Your report card and game plan 📑
Your business is currently in need of significant improvement in both branding and marketing. Your quiz results indicate that there's work to be done to establish a solid brand foundation and effectively reach your target audience.
Where you could shine brighter:
Branding + Marketing
Your rockstar areas:
Read your report to become a rockstar in no time.
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What your results mean
Branding serves as the bedrock of your business's identity and how it's perceived in the market. Without a clear brand strategy, you’ll find it difficult to stand out from competitors and create meaningful connections with your dream customer. Also, weak marketing means missed opportunities to promote your brand and reach potential customers.
To become competitive and reach your goals, you absolutely need to prioritize both branding and marketing development. By focusing on these two key areas, you’ll increase your brand's visibility, resonate better with your target audience, and ultimately drive growth.
Your game plan in a nutshell 👇🏾
1
Dive deep into audience analysis to grasp your target audience's needs, preferences, and behaviors thoroughly.
2
Craft a comprehensive brand strategy to define your values, personality, and unique selling propositions.
3
Create a rock solid marketing strategy to better reach and engage with your target audience.
Before we dive into the details, get familiar with the key concepts
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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.
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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.
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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 ✔️
Audience & Branding
Step 1: Audience Analysis
Define your target audience by exploring these questions:
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 — Competitor Analysis
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 — Branding Development
Define the following elements based on step 1, step 2, and your unique purpose:
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?)
Your mission/vision/promise/tagline/positioning statement
Your mood board and visual identity (logos, color palette, typography, photography direction)
Marketing
There is no short-cut around this one — get clear on basic marketing principles (eg. The rule of 7 and buyer psychology) for small businesses on social media.
Based on those principles, create a repeatable system you can use to generate good and strategic content consistently
Make sure you’re only focusing on one to two social media platforms at a time — once you master them, you’ll be able to expand (where does your target audience hang out most?)
Maintain consistency across all platforms to truly build your brand. Every piece of content should reflect your personality and tone of voice both in messaging and visually, strengthening brand recall and loyalty
Measure the success of your marketing efforts after a month by looking at key performance indicators in your social media analytics
Look at individual posts that have succeeded and double down
Look at individual posts that have performed poorly and learn from them
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 a 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 guide 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. Since you’ve scored high in both branding and marketing, this could be easy for you.
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.