Your report card and game plan 📑

Your quiz results show that you’re a marketing A-student, but your grades could be better in branding. Strong branding is what you’re missing to go from small business to magnetic brand — and truly tap into your potential.

Your business’ rockstar area:

Marketing

Where you could shine brighter:

Branding

(scroll down)

What your results mean

Marketing savviness indicates that you know how to craft content that stops your ideal customer in their tracks and grabs their attention. You have a natural (or learned) intuition for converting strangers to followers and followers to purchasers. Marketing is an indispensable skill for any business owner, so kudos on having that down (although this report will give you a few actionable steps to do even better). 

However, your branding score limits your long-term potential. You see, marketing is short-term, branding is long-term.  Building a strong brand helps you cultivate die-hard fans, not just casual customers. Branding creates connection with your ideal customer by helping you craft a universe they absolutely want to be a part of. This translates to repeat business and passionate brand advocates. With strong branding, you start building a legacy and you secure longevity. Each piece of marketing content then serves 2 purposes: to reach your income goals and to build your brand. You spend less time convincing and more time strengthening your connection with your ideal customer and building a community. 

Your game plan in a nutshell 👇🏾

1

Develop a strong brand strategy.

2

Marketing strategy tweaks — you’re already a marketing rockstar, but you’ll truly unlock the full potential of what social media marketing can do for your business when you align your marketing strategy with your branding.

Before we dive into the details, get familiar with the key concepts

  • A brand is the way that the outside world perceives your business. For example, most people view Apple as an innovative brand and leader in technology and Hermes as a brand with high-quality leather goods made for the wealthy.

    Branding is the decisions businesses make to shape the outside world's perception of their brand.

    Did you know that brands with well-defined and consistent branding have a 91% higher yearly increase in customer retention rate? Branding makes your ideal customer stay loyal to your business over thousands of competitors because they want to be associated with you or agree with your unique perception of the world. It is an element for further differentiation in a competitive world with thousands of great products and services.

  • It’s the foundation of your branding. A brand strategy helps you understand your target audience because you want branding that connects with them; enables you to analyze your competitors and your industry because you want to figure out how you can stand out and learn from best practices; and helps you create a unique brand story that resonates with your audience.

  • Branding is foundational; it's who your business is, and marketing is how it shows up. Think of it as your personality versus how it is expressed when you choose how to dress.

Here’s your detailed game plan ✔️

Brand Strategy

Step 1 — who you serve (if you’re a good marketer, then you already have a good understanding of who your target audience is. You can skip the first step but going back to the basics always helps.)

  • Define your target audience:

    • What are your target audience challenges? Identify at least 3 clear challenges related to your industry.

    • Who is your target audience? Outline their general demographics.

    • Dig deeper — what does their day-to-day look like? What are their aspirations? What other brands do they really like and engage with? What are their values?

    • Create a user persona profile and bring your ideal customer life — give them a name, an age, a gender, a personality, a lifestyle, etc.. based on your research findings.

Step 2 — who serves the same people

  • Analyze your competitors’ branding by taking notes on:

    • Messaging and tone of voice

    • Values

    • Visuals

    • What you can learn

    • How you can stand out 

Step 3 — you

  • Define your brand persona by jotting down the following:

    • Your values (what do you stand for?)

    • Your pillars (what are the elements your brand focuses on?) Hint: these should be aligned with your values

    • Your personality (what keywords can describe your brand’s vibe?)

    • Your brand archetype/s

    • Your tone of voice (how are you going to channel the above into your messaging?)

Step 4 — what makes you unique

  • Get clear on your unique space in the market by crafting a positioning statement based on the 3 above steps.

Marketing

Make sure your marketing communicates who you are as a brand, focus less on product and more on brand by:

  • Considering your ideal customer’s lifestyle, values, aspirations.

    • Tap into their emotions, how can you inspire them or show them that your brand embodies their most important values or help them reach their aspirations?

  • Making sure every piece of content you create aligns with your brand persona.

    • Ask yourself: does this post look, sound, and feel like my brand persona? 

  • Learning to see your brand pillars as content pillars — these are the pillars you’ll always create content around to build your brand.

Okay now that you have a game plan, here are your 3 options to achieve it 👇🏾

Grab the Streamlined Guide to Branding & Social Media Marketing 

Method breakdown

You’ll be guided step-by-step to create a brand strategy, visual brand identity, and social media marketing strategy. It’s essentially your brand strategist in a pocket and was created specifically for entrepreneurs like you, who understand the importance of branding and marketing but cannot hire an agency. The guide simplifies agency-grade strategies into a simple workbook with exercises, real-life examples across various industries, and cheat sheets. 

Pros

Affordable, no overwhelm, no confusion. Just follow the guide step by step and build your dream brand. You’ll use simple software like Canva and Presentation platforms like Keynote or Google Slides to build your brand identity.

Cons

It’s not a quick fix, you’ll have to dive deep into brand building and follow an agency-grade process. It’s simple and easy to understand, but you’ll be reading, writing, and designing. 

or

DIY completely

Method breakdown

Keep your checklist close and open your tabs. Browse the internet to dive into each sub-topic mentioned and utilise AI like Gemini or Chat GPT to help you along the way. 

Pros

Free

Cons

While there are some great free resources out there, most of my clients complain that the free stuff sound great in theory, but in practice leaves them even more confused. If you have time on your hands and you’re good at synthesizing information — this could work.

or

Call up an agency

Method breakdown

You’ll outsource your brand building to an agency, and rest easy knowing that pros are handling it for you.

Pros

Expertly crafted — sit back and relax.

Cons

Time investment (weeks to months), cost (at least $1000), you don’t walk away with any brand building knowledge, making you dependent on the agency for implementation and changes as your brand grows.