Where You're Stuck With Branding & How To Move Forward

I asked on a few Facebook groups what a struggle was for people when they started their branding process and found out that most people feel “stuck” about their visuals and the overall look of their brand.

But I’m fairly confident it’s not that you are stuck. It’s that you aren’t ready to work on visuals yet. But don’t worry - I’m about to help you get ready!

When I start with a client, before anything visual even crosses my mind we talk about goals. Goals of the company, personal goals, target client goals, timeline goals, money goals…the whole thing. It helps me to gain perspective and then help lead the discussion towards figuring out someone’s why. Why they are going into business? From there, we can start to analyze and figure out who they serve and how they serve. Understanding the answers to these question is absolutely essential before anything in the visual department can happen.

When someone reaches out and asks me to build them a site, I get a little nervous, honestly. I don’t want to just build someone a site! I want to create an overall brand and brand identity, which requires more time and effort on both client and my part, but garner more success.

So if you are feeling stuck on your visuals, my question to you is can you answer the following questions:

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WHY

Why are you going into business in the first place? Is your goal to help people with the knowledge you have? Do you have a product that makes someone’s life so much easier? Do you just want to get rich quick?

Knowing your why fixes a lot of issues. First, unrelated to visuals, but still important - determining why you are going into business will allow you to develop a way for measuring success. If you are going into business because you have a product that will transform someone's life for the better by making them more productive, then you can measure your success by how many products you sell and the reviews/testimonials from clients.

But, what I am going to focus on is that determining your why is the first step to defining your target client and defining how you are going to help them. This might take some introspection on  your part, but somewhere tucked away is the whole reason you wanted to start in the first place. Maybe you have a strong connection with a natural lifestyle and want to help companies that create and promote that flourish. Maybe you love weddings and marriage and want to create systems that make it easier for wedding photographers to work. Whatever your original spark was - find that, and hold onto it.

I’ll use myself as an example. You won’t find this in my “about me” or “design” page - and that’s okay. It’s more valuable for you to know this and have it rooted in your mind so that when you are defining your “who” and “how” you don’t forget the original goal and ambition. Why I got started is because I realized I had a skill set that would help women achieve their business goals and give them independence to create their own success, wealth, and happiness. I wanted to offer my knowledge and help grow a community of powerful, smart, and independent women. Plain and simple. 

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WHO

Who do you serve? I’ve struggled with this one in particular. A recent discussion with Devan of DevanDanielle.com taught me something that I think deep down I knew, but resisted following through with. What she taught me was that narrowing down your target client to a specific person doesn’t limit you, it defines you. It makes creating visual content SO much easier when you are working towards attracting one very specific type person. 

So with that lesson, I pass onto you: DIG DEEPER. Don’t say, “millennials” or “online entrepreneurs”. Say: “women, aged 20-35, who started their own business after graduating from college with a less traditional degree, and value hand-made, real leather handbags over knock-offs.” I want to literally be able to envision the target client you describe them so well. In doing so, you will be able to create a brand identity that appeals to this target and promotes you as the expert that they need.

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HOW

Defining how you serve your target customer comes last for me, but should be the easiest of the bunch. How you serve them is basically, what do you do? Do you write amazing copy that will benefit their website and newsletter and bring them more views? Do you implement systems to make their workflows seamless and efficient? Whatever it is that you are aiming to do in your business is your how.

Once you have established answers to WHY, WHO, and HOW you can develop a quick sentence explaining this. Here’s mine: I work with creative individuals and companies to create cohesive and clean branding to better their business and online presence.

How do I serve? I create cohesive and clean branding. Who do I serve? Creative individuals and companies. Why? To better their business and online presence.

Now, in my head, I know that my target client is really women, 20-45, who head up a more organic, creative-based businesses and value the power of social media and quality work. That’s a little long for my one sentence, though, so I try to appeal to that ideal client through my visuals. I use a softer, but more luxurious color palette. I use simple designs that are visually impactful but simple, streamlined, and clean. And then, not necessarily visually-related, but I create blog content that is geared towards a creative-minded person and someone who runs a business. I offer free resources to someone that is starting a business. All of these things are working in tandem to appeal to that woman that I want to work with.

