branding Archives

8 steps for finding your franchise voice

You may hear it often these days. Your franchise voice is everything online.

It helps people connect with your brand, engage with you and (hopefully) come to trust you.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

But your franchise voice is nothing more than the personality of your brand as it pertains to your overall franchise, and while we largely view this as an online requirement, it transcends to any other medium (print and broadcast included) where your franchise may express itself. Check out our nine tips to help build a new brand from scratch.

The following are eight tips on how to find your franchise voice so that you can be consistent and engaging across all marketing channels.

Start with your franchise’s mission statement

The purpose of your franchise should drive the type of tone and voice you create. In other words, your personality should reflect what you care about.

For instance, self-esteem is a big part of Dove’s mission statement, making its voice empowering and uplifting to connect with its customers and potential customers. Themes of self-empowerment and body positivity can be seen in a lot of Dove’s messaging, but Dove also delivers it in a soothing, inspirational and friendly tone.

Review your current messaging

If you’re not starting from scratch and already have franchise content created, it’s a good idea to perform an audit. You’ll want to look over your website, any blog posts, social media posts, videos, etc.

Is there consistency between the tone and messaging? Or, is it a bit all over the place? Take note of the best-performing pieces because they could be a signal of what franchise content is already connecting with your audience.

Deep dive into your audience

Begin with the tools already available to you, such as Google Analytics (or any other website performance tool), social media analytics from the platforms you’re using and any customer database information you already have in-house.

How old are they? Mostly one gender or evenly split? Where do they live? Education? Occupations? How did they hear of your franchise? And whatever other data you have can be helpful.

While not all of those questions might be answerable, you’ll want to gather as much as you can to understand who you are reaching. Once you do, you should compare this to who you want to reach, your target audience. This will help you decide whether what you’re currently doing is on track with what you should be doing in regard to your franchise’s brand voice.

If you’re looking to reach more middle-aged women, this voice looks a lot different than if you want to reach more college-aged men. See our seven tips to help you determine your target audience.

Play the ‘We’re this, not that’ game

Okay, it’s not exactly a game. But it’s a great exercise to narrow down what your franchise brand is about.

Simply fill in the blanks: “We’re ________, but we’re not __________.”

You’ll want to do this at least a half dozen times to drill down to the essence of how you want to sound. For example: “We’re laidback, but we’re not lazy.”

You can and should take your audience research and most successful franchise content into consideration while working through this.

Choose three words to describe your franchise voice

If you let yourself go on the “We’re this, not that” exercise, there hopefully are a few keywords that now stick out to you.

If your franchise was a person, ask yourself which three words you would use to describe this person’s personality. And how do these traits make you different?

Make a ‘brand voice chart’

Once you decide on the three traits that best represent your franchise’s personality, you can build a chart so that you can flush out how each one should be used in your messaging moving forward.

Create a table with four columns. The first column is the list of brand characteristics you’ve already decided on. The next column is a description of how that trait relates to your franchise or brand. The third column is all the “Do’s” related to accomplishing that (such as using strong verbs if you’re passionate or being playful if you’re irrelevant, for example), whatever actions will reflect that trait. Then, the last column should have all the “Don’ts.” These are the actions you’ll want to avoid in the pursuit of reflecting that trait (such as using too much slang if you’re quirky or over-promising if you’re authentic, for example).

You’ll want to work through that chart for each personality trait, essentially creating your road map for your franchise’s voice and tone that can be referenced moving forward.

Translate your ‘brand voice chart’ into guidelines

While a “brand voice chart” is incredibly helpful and definitely an asset you can present to your team, consider taking it a step further. You can create clearly documented guidelines to help enforce consistency well into the future.

Because as we all know, it’s one thing if it’s just you communicating as your franchise. It’s a whole other world when bringing a team together to share and express a single brand voice.

It’s great if your guidelines can be boiled down into a one-pager (or have a Cliff Notes version that’s accessible on the fly), but it doesn’t have to be. This is especially true if you’re including:

A deep dive into your franchise’s core personality
A reflection on tone (how you’re communicating that personality, especially on different platforms)
A look at the specifics (that can be formatted as a “do this, not that” and even include recommended spelling, grammar and jargon use)
A description of multimedia use (ranging from videos to emojis)

The power of your guidelines does come from the time you invest in them to make them the “holy grail” of communication for your franchise marketing team.

