16th Ave Creative Studio

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#16: Creating a Magnetic Brand: The 6 Key Elements

Samantha Bell
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Branding to Elevate to Your Online Business

Branding goes far beyond just logos and colours. This episode delves deep into the art of crafting a powerful brand identity that resonates with your audience. Discover how strategic branding can elevate your coaching or online service business to new heights.

We explore the essential elements of a successful brand, including your unique brand story, the psychology of typography and colour selection, the significance of imagery and iconography, and the intricacies of logo design. Learn how to create a lasting impression on your target audience and establish yourself as an industry leader.

Unlock the secrets of consistent branding with brand guidelines that ensure your message remains clear and cohesive as your business evolves. With the right branding strategy, you'll not only connect with your audience's hearts and minds but also strengthen your overall brand image, setting the stage for long-term growth.

Don't miss this opportunity to harness the full potential of your brand. Start building a magnetic brand that reflects your personality, values, and expertise, ultimately paving the way for the brilliant business and beautiful life of your dreams.

Main Points

0:04 The Importance of Branding in Business

3:51 Brand story and audience connection

5:05 Discovering The Vision for Your Brand

8:44 Typography in Branding

11:38 Colour Psychology in Branding

15:46 Imagery and iconography in branding

18:45 Visual Branding and Logo Design Power

19:52 Creating a Memorable Logo

23:10 Brand Guidelines for Consistency

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Hi, I’m Samantha Bell

I’m all about helping you build the business – and life – you’ve always wanted.

Listen in for the simple, actionable strategies, mindset shifts, and practices you need to make your business thrive. Plus, a healthy dose of self-care, health, and wellness so you can live the life you absolutely adore while building your beautiful business.

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Transcription

00:04

Welcome to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, where we share simple, actionable strategies plus the mindset and wellness practices you need to build the business and life you love. Head to 16thavecreative.com/playbook and download your free guide to design the business and life you deserve today. I'm your host, Samantha Bell, and this is the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast. Are you ready for the business and life of your dreams? Let's get started. Are you wondering what all the fuss about branding is? After all, isn't it just a couple of fonts and a logo? Nope, branding is so much more than that. If you're ready to uplevel your coaching or online service business and you want to attract more clients and charge premium prices for your expertise, branding will help you achieve that. So, listen in, because I'm about to not only drop some truth bombs on the importance of branding, but explain what all the elements of your brand are, why you need them and how to create them. Before I get into all things branding, I wanted to talk to those of you who are stuck in your nine to five job and have been dreaming about leaving the corporate hustle to start up your own business, but it feels like it will never happen. If that sounds like you, if you're feeling stuck in your job, dreaming of doing more with your life, wondering if it's possible, I'm here to tell you it is possible. You can do this. There is a way. All you need is a plan. I have the plan for you. It is the nine to five exit plan, and it will give you the practical advice, the financial thoughts and the strategy to consider, and it will help you map out your freedom in just three hours. So stop dreaming and start doing. There is a better way of doing life and it's waiting for you. Go to 16thavecreative.com/9-5-exit-plan and download your free nine to five exit plan today and map out your freedom in just three hours. Now let's get into branding.

02:19

Branding is not just about designing a fancy logo or picking out pretty colours for your website. It's about creating a unique identity for your brand that resonates with your target audience. Your brand is your essence, is your soul poured into pixels. So it's way more than just a logo. It's the soul of your business that can help create an emotional thread connecting you to your audience; whether you're just starting out or giving your business a complete overhaul, understanding the core elements of brand design will help you create elements of your business that are often the missing link when trying to connect and grow your audience and your client list. Your brand is your promise to your customers about who you are, what you stand for and the value you provide. In a service-based or coaching business, your brand is even more critical because you're selling an intentional product. You're selling your knowledge and skills and expertise. You're not providing them with something that they can pick up and take home. You're giving them something they must imagine and feel, and that makes developing a trusted brand identity for your business a key component in building credibility in you and your services and creating an instant method of connecting non-verbally with people. Your clients need to trust you. They need to feel confident that you can solve their problems or help them achieve their goals.

