, as well as a one-liner bio, a short paragraph or series of bullet point statements, and a slightly longer paragraph for when you're being interviewed in the press or applying to speak on stages. Step two, once you've finessed your wording, remember to keep it in line with the tone of voice you've included in your brand wheel. Then you can start applying it to each of your channels and platforms.
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Make sure you also save each version somewhere handy so that you can roll it out at a moment's notice when required. Remember, the goal is to be extremely clear about what your brand stands for and what people can expect from working with you. Creating a clear brand will avoid any confusion or missed opportunities. Step three, once you've done all of this and are ready to really begin amplifying your brand positioning and messaging online.
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You do need to start thinking about your branding and brand identity too. How your brand is represented visually online. And don't forget offline. Think about brand photography, templates for your social media channels, cover images, grid posts, stories, your website, any icons you want to introduce. Again, you'll see examples of these on my website. The link to the agency site is in the show notes. Your email templates.
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Business cards, if you're still using those, I love them for keeping track of people who I've met at different types of events. Flyers, posters and other traditional or old school marketing methods and materials that can in fact still be very effective today. We'll save that for another episode. For now, I know there's been a lot of information shared in this first episode, so you may want to listen back so that you can make notes and take action. That's what this podcast is all about.
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encouraging you to improve your marketing and business practices following the steps that I use with all of my clients and in my own business to go from overlooked to fully booked. Episodes of my previous podcast, the Audience Growth Podcast, used to be released on a Friday. And so I decided that the new episodes of this new podcast would also be released on a Friday. But that podcast was weekly and this one's made up of seasons, with this first season being 12 weeks long.
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which means that you might need reminders of when to listen. So make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you're notified every time a new episode goes live. During the rest of this season, I'll be walking you through the remaining steps within my bright framework, and you'll be hearing from some truly brilliant guests. I don't accept pitches for my podcast, so everyone you'll hear from has been handpicked to appear because I know that they have incredible value to share.
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So subscribe now and make sure you don't miss a single episode. As a new podcast, reviews are so, so important. So please, if you've enjoyed this episode, take a moment to leave a review on Apple podcasts or a five star rating on Spotify. Doing that will help this podcast get in front of more people. So I would be extremely grateful if you could take a moment to do that. Then once you've left your rating or review, remember to subscribe.
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And I'll be back with you again same time next week with our first very special guest. Any guesses who it might be? You'll have to wait and see. Until then, take care of yourself and keep marketing.