Be ready to evolve as your brand does

Just like people, brands can grow and change over time. Be nimble about what this could look like for your franchise and be ready to adjust your “brand voice chart” and guidelines as needed.

On the flip side, you don’t want to change too many things too quickly. It could confuse your team and your audience.

In conclusion

As a franchise, you may already have direction from your franchisor on your franchise brand voice. But if it needs to be further explored, it’s worthwhile to work through the above eight steps. Remember that franchisors strive for consistent messaging across franchisees. On the flip side, it’s possible that your franchisor has not given you much direction on a specific franchise brand voice to use.

If you’re looking for a little inspiration from brands doing it right, take a look at Wendy’s, MailChimp and Red Bull. Check out their websites and social media pages. They’re all very different brands but extremely consistent, as well as creative, in how they project their individual brand voices.

And above all, know that discovering and conveying your franchise voice will be filled with some trials and errors no matter how much planning you do. Just keep an eye on your content’s performance across platforms and pivot as needed. While you’re examining your franchise voice, consider these seven tips to be more conversational and relatable in your marketing. In addition, see our 10 tips to build up your personal brand and grow your franchise. Plus, check out our Digital Marketing 101 Guide for Beginners to get inspired about your own brand’s marketing efforts and focus. As you begin to find your franchise voice, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help franchises specifically just like you. Schedule your free demo with us today and find out more about how we elevate franchise marketing.

5 signs that your branding is broken

Your brand is your business’s identity. So, your branding is the reflection and culmination of your business’s personality, appearance, voice and overall vibe.

It takes about seven seconds for consumers to make an instant decision about whether or not they like and trust your brand. Keep in mind that consistent branding across all channels can increase your revenue between 10 percent and 20 percent. Brand consistency means that consumers get the same impression and experience when interacting with your business regardless of the marketing or communication channel.

A successful brand is clear, compelling and consistent.

Check out our nine tips if you need to build your brand from scratch.

But it’s entirely possible for a brand to not work how it’s intended, which can impact your overall consumer engagement and sales conversion rate. The following are five signs that your branding is broken.

No brand style guide

Think of a brand style guide as the rulebook for how your business presents itself to the world.

You can use your style guide as a reference to help maintain branding consistency no matter which of your team members is involved. About 59 percent of consumers prefer to buy from brands they trust, and consistency is a huge part of that.

Your style guide would include key branding elements, a collection of visual examples and more, depending on what you want and need.

Check out our five tips to create a brand style guide for your small business.

Your branding is visually inconsistent

Your visual brand identity includes your logo, company colors, chosen typography and any imagery that exudes the look and feel of your brand across all marketing channels. That includes your website, social media accounts and anything else.

As previously mentioned, a brand style guide can make a big difference on this front.

When done right, your company becomes unique and recognizable among your competitors. Visual branding consistency helps put your target audience at ease and builds trusting relationships over time.

Ask yourself:

Does your website reflect who your business truly is?
Are your typography, photo selections, colors and logos matching across all channels?
How do your visuals make your audience feel? Positive or negative?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you know where to start.

Visuals are powerful. Check out these six ways that visuals can increase your email conversions.

Big drop in the middle of your sales funnel

Acquiring leads simply feels good for any small business. But if your increase in leads doesn’t result in an increase in revenue, there’s a disconnect.

If you’re noticing a drop within your sales funnel, it could mean that what you’re saying in your marketing is different than what you’re actually offering. Your messaging could be too aspirational. Take a look at where that conflict could be happening. Something inconsistent is happening in the messaging with your leads.

That being said, if you’re struggling to even get leads into your sales funnel, that’s a signal that your branding is broken as well. It means that your brand is not resonating at all with your target audience.

Check out the seven benefits of using a sales funnel in your digital marketing.

Obsession with your competition

Understanding your competition can benefit your business and marketing strategies. But there’s a difference between understanding your competition and obsessing over your competition.

If your branding exists mostly in relation to your competitors, who they are and what they’re doing, then you’re living in their shadow and not creating your own presence and identity.

Some signs of this include citing your competition in your marketing messages or spending a majority of your marketing planning discussing your competition.

But again, there is a time and place for analyzing your competition. Find out more about what a proper competitive analysis is and how you can start yours.

Lack of repeat business

If you’re bringing in new business but can’t build customer loyalty, this is another sign that your branding is broken.

Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit. You want to keep your customers purchasing from you once you acquire them. But as important as it is, customer retention is a big challenge for many businesses.

There could be a brand disconnect that is holding your growth potential back.

Check out our six tips to improve your customer retention rate and grow your revenue as a result.

In conclusion

If your brand is broken, you can definitely fix it. You don’t have to ride it until the wheels fall off of it and your small business. While rebranding may cost some time and money upfront, the potential to reach more clients and generate more revenue is worth it.

Just make sure that you:

Define your business’s purpose, vision, mission and values.
Identify better, compelling brand messaging.
Upgrade all visual elements as needed.
Develop (and use) a brand style guide.

As you’re evaluating the effectiveness of your branding, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips for successful brand collaboration

Successful brand collaboration can help your company grow its online reputation (in a good way) and reach a wider audience.

But if your partnership is weak or not the best fit, your collaboration will fail, which could cost you your reputation or even your profit.

A brand collaboration refers to the partnership between at least two brands or a brand and an influencer to promote a specific product or service to get the attention of your target audience on a larger scale.

About 71 percent of consumers enjoy brand collaborations, so it’s worth the effort to reach your marketing goals.

The following are five tips for successful brand collaboration.

Carefully select your partner brand

Simply put, there is more to brand collaboration than discovering a potential partner brand that is fresh, exciting and has a significant following online.

The goal is to thoroughly research the brand you are considering working with. Will this partnership give you the chance to break out of your brand’s comfort zone and reach a new audience? Or, will this partnership help establish your brand as an industry leader? How can you benefit each other?

You should avoid working with anyone who’s already worked with your competition. You want your brand collaboration to feel natural for both parties, and that won’t necessarily be the case if your partner has worked with your competitors.

Ideally, both brands should bring something valuable to the table.

Unclear of exactly what your brand has to offer? Check out our nine expert tips for branding from scratch. You also can view our five steps to determine your brand personality.

Plan your brand collaboration campaign

Planning is everything. Even before you decide on a partner brand to reach out to and propose a collaboration with, you should have some idea of what you want to accomplish.

Consider your goals and the opportunities surrounding them. Once you have at least outlined a plan, you can better select a brand to partner with and bring solid ideas to the table.

You should give your potential partner brand the opportunity to bring its own ideas to the table, too. The best collaborations are a give-and-take that can help you both develop the best possible campaign.

Create and use a clear contract (and guidelines)

Consistency is key to a successful brand collaboration campaign. In order to achieve and maintain consistency while staying committed to authenticity, you must negotiate the details of how your partnership will work and cement that in a clear contract.

Thinking through what each brand will be doing, how it will happen, how often it will happen and what that will look like should all be included in basic guidelines in your contract. Don’t forget about tone of voice, creative elements and which social media (and other) channels you’ll be using.

Any exchange of pay or coverage of expenses should also be part of your contract.

If there’s anything that’s unclear, talk through it to come to an understanding that works for both brands.

Aim to create something valuable

Successful brand collaborations create something that is valuable or at least interesting for your target audience.

Whether that’s fun or entertainment, or perhaps it’s unique and inspiring. Regardless, think through how your brand and a brand partner can come together to not only catch consumers’ attention but leave a memorable impression as well.

The more engaging you can be together, the more likely you’ll compel your audience to take a specific, desired action.

Measure your performance

Of course, there’s no way to tell whether your brand collaboration is working or not if you’re not monitoring the performance metrics.

Especially if some metrics are only accessible by one brand and others are only accessible by your brand, it’s important to discuss in advance how you’ll gather and analyze all relevant data.

Depending on the length of your brand collaboration, you can easily pivot during the campaign based on the data to better optimize your efforts.

In conclusion

In the end, a successful brand collaboration comes down to active management before, during and after the campaign. There are a number of moving pieces when two or more brands come together to collaborate. Keep everything as simple as possible and promote communication between all partners as much as possible.

As you begin to explore brand collaboration, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 steps to determine your brand personality

Brands have personalities just like humans do. But if you’re a little unsure how to define your particular brand personality, you’ve come to the right place.

A brand personality involves the human characteristics of a brand, which your customers can relate to and connect with. Every brand can and should have a voice, color and other attributes that evoke different emotions.

Without a defined brand personality, consumers will have a harder time figuring out whether you’re the right business for them. That’s definitely not a decision you want to complicate.

