Successful Entrepreneurs Know: Brand Before Business – or Bust!

Photo by pmv chamara on Unsplash You had so much energy and joie de vivre when you launched your business. This morning, you surf the classifieds to find a j.o.b.. The wind is gone; your sails are flaccid. You had a good idea. You gave it the college try. Wait. As a business coach and content expert, I’m going to ask you the right question: What is your brand identity? Huh? You heard me. You know what product or products you’re hawking. Or what services you provide. You set up the website. Got the fancy digital business card. Paid Mark Zuckerberg for social media posts. You did SEO. You did everything right. And most importantly, you are an expert in your field. Or your product is beautiful, useful, fabulous. You should be a billionaire by now. Nope. You know why? Because you didn’t work on your brand identity first. Rush to Failure I’ve been an entrepreneur for over thirty years, have six successful ventures behind me, and three operating now. I have coached hundreds of entrepreneurs. Almost every new business rushes to the market without knowing the market and how they fit in the market! This is a simple matter. Basic communication. The meaning of any communication – marketing included – rests with the person listening. Not with you. Not with the business. But with the consumer. So, you must learn to talk to that person in a way that person expects and wants. And they have to want to listen to you. Don’t bother printing business cards or paying for a year of website hosting until you know who you are, who your customers are, and who you need to be to engage those customers in conversation. Marketing gurus call this step: Branding. What is Branding? Branding is the communication choices that you make to represent your brand. Your brand is the personality you choose to connect effectively with your audience’s values, attitudes, and emotions. Branding differentiates you from competitors, nurtures recognition, enhances value and customer relationships, and ensures create cohesion. Which company would associate with this image: Disney or Harley Davidson? (Open Source Image from WebstockReview.net) That’s obvious. Sure. But every company strives – or should strive – for those powerful associations. You know who they are – and you know, as a consumer, if you like it, want to be associated with it, or want to buy from them. Some of this, you already know – but you were so excited to make money that you jumped and figured you would do all that branding stuff later. Whoops. No worries. Spilt milk and more cliches. We’re human. You can fix this! In 2016, I started my photography side-hustle. For a while, clients dripped in through referrals… but I wanted the business to be more than a side-hustle. So, I launched a website, created business cards, blah, blah. And nothing. Crickets. More cliches. Ready? Physician heal thyself. I know Branding Before Business. I’ve advised every client to do just that. But I rushed to market and failed. No matter the industry, branding is the key to business success. Every business needs a brand identity: the design elements, word choice, color scheme – even the business name – to attract the target consumer. Branding includes personal branding, corporate branding, product or service branding… Every communication that originates from your business should be cohesive to that brand choice. Your business has seven seconds to make that first impression. To stand out in the crowd. To capture your target customer or client. Or that consumer will swipe and forget you. You must ensure you are speaking your special person’s language. Just like you are about to do, I grew my business with solid branding. What to Do? Branding takes effort – which is why most budding entrepreneurs skip it. Consider simple communication: You have to craft what you say to help the listener understand you. If you use slang with grandma, she’ll frown. If you use formal language with friends, they’ll laugh at you. It’s not… another cliche… rocket science. But it is vital. Step 1: Be Authentic You need to know who you are and what values you hold. I don’t state that lightly. What’s your personal brand? Are you a person of integrity? Are you fun? Are you serious? Are you down-to-earth or posh? What are your priorities? What needs are important to you? When branding my photography business, I took a weekend and seriously examined who I am as an artist. My photos are not light and bright. I prefer action and capturing candid moments. I detest canned, cute poses. Detest. I’m edgy. Honest. Raw. Realizing this bothered me. All the other local photographers were light and bright and had these cute, pretty images. They were making money. I was scared. But I forged ahead. I can’t be cute and soft. It’s not me. And selling it would be impossible for me. List your values. Note your attitudes on social topics. Make a list of brands you admire – and consider why you admire them. Step 2: Identify Your Customer or Client Persona Who’s buying your product or choosing your service? This is an important step. Once you have clearly defined your product or service, answer these questions: Here’s my abridged client profile: My ideal client is a male or female GenX who enjoys being different. They listen to alternative music. They don’t have that 9-5 corporate job. They like adventure and take risks. They are entrepreneurs or have side-hustles. Top middle class. Very authentic. Anti-establishment. They rage against authority and don’t vote the party ticket. They are self-educated or traditionally educated but know a degree is what you do with it (cognitively complex). They are self-sufficient and self-made. They care about personal freedom. They don’t care about social media unless it’s memes or satire. They enjoy life and choose excitement over the popular. They respect authenticity and honesty. They buy lingerie and sex toys, sports equipment, motorcycles, have high

