In this episode of the Fierce Impact podcast, I talk about why getting clarity on your brand foundations can really help your business to thrive. 

If your brand feels a little murky or a little bit off-kilter it might be because you don’t have complete brand clarity.

Listen in to hear:

• Why brand clarity really matters.
• How it makes decision making in your business easier.
• How brand clarity saves you time in the long run (no more wondering what to write or how to talk about your business.)
• What the brand foundations are that you really need to get clear on.  
  

TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, howdy, and welcome to episode two of the fierce impact podcast.

It is a complete delight to have you listening in. I hope that you’ll find this episode a really useful, thought-provoking one, because I’m going to be talking about why getting crystal clear on your brand foundations can really help your business to thrive. So let’s get straight into it shall we?

When we first start out in business, it’s a really exciting time. We’re often super eager to dive straight in to start finding clients and start getting that money coming in the door. All of that is totally understandable. We’re often really focused as well on getting visible. So getting social media accounts set up, knocking up a quick website, creating a logo and choosing brand colours, all of those really fun things. But as time goes on, and quite often before we know it, we get caught up in the day to day of business. Over time, our brand can start to feel a little bit murky, a little bit wonky, like there’s something missing. But it’s hard to put a finger on it sometimes. And this feeling often comes because we don’t have complete brand clarity.

So thoughts start popping into our mind like:

• What am I really trying to say about my business?
• What am I really trying to achieve?
• What do I actually want for my business and for the people I’m trying to help?
• Who am I trying to speak to because it kind of feels like I’m throwing spaghetti at the wall and no one’s actually responding?

And things like, you know, I feel like I’m blending in I’m I don’t really know, what makes me different to all the other people out there that do what I do. And when you’re writing, why am I finding it so hard to write about the value that I bring.

So these are all thoughts and feelings that my clients have shared with me and have spoken about when they’re trying to unpick what doesn’t feel right about their brand and their message and their copy. It almost always boils down to that lack of brand clarity, they’ve been so busy doing the do in their business that they’ve not actually been able to spend time really articulating the heart of their brand.

Sometimes things in their business have evolved, the business has changed and it just feels really difficult to define. A lot of the time we actually hold this stuff in our heads, but we don’t actually download it and pick it apart and spend time really considering and articulating the foundations of our brand in an intentional way.

So it can get to a certain point where we feel like we’re just sort of drifting along and not making the gains that we want to make in business because we don’t have that clear direction mapped out. That’s why it’s really important to be as clear as possible about your brand foundations.

So spending time intentionally working on it, because it’s these foundations that guide the rest of your business, that breathe life into your brand and that give it direction. And these foundations help you to make strategic decisions in your business. So it can help to make your decision-making process a lot easier. So it’s like a filtering system.

Everything you’re doing and creating for your business can be assessed against your brand foundations, for example, is that opportunity or decision that you need to make about something is it going to support you to move towards your vision.

Will it help you to achieve your purpose your mission? Or is it something that’s actually going to distract you from achieving that? Is it going to pull you away from achieving your vision? Is it something that aligns with your values and the way that you want to do business the way that you want to be seen and perceived?

So you can see that having brand clarity is so important and useful for keeping you really focused and in alignment with what you’re trying to achieve. And let’s face it, you know, the online space is a really noisy place in comparisonitis is rife. There are so many distractions and opportunities and possibilities out there for you. So your brand foundations act like your anchor, they help to center you. So you can make really good decisions that will help your business to grow.

I truly believe that having this brand clarity, these strong brand foundations help you to stay in your own lane and not be worried about what other people are doing or not be pulled away and distracted by other things. Because if you’re like me, and have major shiny object syndrome, and a mind that’s constantly ticking over new ideas, and oh, I could do this, or ooh, I could do that, you know, it’s immensely powerful to be able to come back to this clarity work that you’ve done to keep you on track.

And there’s this old quote by Jeff Bezos, that’s often thrown him out around and you might have heard it. So it says,

Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

Jeff Bezos

So having clarity helps you to intentionally curate the image that people call to mind when they think about your brand. It gives you the opportunity to carefully consider how you want people to perceive you. How you want people to feel when they connect with you, when they come across your business? What do you really want them to take away from the engagement and the experience that they’ve had with you? What do you hope they would be saying to other people about you?

So if I asked you now, how do you want people to feel and think about your brand What would you love them to be saying about you behind your back? Would you be able to clearly articulate that to me?

This is getting into the brand strategy side a little bit, you know, what are the steps that you’re taking, to intentionally make sure that the feelings and experience that people have when they come into contact with your brand align with the perceptions, you really want them to have about your brand.