On the flip side, a strong brand personality can increase your brand loyalty and customer retention. (Check out our six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.)

Remember, your brand only has seven seconds to make a good first impression.

About 46 percent of consumers in the U.S. say that they would pay more to purchase from brands they can trust. In addition, about 64 percent of women and 68 percent of men have felt an emotional connection with a brand. This can occur when you grow interest, trust and optimism from your potential customers and customers.

Essentially, there are five types of brand personalities:

Sincere, generous, thoughtful, honest, wholesome, cheerful, down-to-earth, warm and value-oriented (such as Cadbury, Hallmark and Amazon)
Excited, easygoing, lively, trendy, imaginative, spirited, daring, intrigued and youthful (such as Mountain Dew, BuzzFeed, Red Bull, Tesla and Nike)
Rugged, rough, outdoorsy, adventurous, athletic, tough and sporty (such as Jeep, Harley Davidson, Woodland and Yeti)
Sophisticated, elegant, luxury, charming, high-class, timeless, glamourous and renowned (such as Dolce & Gabbana, Mercedes, Chanel and Rolex)
Competent, accomplished, reliable, successful, intelligent and authoritative (such as Google, Microsoft, Volkswagen and Intel)

Not only does a defined brand personality resonate with your target audience, but it also can set your marketing strategy path. Once you know “who” your brand is, the opportunities to share that become clearer. Your brand’s personality will help you make the best decisions for every aspect of your business.

The following are five steps to determine your brand personality and better connect with potential customers.

Understand your target audience

So much about branding drills down to the people you’re hoping to reach and serve with your products and/or services.

By digging into the demographics and behaviors of your ideal customer, you can get a better sense of how your brand could relate to that customer. The more relatable you are to him or her, the better.

Keep these questions in mind:

Who is your audience?
What journey are they on?
What are their core desires?
What are their characteristics and behaviors?

Not exactly sure who your target audience is? Our seven tips can help.

Identify your brand’s role

Once you understand your target audience, it’s time to determine what role your brand should fill for them. For example, your brand could be your audience’s guide, motivator, friend, protector, inspiration or something else.

Before you jump to any conclusions, consider how your products and/or services affect your customers’ lives. Here are a few questions to help you identify your brand’s role:

Is your brand more of a leader, or does it play a supporting role in customers’ lives?
What special effect does your brand create in your customers’ lives?
If your brand had a personal relationship with your ideal customer, what type of relationship would that be? A family member? Friend? Someone else?

Brainstorm related characteristics

Once you decide on your brand’s role, list out all the characteristics that role exemplifies as it relates to your target audience.

Don’t hold back when listing characteristics. The point is that you get every thought written down. Quantity over quality.

Once you’ve exhausted all possible ideas, review your list and fine-tune it. Highlight what really speaks to you. Consider whether there are any related characteristics before you narrow down to your favorite characteristics that resonate most for you.

Visualize your brand personality

It’s time to create a mood board to visualize your brand personality, starting only with your favorite characteristics that you brainstormed earlier.

In the simplest sense, a mood board is a collage that contains a variety of images, text and any other items that ultimately will define your brand and communicate your brand personality. It also can help bring this developing personality into focus.

You can easily create a “mood board” using Pinterest, where you can easily pin visuals that represent your characteristics. The goal here is to bring your brand personality to life.

Just like when you were brainstorming characteristics earlier, now is the time to gather more than you need and then fine-tune to what feels best to you. This can include images, colors, visual metaphors (such as a tiger for being “fierce”), art, words/quotes, letters, texture, patterns and shapes.

Also, be sure to include any brand guidelines, such as your brand colors, fonts, logo and any other related brand materials that you have. If you are still developing your official brand, our nine expert tips can help.

Develop your brand voice

Now that you’ve visualized your brand personality, you need to develop a brand voice that supports and conveys that.

How do you speak to your target audience? Once you have an idea, it’s time to outline specific guidelines that highlight your tone, the type of multimedia images you would share and even jargon use, among other considerations.

Check out our eight tips for reflecting your brand’s personality through your brand voice.

In conclusion

Your brand personality can be pivotal in helping you stand out from your competitors. It’s worth the time and effort to understand it for yourself so that you can then communicate it through every asset in your digital marketing efforts and beyond.

