MBA1721 5 Ways To Improve Your Branding in 2021

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The word branding is thrown around a lot in business and not a lot of people really fully comprehend it. You know, it's something you need to have in order, but you're not really sure how it ties into your business. Your marketing, your sales. This is common. So I want to simplify things and then share with you the five things you can do this time year to strengthen your brand. Branding is simply what other people say about your business. How do people describe your business? Is your brand? For example, Nike is known for being motivational, youthful, go getter. All these things kind of mesh with the brand of Nike because that's the message they put out there. This is the kind of product and business they run. It's also a very casual type of brand versus Louis Vuitton. That's not a casual brand. That is not a motivational brand. That's a luxury brand. It's not for everyone. In fact, another luxury brand, Porsche, had a very famous ad. They used to have billboards on this magazine, ads that stated their brand in a simple sentence. Not something for everyone, everything to someone. Again, making it exclusive. So how can you form that message, that branding? Well, it's actually quite simple. There are three things you can just write down in a document. This is a great exercise to really solidify what your business is all about, your branding. The first thing is what is your usp, your unique selling proposition? In one sentence, how is your business, your product, your service unique and stands out from the competition? One of the most famous ones is Domino's Pizza. They had this for a very long time in the 80s and 90s. It's not their current one, but you could see what I mean. It was fresh, delicious pizza in 30 minutes or less. So in one sentence, I know exactly what Domino's is all about. It's about fresh pizza that tastes good, that delivered to my door quickly. At the time, the competition didn't do delivery or their delivery was really slow, quality varied, all that kind of stuff. So you need to write down your USP number two. How do you serve your customers? How do you deliver your products or services? What experience do they have? Describe it. And then lastly, and you can flip 2 and 3 if you wanted to. Who are your customers? Describe your target market. Who are the people that you serve? In as much detail as you can. By having these three pieces of information, you have a good understanding of the brand that you want to build. These are the things you want other people to say about your company. So in order for them to say that, you have to practice what you preach. You have to put that out there. So how do we do that? Well, these are the five tips I want to give you. Tip number one, your usp. This has to be at the top of your homepage. This has to be your headline. This has to really be the first thing anybody sees so they understand why they should go with you. You don't have much time. When somebody hits your website, they want to know quickly why they should stick around, why they should consider you. And if you can't grab them and hold their attention with your first communication, which is the headline, the headline that's on the top of the page, then they're just going to leave and you're going to lose them forever. So tip number one, very easy. Change the headline on your homepage to your usp. I know this sounds really simple, but I guarantee you, many of you, if you look at your website right now, you don't have that. Remember, you want to make sure your usp, your headline, is very, very easy to understand. It's simple. Remember, we always say a confused mind never buys. Okay? You don't want to confuse them with a long winded sentence with commas and semicolons and hyphens. No, keep it short. If you have to take a breath to say the sentence, it's too long. Number two, challenge yourself to reiterate your USP in all your communications for the next 60 days. Great businesses, great brands do this all the time. Somehow they include in their emails, in their social media posts, in their podcast episodes, in their videos, they include their usb. They say it in a different way, they approach it in a different way, they give different examples, they share stories. But the bottom line is that every time they communicate with a customer, anytime a customer interact with them, they drill home their usp. So it starts with your website, but it doesn't end there. Okay? Every time a customer interacts with you, or you send out a message or you communicate with them, you want to somehow incorporate your USP in that communication. For example, our company webinar Ninja R USP is better. Webinars, no worries. We want to make sure people focus on the content, their audience, their interaction with the audience and not the technology. So we're always putting that USP in our communication. So even if I'm speaking to a customer on customer support and I'm helping them with Something, a tutorial. I'll wrap up and say, hey, our aim is to make sure that Webinar Ninja is the easiest software you've ever used so you can focus on your audience. If there's any way we can make your experience easier, let me know. Until then, have a great day. So that customer is again reminded, this is why we exist. This is what we're trying to do. This is our mission. This is what our community is all about, what everybody on the team is working towards in our newsletter. Hey, we just released a new feature to make your life even easier with Webinar Ninja. Again, I'm saying it in a different way, but that's the usp. I just gave a webinar for our members the other day and I was showing them a new feature how you can have people opt in for your Watch now webinar your on demand webinar and then automatically get a PDF download