03:51. Brand Story and Audience Connection

Before you can even get into the design elements, the first place to start is discovering what makes your heart tick and why your audience should care about what you do. So take some time to think about the core values behind your mission. What's your story? Why do you do what you do? And then think about your potential clients. What do they dream about and desire in their hearts, what scares them or could potentially hold them back from working with you, and how can your brand identity speak to their hearts? I talk so much about heart connection, and in the last episode of the podcast number 15, I chatted about building your business using hope in your sales and messaging, which is all intertwined in touching people's hearts. By getting crystal clear on who you are, who you serve, why you do what you do, and then matching that with the needs and wants of your perfect fit clients, you're more likely to create a brand for your business that is so powerful and so instantly recognisable that people would walk over hot coals to work with you and are likely to be banging down your door.

05:05 Discovering the Vision for Your Brand

In general, there are six main elements in brand design to consider for your coaching or your service-based business. First, we've already spoken about, and that's your brand story. It's all those pieces I asked you to think about. About you and about your clients. You must start there. Think of your branding in the same way you do when designing services or packages. You always start with the who, the what and the why. It's the same for your brand design. So, before you get into the design elements, start working on your vision, your vision for your brand, and this is where you really start to brainstorm the ideas for the look and the feel, the aesthetics of your brand.

05:47

It's quite a lengthy process unless, of course, you have a super clear vision already. But if you're like most people, it can get really confusing because you like so many different styles, you like different colours, you have like different moods, which makes it really confusing. One day, you want the coastal relaxed feel, and the next day, you're feeling like Lady Gaga, and I get it. As humans, we're led by our emotions, and how you're feeling on a particular day can dramatically influence the decisions that you make. Now a tip to not get caught up and confused by your ever-changing emotions is to take you out of the equation.

06:26

Remember, you must be aligned to everything you do in your business, everything you create, and it has to be a unique reflection of you. But the purpose is to connect with your audience. So take yourself out of the equation and do some market research. Talk to current and previous clients, talk to prospective clients, have a look at your competitors and what types of people or businesses follow them and what they like, and then get all that information together. When you gather this information, you'll be able to analyse all this precious data and relate it back to your business. You might be in full Lady Gaga mode, but your clients might be vibing more with Lua Lua, which means if your brand aesthetic is too bold, you're not going to attract the right people, you're going to be off-brand, you're not going to connect.

07:19

Once you have all the information about your clients, you can then start to play around with visual inspiration. Simply start a Pinterest board, search out different colour palettes, images, tones, even aspects of other websites that you like. Take snapshots of them and think about all the feelings that you feel, all the emotions that are invoked by these elements, and be specific, even down to different type fonts that appeal to you. Take photos of them, put them on your Pinterest board, sift through them all, and then you're going to have a much clearer idea of what resonates with you, and then you can connect it and see if it's going to resonate with your audience. And that is the beginning of your design process. Getting all these elements together and getting the overall big view picture. Then you're going to narrow it down and refine it. You're going to start considering your colour palette, your topography logo, type your imagery icons and finally pull it together with your brand guidelines. Most people like to start with their logo, but that's going to be your undoing. It's going to be more difficult to create a logo if you don't get these other things sorted out first. I'm going to start with your typography, because that sort of comes before designing your logo, because it's a part of your logo. So hang in there, be patient. We'll get to the logo soon.

08:44 Typography in Branding

Again, while typography may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of your brand identity, it does play a crucial role in creating your brand. Topography is the design and arrangement of typefaces or fonts and the use of different font styles and sizes and colours in your whole business. It's important because it helps create a hierarchy that draws the viewer's attention to key elements, while reinforcing your brand personality and values through these visual elements. When choosing the right fonts for your brand, make sure to go back to your vision board and also to think about your brand's tone, style and your clients. Different font styles create different emotions and they will affect how people perceive your brand. Like a sans-serif font, it's often associated with being modern, with being simple, with being clear, while a serif font is more associated with tradition, sophistication, and elegance. If you're going for a really edgy brand and you choose a serif font, there's going to be a disconnect because it's not sending the right message to the people. So you may love it, but it's off-brand. So that's why you need to consider the psychology behind typefaces.