Of course, we recommend setting a brand style guide to keep your brand personality, voice and more consistent across platforms and over time. This consistency empowers a stronger digital marketing strategy.

Check out our five tips to create a brand style guide.

As you begin to nail down your brand personality, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 tips to create brand loyalty for your business

While attracting new customers will always matter, you can’t forget about your existing customers (and building up their loyalty to your brand).

Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit.

Fortunately, while consumers do have limitless options when it comes to the items they want to buy, about 90 percent still report being brand loyal.

Brand loyalty is when consumers strongly favor a specific brand over other brands.

Brand loyalty involves more than just retaining your customers, though. It’s about providing an experience that your customers won’t find anywhere else that will keep them coming back.

The following are six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.

Increase your focus on customer service

The quality of your customer service is everything. It can make or break your customers’ loyalty to your brand.

About 33 percent of customers say they would consider switching companies immediately following just one instance of poor service.

Remember that you want to address every inquiry in a responsive and timely manner. But beyond that, you should make every customer feel valued and appreciated.

Check out our six ways to be more responsive to your customers.

Understand (and share) your brand story and voice

Customers need to have a clear understanding of a brand before they become loyal to it. Your brand personality encompasses what your brand is all about, and it should be approachable to your target audience.

Clearly, you want to be as unique as possible as well so that you stand out from your competition. Take extra time when constructing your mission statement, which explains why your business exists and what makes you different.

See our nine expert tips to help you build your brand from scratch. In addition, check out our five tips for creating a brand style guide that can help you stay consistent in all aspects of your branding.

Success here makes your brand more recognizable and memorable to customers.

Consider a loyalty rewards program

Loyalty rewards programs incentivize your target audience to shop with you again. You can offer discounts, coupons or extra perks to repeat customers for any number of reasons:

Customer anniversaries
Repeat purchases
Early bird perks
Customer birthdays

Think about the products and/or services you offer and what makes the most sense for you to create as a loyalty rewards program.

Leverage your social media

You likely already have various strategic goals tied to your social media marketing, such as brand awareness, lead generation and customer service.

But think about what you’re doing on your social media accounts to promote brand loyalty. Sharing announcements and new products isn’t enough. You should dive into your brand story and find ways to share all the facets that come together to make your brand personality what it is. It should permeate every post in even the most subconscious ways.

Start with what matters most on social media: compelling content.

Find out what every startup company should know about social media, as well as what social media platform is right for your company.

In addition, you’ll want to review the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing so that you can better identify the opportunities when customers may not message you directly but will mention you on social media (for better or for worse).

Invest in a brand community

By “invest,” we don’t mean with money per se. Building a community that supports and celebrates your brand at the very least requires a major and consistent investment of time.

It all begins with understanding not only your target audience but your existing customers and what commonalities they share. Consider those engaged within your community as potential brand advocates, who are likely to share your brand with others and give honest reviews of your products and/or services. In the simplest sense, they have your back and are proud to be connected to your brand.

Depending on how your community largely uses social media, it might make the most sense to create a Facebook group or a branded hashtag or even a subreddit board. There’s no right or wrong here. All that matters is that the channel you chose to nurture your community on resonates with your brand advocates.

Social media is all about engaging with others, but it also requires you to be present for your community to help it grow and thrive.

Check out our 12 tips to use Facebook Groups to help grow your brand. A lot of these tips can be applied to other channels when building an online community.

Deliver value through quality

This may sound obvious, but there is no amount of great social media or incentives that can create brand loyalty if your products and/or services are not high quality.

Make it a priority to deliver on every promise you make and exceed every possible expectation you can think of.

You can regularly conduct customer surveys to better understand what you’re doing well and what could be done better.

In the end, customers will feel loyal to quality in all aspects.

In conclusion

Ultimately, your commitment to creating and maintain brand loyalty among your customers can help boost your profits, so it’s worth the effort.

Consider existing customers just as important as new customers.

As you’re developing a strategy to boost brand loyalty for your business, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips to create a brand style guide for your business

Branding directly impacts the success of a business online, so you’ll want to consider creating a brand style guide if you don’t already have one.

Think of a brand style guide as the rulebook for how your business presents itself to the world. This includes your logo, fonts, colors, nature of photography and more.

Check out our nine expert tips to help you build a brand from scratch.

You can use your brand style guide as a reference to help maintain branding consistency no matter which of your team members is involved. Consistency helps you build a trusting relationship with consumers.