Don’t Panic Post Everywhere: The Why of Social Media Management

Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash For so many of my clients, primarily Gen X entrepreneurs, posting on social media is a source of panic. They are aware they should be, have to, need to, to keep up with their competitors. But doing so is daunting, time consuming, and confusing. Let me clear up some misconceptions, give you assurances, and teach you a few key points so you can handle your social media marketing with confidence! Social Media is One Channel Communication requires the sending of a message across a channel. For any company, marketing channels are many and varied. The main categories are three: voice (face-to-face, telephone), print (periodicals, circulars, billboards, posters and fliers, brochures, business cards), and digital (website, email, SMS/text, internet ads and posts). Each channel has its own challenges – and digital can be the most daunting! For many entrepreneurs who grew up in a non-digital environment, the concept of posting on social media induces anxiety. First, they’re not sure what message to send. Second, they aren’t tech savvy. And third, they don’t have time to keep up with it. So, they ask why do they need to use it at all. Why Social Media? Understand that our business culture has shifted to a relationship model. Consumers no longer want to be talked at: They eschew print ads, radio ads – Crazy Eddie screaming at them! They want to talk to the business. They want to feel part of a team. Our ever identity-focused culture demands businesses acknowledge the consumer as a unique person. Social media facilitates that connection. You post an ad for your new widget. Or you post a sale notice. Great! But it should not stop there. You must rethink your approach to marketing. This is not 1975. You are thinking you can post it and the customers will burst down the doors, credit cards ready! Nope. Social media posting is not a spray and pray activity. You can’t randomly share posts you like and think that’s enough to establish credibility and qualify as a social media goddess. No. Why bother at all? When you post that ad to social media, you must invite likes, follows, shares, and feedback. If you are posting without a plan, you are truly wasting your time. And, contemporaneously, communicating to the market that you don’t know what you are doing, do not understand modern culture, and don’t care about them. Without getting too professorish, communication is not one way. In fact, communication theorists once thought of communication as a one-way exchange, akin to a photograph. But that’s not reality. Communication is more like a movie or video: Person One sends a message across a channel to Person Two. Person Two then responds across the channel with feedback to Person One. And so it goes. Every effort you make on social media should facilitate that transaction. The Challenge “It’s too much,” my client, who I will call Larry, told me recently. “I’m supposed to create this ad or video or blog or whatever, figure out how to get it up there, track how well it does, answer everyone who comments or asks a question – and I’m supposed to do this daily? I’m running my business. I don’t have time. TikTok videos. Creating a YouTube page and videos? What the hell are Reels, anyway? And Facebook and Pinterest. I just about mastered posting an article a year on LinkedIn – and then my friend said I should be Tweeting daily. Are you serious? But I tried and was on the computer all day instead of selling my widgets. Who does that help? Sure, I got twenty likes and lost three days of sales. The whole thing is stupid and a waste of time.” Larry is not alone. To those of us who grew up with radio ads and newspapers, with salespeople at our door selling shoes or vacuums, the social media thing is too foreign. The mastery is evasive – and with time so precious, most entrepreneurs hire some social media guru to handle all of it only to find the dude or chick disappears with the entrepreneur’s $3,000! One of my friends hired a web developer to create the website and set up and manage social media. After fourteen months, her business still does not have the website. She’s at her wit’s end: “I’m relying on our Google and Yelp listings. The website lady keeps telling me she’s almost done. I just don’t have time for this!” As an entrepreneur, you must pick your battles and spread your dollars for maximum return. You may need an expert to create your website. But your social media? You can set that up and run it in a short time with an exacting effort. Here are your steps! Where? What Social Accounts You Need As a sophisticated business owner, you wrote your business plan and your marketing plan. So, you’ve done your research and described your customer or client persona. The persona is a description of your ideal customer or client. It includes demographic and personality data. Who is this person? Age, gender, marital and family status, economic status, education level, and so on. You know what this person values. Do they care about religion? Their country? Family and friends? You know where they donate their time and to whom they make political contributions. What music and movies they like? What they wear. Where they vacation. You know their temperament and how they satisfy their needs and wants. You get the idea. You should also discover what social media your ideal client prefers. Are they on YouTube watching home improvement videos? Do they post vacation images on Instagram? Do they use Facebook daily? Weekly? Never? Much of this depends, generally, into which generation your ideal client or customer falls. Socio-economic status and education level is also important. Do some research and figure out where they are. Let’s take a Gen X baseball fan. You will find him on the