10:05

One thing is creating a hierarchy of fonts. It actually gives your brand that consistent, recognizable identity. When planning your hierarchy, what you're going to do is select one font for all of your headlines and titles, another font for your subheadings and then a third font for your body text. That's your hierarchy and that helps, again, draw people's visuals, draw their attention to where you want them to go. So you'll use headings for particular things, you'll use body text for other things and then you use your subheading for other things, depending on the importance of what you're putting in front of people. All these fonts, they need to work in harmony together and not fight each other. You can't you know, you can have opposing fonts, but they need to also work harmoniously together. Otherwise, you'll create a really uncomfortable visual for your clients and you will create a disconnect in doing so. Another thing to consider is your font types should also be able to be read really easily, no matter where they're looked at. So, whether it's online or in print, make sure they're clear and easy to read and, once you've chosen your hierarchy of fonts, use it everywhere and be consistent. Use it on your website, in your social media, in any print material, everywhere you have a presence, use these fonts and none others. Doing this will create a really cohesive brand identity and increase your recognition.

11:38 Colour Psychology in Branding

The next thing is colour. No, we're not at designing your logo yet. Colour plays a really significant role in your brand identity. It really has the power to evoke emotions and influence customer behaviour, and it creates a really consistent, recognizable look and feel across your entire business. Choosing the right colour combinations will mean your business overcomes other hurdles to connecting with your perfect fit clients. So it's important to take the time to get this right when choosing the right colours for your brand. Again, go back to who your clients are and what you're trying to create overall, and marry all that information together with some colour psychology and you will have a colour palette your clients will be immediately drawn to. Because, just like with the typefaces, different colours evoke different emotions and can affect how people perceive your brand.

12:39

For example, blue communicates calm, trust, reliability, and professionalism, whereas red evokes feelings and emotions of passion, energy and excitement. You can blend the two. I have I've got a variation of red and blue on my website because I'm instilling feelings of both calmness and reliability and trust, but also melded with excitement and passion and energy. I want the two married together because that's my brand. Understanding the psychology behind colour can help you make very smart choices in your colour selection and using colours strategically to influence client perceptions and help to build your brand's recognition.

13:24

To create a cohesive colour palette for all your branding materials, you start with choosing one primary colour that best represents your brand identity, and this one colour is going to be the most prominent and it's going to serve as the foundation for your entire colour scheme. Then you want to choose two or three, maybe four, complementary colours, no more than four, so you want an overall palette of five colours. That's important because for websites, if you have more than five colours, it slows down your website load times, so that's important to note. While some brand designers can get carried away choosing lots of colours, variations of the same tone and all the rest that can actually be detrimental to your website. So a designer who understands website SEO and website load times will know not to have more than five colours on your website. Really important to note. Yeah, you've chosen your main primary colour.

14:22

You need to then choose some complementary colours that are going to work well together with that colour. You can have light and shade. You can have opposing colours to create a bit of an interest and a little bit of friction, but it needs to work together, not be so opposing. For example, you would not put warm colours with cool colours because they don't blend well and they won't give a good feeling to people. Also, remember that you're going to be using these colours across your entire business on your website, in your socials, in your emails and in print form at some stage. So you want to make sure that the colours you choose are web-friendly and print-friendly. And also, do not forget the visually impaired, because you'll have visually impaired engaging with your content and you don't want to create unnecessary barriers for them. For example, you wouldn't put white against a beige background because it's so hard to read, not just for visually impaired, but for non-impaired readers as well. Just consider all those aspects. That's an important part of selecting the right colours. Choose the right colours and then use them consistently everywhere across your business, and that's going to create a really cohesive, memorable brand identity that resonates with your target audience.