About 59 percent of consumers prefer to buy from brands they trust.

The following are five tips to help you create a brand style guide for your business.

Collect visual branding examples

One of the best ways to convey the presence of your brand is through visual examples.

Consider what reflects your branding the most. This can include ads, emails, social media posts and so on.

If there is a particular point you want to make sure gets addressed, be sure to collect the visuals to communicate that aspect of your branding to your team members.

It’s about visually communicating the look and feel of your brand.

Define the essential elements of your brand

Traditionally, you’ll want to identify six essential elements of your brand in your brand style guide:

Brand story

This includes your company’s vision and mission statement that introduces your brand to the world and conveys your purpose in so many words. See our five tips to create an effective mission statement for your business if you don’t already have one.

Logo guidelines

Beyond what your logo consists of, think about how your logo should look in different environments. For example, a simpler icon version in addition to a full logo, overall spacing, minimum sizing, logo proportions, a black and white version in addtion to color and so on. Include all of the approved versions of your logo in your brand style guide, as well as an explanation of when to use which version where (as applicable).

Brand color palette

Even if you already have one main branding color and a secondary color, you should make sure that you identify at least one more color to give your brand flexibility.

Many brands opt for about four colors. Think of a lighter color for backgrounds, a darker color for text, a neutral color and a color that pops. They should complement each other.

Font guidelines

Font itself can become its own rabbit hole, but it is very important to put careful thought into choosing the font that best reflects your brand’s personality.

Once you have at least two fonts chosen (can certainly be more than that), you’ll want to be very clear in your brand style guide as to whether an entire typeface family can be used or which specific typefaces can be used.

In addition, you’ll want to communicate when, where and how every font should be used with your brand. Be as clear as possible, including the alignment to be used and any specific spacing.

Image and photography guidelines

This can be one of the more difficult sections of your brand style guide, so take your time. It’s likely easy enough for you to identify which images suit and reflect your brand well, but it’s just as easy for a team member to not have the same natural eye as you.

The goal is to steer your team in the right direction. You can do this by including a selection of example images and sharing the reason behind those examples as well as what your brand hopes to achieve in every image.

Brand voice

Your brand has a personality of its own, much like a person. The more you can share as it pertains to the overall writing style for your brand, the better.

In this section of your brand style guide, you can detail best practices, illustrate your brand personality description with key adjectives, include do’s and don’ts, etc.

Not sure what your brand voice is? Check out our eight tips.

Think about the bigger picture

Depending on the nature of your business, you may need to dive deeper into certain areas where your branding is relevant.

For example, if you create physical products, what should your packaging look like? How should the layout of your website appear? What makes a branded appearance for a post on any given social media platform?

Brainstorm every possibility that is relevant for your business. Then, pick away at the answers so that you can include them in your brand style guide.

Get organized with a brand style guide outline

Once you’ve compiled all your essential branding elements and visual examples, it’s time to outline your entire brand style guide so that you can stay focused throughout.

In addition, your outline will make the creation process more efficient.

You’ll also need to decide the format of your brand style guide. It can be a digital PDF, printout, webpage, etc. In general, make sure that it’s easy to update and distribute to your team.

Expect brand evolution

The only guarantee in life is change. Never assume that what you decide about your brand today will be right for your brand in 20 years. Just think about Apple. It’s definitely not the same-looking brand from the 1980s (or even earlier).

Consider your brand style guide a living document that you should revisit at least annually.

To help with inspiration, check out the brand style guide for Starbucks or Zendesk.

As you begin to create your brand style guide, consider optimizing your digital marketing process. This includes such features as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips to create an effective mission statement for your business

Successful digital marketing incorporates sharing the story of your brand, sharing what you do, how you do it and why.

To help nail down the focus of your story and the purpose of your business, you should consider creating a mission statement.

They work externally for potential customers and internally for employees. For consumers, it can help you set your brand apart. For employees, it can help keep your team on the same page during branding.

See our nine expert tips to help you build your brand from scratch.

Your mission statement should explain why your business exists and what makes you different while balancing realism with optimism.

Ideally, it should include these four elements:

The value of your busines
What is inspiring about your business
Overall plausibility
Being specific

Examples of successful mission statements include:

Google’s mission statement: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Tesla’s mission statement: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
LinkedIn’s mission statement: “Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
Starbucks’ mission statement: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time.”