So consider that when you are “stuck” on  your visuals. It might not be that you are stuck at all - it might just be that you aren’t ready to do visuals because you haven’t answered these essential questions first.

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Why I'm On Squarespace (& Put Clients On It, Too!)

I purposely didn't allow myself to read about this topic before sitting down to write, because I know there are a hundred other posts about why people are using Squarespace, and I didn’t want to be influenced by “good reasons” that aren’t necessarily “my reasons.”

First though, a little background about me – I am a freelancer and I have this blogger business, but I also work a traditional 9-5 at a boutique design agency that specializes in web and graphic design. We use Wordpress at work, and while I am mostly on the print side of things, I hear and am involved in a lot of the day-in and day-out struggles, which is why when I get home from that job, and sit down to work on my personal stuff, I breathe a sigh of relief as I log into Squarespace. Here are five reasons I'm obsessed with Squarespace, & put all my clients on it, too!

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IT'S RESPONSIVE

Over half my views each day come from mobile devices. I need the interaction to be easy and seamless for those viewers. While there are many templates on other platforms that are responsive, it is still something that you have to be wary of. You have to put time and energy into it, test things, adjust things, re-test things when your plugins update, etc. That sounds tedious. I’m too busy for tedious, y’all. Starting a business, running a blog, planning webinars, being involved on social media… there is no time to be constantly stressed about my site working on mobile devices, and then being in a panic when something updates and breaks the whole code.

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IT'S BEAUTIFUL

I have yet to see a Squarespace site that is just ugly. It’s probably harder to make a bad looking Squarespace site than it is to make a good looking one. The bones that they provide you with in their themes are extraordinarily well designed. I might be a traditionalist – but grid systems just work. They always have. It’s pleasing to the viewer, it’s professional, and it’s simple. I don’t value design that pulls out all these crazy tricks, I value design that has balance and is cohesive and effective. Squarespace makes creating that so much easier.

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IT WORKS

At my 9-5 this happens more often than you would think – wordpress plugins update and all the sudden your site went from working great to a heaping mess. Usually the fix isn’t that hard or drastic, but it’s still time you have to take out of your day to figure out – and if you aren’t savvy, it’s time you have to pay someone else to figure out. 

The thing is, to make Wordpress function the way you want, chances are you are gong to use plugins. And plugins are risky – you are trusting some other developer, they are going to do updates, they are going to slow your site down, and they are going to interfere with other code. I don’t want to have to think about any of this once I am “done” designing my site.

With the exception of some word choice changes, the bones of my site haven’t changed since I created it. It’s worked seamlessly, flawlessly, on all devices, across all platforms, and it natively does every little thing I can think of.  I don’t have to be concerned with the idea of plugins to “make things better” because things are already amazing.

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IT HAS EXCELLENT SUPPORT

Any time I have a question about Squarespace I get a direct answer in less than 24 hours. I get personalized emails that go into explicit details, link to videos and other articles that might help, and direct contact information if the support team needs to hear back from me for some reason.

I’ve even had success in the forums that Squarespace offers. I’ve asked questions about the best place to enter custom code, about differences between templates, and a few other things, and there are swarms of people just waiting around ready to offer their expertise. It’s a great tool to have at your disposal, and very effective.

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IT'S INTUITIVE

At some point, you finish designing the site and pass it over to the client. This is scary for both you and the client. All of my clients have expressed a want for it “to just be easy” when it comes to updating the blog, or changing out photos in a gallery, or prices, etc. With Wordpress I often feel like I’m very confusing when I try to explain to a client that each product on a product page is really a blog post…? When I used to use Wordpress it just felt like I was constantly “rigging” things and then to turn around and explain that to someone who doesn’t understand (or want to understand) it became extremely confusing.

When I wrap a project now, and do a quick tutorial on using Squarespace, do you know what happens? “Oh! That’s easy.” Or “That makes sense!” Do you know what a relief that is to hear? Such a relief! I no longer feel like I am abandoning a client in the great abyss and hoping they figure it out – we part on terms of positivity and comfort and confidence! Phew!

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What are some features you love about Squarespace? Let me know in the comments below! I'm constantly discovering more and more that I love about it, so I'd love to see some new things! Also - I've got some super exciting news coming up soon, so keep checking back for that!

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