15:46 Imagery and Iconography in Branding

Now, I'm still not at logo design. You will have to be patient. Because you're still forming the basis of your branding, the next thing to consider is your imagery throughout your business. Remember keeping your clients in mind. Humans actually process visuals about 60,000 times faster than text, and using visuals can help memory recall by about 80 percent, which makes choosing the right images for your business an integral part of your brand identity. Don't just randomly slap on a few images and that you think are pretty, because you will undo all the hard work you've done in selecting your fonts and your colour palette.

16:26

When you're choosing your images (I’m speaking to stock imagery here, because everyone does use stock imagery) choose stock imagery from the one photographer. Don't randomly select photos from multiple different photographers, because you will get an inconsistent look and feel because they will edit them differently, they'll use different lenses, they'll use different effects, so you will get a random look which will pull people away or will repel people from your branding. It won't look good.

16:59

I'm also including icons in with images, because they're symbols and are a visual element. They can be really helpful to your branding. Icons have been used since ancient times to communicate ideas and concepts. Think about Egyptian hieroglyphics and cave paintings. People have used images to convey messages for thousands of years, so using consistent, recognizable images and icons can really help your brand stand out from the crowd, and choosing symbols that represent you in a unique way, in a way that makes sense, will make it really easy for your customers or potential clients to understand who you are and remember you in a way that words can't.

17:42

Now, many businesses skip on photography and do rely on stock images and iPhone photos to get by. While getting professional photographs or buying high quality stock images can be quite an investment, it is money well spent. Your business will reap the benefits of investing in high quality imagery. Think about some websites that you've visited and they may have had poor quality grading images or be using stock photos that you have seen hundreds of times on other sites. Those sites don't give you the same level of confidence in that business as it would do, compared with a site that has beautiful, clear, bespoke images that are from a professional photographer. You automatically feel more trusting in that business than you would in the other, and that's another reason why it's important to invest in purchased stock images, because they won't be used everywhere else, you'll be less likely to come across them and you'll stand out a little bit more.

18:45 Visual Branding and Logo Design Power

But it's not just about pretty pictures. The colours and shapes and styles you choose can all impact how your brand is perceived. For example, using round shapes in your icons conveys a sense of warmth and approachability. Angular shapes communicate strength and stability, so even the shapes have a psychology behind them. So you need to consider all of this when you are building your brand. There's enormous power in the use of images and icons, which goes far beyond the aesthetics. So, as with everything else in your business, consistency is the name of the game. By keeping your visuals on brand and using them consistently across all your business, you'll help establish a visual identity that's recognizable and memorable. So make sure your images and icons match your brand's colour schemes, fonts and overall style guide. Let your creativity run wild. Don't be afraid to show off your brand's personality through beautiful, high quality images and icons.

19:52 Creating a Memorable Logo

Now we're up to what you've been waiting for logo design. Your brand logo is more than just a symbol. It's the heartbeat of your business. It's the face of your brand and it must be on point. Usually, the logo is the first thing customers associate with your business, so investing time and resources into creating a stunning, beautifully designed logo is important if you're serious about elevating and growing your business. A memorable logo is simple, unforgettable and a reflection of your brand's personality. It's the mark that lingers in your audience's mind long after they've interacted with you or your business. Some of the most successful logos in the world, like Nike's Swoosh or Apple's Bitten Apple, are incredibly simple in their design, yet they're instantly impactful and memorable.

20:45

Memorability is important. You want your logo to be distinctive and unique so that it stands out from all the millions of logos swirling around the internet. Some of the most famous around the world are McDonald's Golden Arches or Coke's Script. They're perfect examples of memorable logos. Whoever you are in the world, wherever you are, you know who those businesses are. There's actually many different types of logos, and some of the most common that you'll see used are wordmarks, letterforms, lettermarks, which are also known as monogram logos. There are logo symbols or brandmarks. There's abstract logo marks, mascots, emblems and combination marks. And this means your next decision is what type of logo best fits your brand and will also resonate with your clients.