So you can see that by not having brand clarity, you’re leaving things to chance you’re in unintentionally, and sometimes unknowingly creating a perception rather than consciously curating the perception to the best of your ability, your brand messaging, your brand identity, your copywriting should all be guided by your brand foundations, and they help you to create that perception that you want people to have of your business, of your brand.

So what is it that you actually need to make sure that you’re clear on So what are these brand foundations that I keep on talking about? So I’m going to run through some of these now. So just bear in mind that many of these I can actually fill a whole episode with and you know, I will touch on these in future episodes. So this is just a snapshot of the core elements that are really important to think about for your brand to clarify for your brand.

VISION

So first up is your vision. So what do you want to achieve with your business? What are the long term goals and desires you have? When you think about where you’d like your business to be in say, you know, five or more years, and I know that this can sometimes be a big ask, you know, it’s often really hard to think more than, you know, a year or two ahead of us, okay? So, without being clear on what you actually want to achieve it can end up feeling like you’re sort of meandering around like you’re not actually making any progress because you’ve got nothing to anchor your progress against. If you have that clear vision or if you spend time thinking about your vision, it helps to set the direction of your business.

MISSION

Next up, we’ve got your mission. So your mission statement describes why your business exists, what it does, who it serves, and its purpose, and it’s something that you can create to help guide you every single day. Or if you have staff to really get them inspired to back inspired to keep helping you moving forward in your mission.

VALUES

Next up is your values. And this is actually a biggie for me, because I really believe that you’ve got to be clear on your values, you can weave them through everything that you do, your message and your copy, use them as a guide for decision making. So the values you have and the way that you uphold them in business, also feed into your point of difference as well.

BELIEFS AND PERSPECTIVES

Then you’ve got your beliefs and perspectives. What do you feel really strongly about in business? What fires you up inside about your industry? Do you have different perspectives from others?

Again, this all feeds into your point of difference, which is what will help you to stand out and become more memorable. So are you really clear on what opinions you have about your subject matter?

IDEAL CLIENT

Then we’ve got your ideal client. So this is the one person that you would love, love, love to work with, over and over again. So this is not a broad audience. It’s just one person because when you are creating messages, and when you are writing your copy, you need to be speaking to one person, one reader only. Otherwise, what will happen is your copy and your messaging won’t resonate with anyone.

BRAND POSITIONING

Then we’ve got brand positioning. Earlier in this episode, I talked about intentionally curating the image that people have of your brand, and brand positioning is what can help you to do this. So it means identifying the position that you want to have in the market, and in your ideal clients’ minds. So what’s the mental image you want people to conjure up when they think about you?

For example, and this is a very basic level, do you want to be regarded as a leader? Or maybe as a luxury high-end brand? Or do you want to position yourself as the affordable go-to brand, for example.

BRAND PERSONALITY AND VOICE

Then we’ve got brand personality and voice. So I’ve talked about how you come across in people’s minds and part of curating that perception relates to your brand personality. So what are the personality traits you want your brand to embody?

What’s the tone of voice you’ll use in your communication. And quite often, if you’re a solo business owner, your brand personality and voice have very closely intertwined with your own personality and voice. Not always. But it’s often very typical that that happens, because you are the brand, essentially, then we’ve got your unique value proposition. So your statement that clearly tells people how you solve their problem, the value that you provide.

So in other words, the promise that you’re making to people when they’re working with you, and your point of difference.

BRAND MESSAGING

Then you’ve got your brand messaging, so your core message, and a suite of messages for your brand, and your specific services.

This is where you actually start to bring your brand to life. So everything that I’ve talked about until this point, so that I’ve talked about getting clarity on feeds into your brand messaging, so that you can communicate more effectively, and with more impact, and also with consistency, because repetition and consistency of message is so important if you’re wanting to become memorable and known for something.

So as you can see, there’s a lot that goes into getting brand clarity and creating these solid foundations for your brand. It’s really deep work and I’ll be completely honest, it does take time, but it’s immensely valuable work for you to do.

The really good thing is that once you’ve done this work, you’ll be honestly astounded at how much easier it makes things for you in business. How much less time you’ll spend wondering what to talk about what to write about now that you’ve got all of those core messages that you can draw on and guide your copy.

So I really hope that you found this episode useful. I’d love to know what your thoughts on this topic are. If you’d like to screenshot it and share it on Instagram, and tag me at @hayleymaxwellwrites then I’d love you to do that and let me know what you thought of the episode.

Remember, if you’ve enjoyed it, hit follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode.

Until next time, my friend, go forth and be fierce.

PIN THIS?