that you can just upload straight to our system. And again, I reiterated the usp. Don't you hate it when you have to do a new opt in on your website? It's such a long winded process. You have to make sure that your email notifications are firing or email sequences on your CRM. You have to put in the form. You got to make sure you deliver the PDF. Oh, by the way, the PDF has to be up on Amazon and you have to kind of get the link and make sure that it's readable and people can download it. Well, forget all that. We just came up with a great new feature called Handouts where you can basically turn any opt in into an automated Watch now webinar. And you don't need to know how to do any of the things I just described. We're going to save you time, save you energy, save you money, make your life better. Let me show you how it works and I just did that right in the webinar. Now, my guess is that after 60 days of doing this, you're going to see so many positive comments and so many positive results that you're going to continue to do that in your business throughout the year. Tip number three, and you might be seeing this as a pattern already, but you gotta stay consistent with your branding. Branding only works when you're consistent, when it's the same all the time, when they get the same message over and over. Now those are the words, but also you wanna stay consistent with your design. One of the easiest things you can do to make sure that your branding is consistent and people remember you is to create a branding guide. A branding guide is basically a document that tells you and anybody else on your team working for you, this is how we implement our brand. And basically this guide just talks about what I talked about. Your usp, who is your customer, how you serve them, but also things like your branding colors, the actual hex code. So they know exactly what colors are your branding colors. Usually brands have three or four colors that are the colors they always use for the brand. It's what is incorporated in their logo. High resolution logos, make sure that's in your branding guide. The font that you use for your website, if you can use the same font or something very close in your emails and everything else, that's gonna be awesome. Even the font size and the line height is something that you wanna keep consistent. Basically what you're trying to do here is you want the experience to be as good wherever they are when they interact with you. So if they're getting an email from you, they feel like it's just as good as the website itself. If they're watching a webinar, they're seeing the same branding colors and the logos on the registration page, on the thank you page, on the webinar slides themself. This reinforces, hey, this is a professional, professional organization. Everything's consistent, everything just looks pro. So a branding guide can help you and everybody on your team stay pro. Stay on brand tip number four. If you don't have a award winning or stellar designer on your team to design every aspect of your images on your website, your newsletters, maybe social, your branding or images on your social profiles, like your banners on your YouTube channel, things like that, that's okay. I always say until you have somebody who can take care of that, keep it as minimal as possible. Stay minimal. Even if you don't use any images on your emails at all, just text will actually look more professional and more on brand than trying to use graphics that maybe are a little bit off brand. So when in doubt, just stay minimal even with your website. I've seen some beautiful looking websites that just have very, very clean text based designs. For example, if you go to Fizzle Co, if you want to get a free trial, their design is very minimal and they are very successful business. You don't need to clutter things, you can keep them simple.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business. World. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella eduardo.

Tip number five for better branding for your business in 2021. Study brands you love. One of the best ways to improve your own brand is to study the brands that you really like and to take notes. Take notes on why you like it, what are they doing, what messages are they sending you that you really think are nifty. Right? I really like that. Of course we are not saying you should copy and just rip somebody's brand, but you should learn from what works. Okay? And you can be inspired by a brand. And we've been open and honest. You know, there's a lot of companies that have inspired us. Companies like Wistia. Their branding really resonates with us. Brands like ConvertKit serving the same audience that we do. Brands like Sumo or Appsumo who don't take themselves too seriously. And we try to have that aspect in our brand as well. So it's a good idea to look at the brands that you really love, the things that you really visit over and over again, the newsletters that you subscribe to. What do you like about it? What are some things that you would love to adopt in your own brand, Some practices, some things that they really do that kind of catch your attention. Well, there you have it, guys. Branding for 2021. My five tips. I hope you've enjoyed them. If you thought this episode was helpful, why don't you share with your friends and family on social? Go ahead and screenshot it and share on whatever platform you love to use. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Whatever you do, if you take on one of these tips or all five of these tips, the key is consistency. Stay as consistent as possible. Do the same thing over and over and over. If you're going to iterate, iterate, improve. But don't drop things altogether. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Free ride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.