21:41

Then you can get into creating your logo. So you'll understand now why I've put logo design so far down the bottom of the list. While the whole composition of the logo is important, it's the individual logo elements that are going to make yours so very special. Those elements they can include an icon. They will include your fonts or custom lettering. If you've gone down the custom lettering part, they'll include your tagline, your overall brand aesthetic and your brand colours. Then you take all those elements, put them together and apply some strategic design principles to meld them into a unique creation to you. You can see again now why logo design is so far down the list.

22:29

Everything you've done up to this point leads to creating your logo. You need to do all those pieces first. You don't just jump in and design a logo, otherwise it will be confused, off-brand and you'll most likely have to start it from scratch once you've done all the other things. So just do them first and save yourself some time. So now you've got your brand story, your topography, your colour palette, your images and your logo. You need to put everything together into a document that specifies the how and the why of each element, so that your brand's visual identity is exactly the same no matter where your clients interact with it. And these are your brand guidelines.

23:10 Brand Guidelines for Consistency

Brand guidelines are the foundation of consistent, effective branding. It's not a new concept. The first recorded use of a brand was way back in ancient Egypt, and it was used to identify products such as wine jars and livestock. And while the use of brand identity today is far more sophisticated than in ancient Egypt, the importance of having a solid framework around your branding remains the same. When a brand is consistent in its messaging and visual identity, it really helps your customers feel confident in their purchase decisions and it builds a sense of familiarity and trust. And this can't be achieved without a consistent aesthetic. But it's not just about consistency. Brand guidelines can also improve creativity. By providing a clear framework for design elements, guidelines can encourage your brand designer to be able to think outside the box and really develop unique ways of using all these individual elements.

24:14

But staying on brand. As your business grows and expands, having a clear and consistent brand identity becomes even more and more important to avoid inconsistent branding that can potentially confuse and repel potential clients. Because you will have so many more people in your business, different fingers in all the different pies. They will all need to be using your brand elements in the same way at every touch point, and that's where your brand guideline comes into play. So investing brand guidelines early on to ensure that your branding remains effective and professional even as your business grows and evolves over time.

24:55

Now we have covered a whole lot of branding today, and I hope that it's given you more of an insight into how you can improve your branding and why it's well worth spending the time and energy to get it right. You most likely will have also discovered it's far more involved than you initially thought. You've learned all about creating your brand story, your brand dreaming, topography, colour palette, imagery, icons, logos and your brand guidelines and, in the end, your brand design is the bridge that connects your business with your audiences, hearts and minds. So by creating a consistent and compelling visual representation of your service or coaching business, you're going to create a lasting impression on your target audience, strengthen your overall brand image and establish yourself as an industry leader and drive long term growth in your business. And keep in mind that branding is not a one off task, because your brand needs to evolve, as your business and audience does, but getting these basic elements right and beautifully aligned with your core values and future vision.

26:08

The changes you make in the future will be more about smaller aesthetic updates than a major overhaul, like we've just discussed. So what are you waiting for? Get started using these brand design elements and create a brand that truly reflects you and your business and connects with your perfect fit clients. If you need some help, talk to me about creating a brand that does reflect your personality, values and expertise. Trust me, it is a small investment that will pay off in the long run. You can book a free call at 16thabcreativecom. Forward slash contact and if you want to listen to the episode on hope, using hoping your sales and marketing, go to episode 15, and I'll also put the link in the show notes below.

26:54

So that's it for today's episode. I will see you next week, where we're chatting with a special guest, Jen Donovan from Social Media and Marketing, and Jen is going to spill the beans on using social media to grow your business and also how growing a business in rural Australia is so very different to building your business in the city. So be sure to tune in next week for our chat with Jen and until then, remember the time is now for the brilliant business and beautiful life you adore.