The First Steps To Creating Your Brand Identity

This past weekend I co-hosted a webinar/workshop and talked about inspiration boards and my process with clients. If you haven’t heard of an inspiration board, it’s generally the first step to creating the visuals of your branding. It is a collage of images that work together and give ideas about a feeling, vibe, colors, textures, typography, and so on, in regards to what we are going to create for your visual identity. I wanted to share some of that information with you today on the blog, so here are the three steps to my inspiration board process.

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DEFINE KEY WORDS + FEELINGS

If you’ve read my blog before, you know I put a lot of emphasis on the foundational pieces of branding long before we move into visuals. This is true in my client process, too. We’ve already gone through questionnaires and spent some time talking about target clients, overall goals, and paths to getting there. I’ve already asked my client to consider and come up for 3-5 words that they hope describe their business/branding and 3-5 words that they hope potential customers would use in describing their business/branding.

Those words are very valuable pieces of information – they are the biggest and best tool I have to work off of, honestly. If we want “soft and romantic” versus “pops of color and vibrant” I need to know. Those evoke very different visuals and directions. Now, those words are supported by the images that come later on, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Words that are as precise and descriptive as possible are best. Here are some examples, just to get you thinking: strong, streamlined, soft, airy, detailed, clean, bright, or somber. Think about those words and how they immediately put images into your head. Those are the kind of words to keep in mind while moving forward into creating visuals.

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GET PINNIN’

This part of the process is pretty standard across the designers I know of. Pinterest is an amazing tool for seeing a lot of images at once, and that is exactly what we need to do next. So, I create a secret Pinterest board and invite a client to pin on it. The hope is that they pin at least 15-20 images that are visually appealing to them so that I can take those and create the actual collage.

There are a couple of things to consider with this step. First, avoid pinning any other logos or brand boards. These are far too distracting and will plant seeds in your mind that only copying will ‘fix.’ We obviously aren’t going to copy someone else’s logo or brand boards, so better to just avoid that entirely.

Also, I tell clients to pin anything and everything. It doesn’t matter if it “has nothing to do with your business” or feels completely unconnected. I just want to see styles, lines, colors, feelings, etc. Remember when I said those words were support by the images earlier? Here’s what I meant by that: you might say something like “rustic” or “chic” but the pictures support what that really means to you. Because your version of “chic” might be different than mine, right? So you said these words earlier, which are very important and helpful to me, but now I also get to see what you really meant by those words through the images you choose.

The other thing I like to ask my clients to do is consider every image they pin through the eyes of their newly defined target audience or client. Think about each picture deliberately and think, “Okay, I liked this picture of xyz (jewelry, living rooms, food, etc.) Would it appeal to my target audience in some way? Would they like the colors, the style, the composition, etc.?” Having that mental checklist is valuable because again we are getting in the head of your target audience, which is always beneficial, and trying to create visuals that appeal to them.

If you are struggling to find pins, my recommendation is to first start with your regular Pinterest boards. Since you’ve already pinned these images, chances are they are visually appealing to you. If you still need more after combing through your boards, you can search related areas to your industry. So if you are a photographer, you could look up wedding photography. If you are a nutritionist, maybe look up food images. If you work with children, you could look up playroom interior designs, or toys. I also recommend letting your search evolve naturally. So in the same way that you can make a mind map and start to expand off of one original word or idea, do that with your images. Maybe you start by pinning images of flowers, but if that evolves into window boxes, windows, then stain glass windows… let it! Even if your business has nothing to do with stain glass windows, it’s still a huge visual clue to what you like as far as color, style, and feel.

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USE PHOTOSHOP TEMPLATE

Once a client feels they have successfully pinned enough images to work with, I move into creating the actual collage or board.  I go through the kind of tedious task of pulling all the images from Pinterest into a folder within my client folder and then again into Photoshop.

I then spend time collaging the images using clipping masks in Photoshop. The goal is to whittle down the 15-20 images to 6-7 images that best work together and start to create a cohesive feeling and look. From those images I can begin to pull a color story too, which will greatly inspire the color palette moving forward.

Some of the best images to use, and most helpful, are ones that contain typography. Something like an inspirational quote in a very curly, cursive font will influence logo directions. Something more clean and modern will push us in a different direction. I also love pictures with patterns or illustrations, because this clues me into branding choices down the road.

I send the client a copy to review and make sure they are happy with the overall feeling before moving forward. This collage then becomes what I use as reference throughout the rest of the project, from logos, to color palettes, to stylistic choices on collateral, and so on. It plays a much larger role than “just looking pretty.”

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4 Ways To Figure Out What Your Target Client Really Needs

Earlier this week we talked about your “how” and making sure it offers a specific solution. But, as promised, today we are going to talk about figuring out what your target client actually needs solved. The thing is, we don’t want to spend time figuring out the perfect thing we want to offer and have no one actually buy it. There needs to be an expressed interest or need for your product or service, so by doing a little research, you can figure out what is a solution to your target client’s pain points. This goes for anything – your services, your products, your courses, your free products, etc.

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FACEBOOK GROUPS

I know everyone loves Pinterest and Instagram, and I do too, but I am still holding onto the value of Facebook groups for business. Facebook groups are easy research, because people use them to ask questions all the time. The hardest thing I found with Facebook groups was finding the ones where my target client hung out.  Eventually, I resorted to a Pinterest search for “Facebook groups for online business owners” (or something similar) and found a ton of articles pointing me towards ones to join. So that is my recommendation to you – spend a little time finding where your people are, jump in, and start reading their questions, struggles, and pain points. Then begin to cater your offerings to answer or fix some of those issues.

Just a disclaimer here, remember that YOU have to do the work once you get a client. Make sure your offer not only serves your target client, but also is something you want to do and are capable of doing!

If you’re in Facebook groups and don’t see these sorts of things come up, check what day you are allowed to post polls/questions and ask people in there questions. I see this all the time! People will ask things like, “are you more interested in XYZ?” or “What would you see more valuable a package with XY or a package with YZ?” Now I am not saying to be spammy or “me-me-me” all the time, because that turns people off, but you can definitely reach out to ask the masses.

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ASK YOUR SUBSCRIBERS

There are a ton of beneficial features to having an email list and subscribers, but one of the best is that you have a resource available to you as a way to communicate with your audience. So, for example, when someone joins my list my welcome email asks them to let me know what areas in branding they feel uneasy about or want to talk more about. Granted, not everyone responds, but those that do have fueled the topics for my newsletter, for my blog posts, and other offerings.

Some people do this as a survey they send out, just to get feedback and ideas generated. That’s a great way to go about it, too. I haven’t done a survey at this point, because it doesn’t really fit my voice/content strategy, but I might do one in the future. For now, I just work on building relationships with my subscribers and making the conversation feel open and accessible – a) because I genuinely do like talking to people and curious about their business endeavors and b) it helps me to formulate what to talk/help with.

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RESEARCH SIMILAR TOPICS

Lately I’ve started researching areas where people struggle in fields related to branding – and see if there’s a solution that I can offer.

This might sound confusing – here’s an example. If someone says, “I’m struggling to bring in business” that might be a business-related problem, but it could also be a branding-related problem and that’s where I come in. So if you know your target audience and you’re stalking them (yes, CREEPY!) on social media or their blogs or wherever and they are expressing hang-ups that they are having, see if there’s a way that your solution might help. Maybe you’re a virtual assistant and you see people saying things like “I spend so much time in my inbox!” They might think they need a better email tool, a more organized approach to their day, maybe a coach – but if you could present your skills as a VA in a way that says “I know you don’t want to spend all day your inbox – I can help you manage that and get it under control!” Then you’ve offered them the solution they never even realized was an option.

This helps you also start to get a grasp on exactly how your target client speaks about their struggles so that you can respond accordingly. So I might say “I offer branding” but that doesn’t tell my target audience anything they want to hear. Instead I say “you’re going to stand out, you’re going to be influential, you’re going to be seen as an authority” which are all things that I’ve read, researched, and heard my target client wish they had (that I am capable of offering).

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CHECK RELATED OFFERING’S REVIEWS

I can’t take full credit for this idea – it actually was something I learned from a Mariah Coz* course at some point along the way. Basically I spend some time looking up books about branding, courses, workshops, etc. and I see where people felt they needed more specific help. So something someone might comment is that they “loved the end result but want to make sure they are reaching their target client” – so then I know to make sure I include a huge emphasis on this part of branding and use that as a selling feature or way to stand out.

Again, this takes work and a little bit of stalker tendencies, but it’s worth it for the intel and ability to cater your solutions to your audience or potential clients. You can see what things work and where they fall short, so you can adjust your own offering accordingly.

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Other ways that you can start to research your target client and see where they express a direct need for something you might be able to offer – checking out related hashtags on social media, checking out quora or reddit, simply typing things into Google and seeing what populates in the dropdown, or ask questions in your blog (for them to comment answers). There are a lot of ways you can determine your business success by skipping over that part where you wonder if something is going to work or going to sell. There’s a sweet spot, where you are doing something you love and someone benefits from it – and that’s the goal to figure out. Let me know in the comments below how you decided on your offerings, I’d love to know!

If you think you need some more detailed help with things like figuring out your target audience and how can you serve them, check out my new e-book Branding 101: Building Your Base. It's currently in pre-sale now, so lock in the best price by clicking below!

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* That link is an affiliate link to the Femtrepreneur Course landing page - basically the courses that will change your life and business. I wouldn't recommend Mariah if I didn't think she was ah-maz-ing.