The following are five tips to help you write an effective mission statement for your business.

Combine what you do with your values

To get started, write out what your business does in the most basic terms in no more than one sentence.

Then, list the core values of your business. After that, write an explanation about why your business does what it does.

You can then take these three ideas and proceed to combine and condense as necessary until you end up at a mission statement that both engages and informs.

Think long-term and big picture

It’s not about what’s happening right at this moment with your business. You want to keep your mission statement open enough to account for where your business will be in the future.

For example, just because you might only serve one geographic location right now doesn’t mean that your business won’t expand beyond that over time.

The bigger the picture, the better. Remember, your mission statement is not a detailed business plan.

Keep it short

As you saw in the above examples, a mission statement should be as short and concise as possible. It’s about getting to the point quickly and thus being more memorable.

Resist creating an essay or anything that feels long or drawn out.

One sentence is best but definitely no more than a brief paragraph at most.

Gather feedback

Once you’ve settled on at least one option that you like, start gathering feedback from colleagues and others.

Having more than one option is helpful. And if you have the resources, a focus group from outside your business (and even a second one from within your business) can be very helpful.

Just don’t make knee-jerk changes based on every individual’s opinion. Focus on gathering the data first review it all at one time.

Your mission statement can evolve

Did you know that YouTube began as a video dating site in 2005? Clearly, the world’s biggest video platform has evolved far beyond that initial intention, and you better believe its mission statement has grown with it.

Just like YouTube, you should expect your own business to naturally evolve and grow.

So, keep your mission statement in mind along the way. You can update it as necessary.

In conclusion

Once you’ve arrived at a mission statement you’re proud of, share it everywhere: your website, social media accounts and so on.

This is a statement of what makes your business worth purchasing from and/or working with. Don’t let it get hidden or lost in the natural noise of the internet.

After you create an effective mission statement for your business, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Branding: 9 expert tips to build your brand from scratch

Depending on your experience, creating a new brand from scratch can either be really fun or really stressful.

Or both.

But branding can be done step-by-step in a thoughtful way that results in something that connects with the customers you’re seeking.

A brand consists of:

Visuals, such as colors, logo, images, font, etc.
Tone of voice
Content
Online presence, such as website, social accounts, etc.
Influencer and other types of partnerships

The consistency and connection an effective brand can offer builds trust among consumers. About 81 percent of consumers say they need to be able to trust a brand before buying from it.

And first impressions matter. It only takes about 0.05 seconds for potential customers to form an opinion about your website.

The following are nine expert tips to help you build your brand from scratch. Or, if you’re considering leveling up your personal brand, check out our 10 tips.

Identify your target audience

This step is key for so many digital marketing tactics in general. But it’s especially crucial to consider whom you’re trying to reach when developing the core of your brand.

Having these ideal customers in mind (as well as their demographics, interests, challenges and so on) can help you make the biggest decisions in the smartest way possible.

See our seven tips to help you determine your target audience. Just remember that you want to get as specific as possible.

Conduct a competitive analysis

In other words, research your competition. The reasons may be obvious, but regardless, understanding your biggest competition shows you what’s already out there and what opportunities you could seize with your own brand.

It’s about being unique and relevant to potential customers.

Dive deeper into what a competitive analysis is and how you can start yours. In addition, check out these 16 tools that can help you with your research.

Of course, in this competitive analysis, you’ll want to focus on your competitors’ branding.

Determine your brand’s focus

It’s easy to get lost in your branding when you’re just starting out. Focus on what you know you do best and use that to create a mission statement, which can include:

Your brand’s products or services
Your target audience
What makes your brand unique
What problems your brand solves

Once you have a clear mission statement, you’ll want to share it everywhere, such as your website and social media accounts.

Define your brand’s personality

That’s right, personality. The most successful brands have a personality that’s appealing and relatable to their target audiences.

Of course, we don’t recommend choosing a personality out of thin air (and that can be pretty daunting anyway).

Think about the emotions your target audience is feeling when they’re looking for the solutions your brand can offer. Then, from there, you can identify the voice, language and content that can meet them where they are consistently.

Another trick is to consider the demographics of your target audience. You would address women in their 40s differently than you would teenage boys.

In addition, Shopify offers a brainstorming graphic to help you get started.

Dive deeper with our eight tips on finding your brand’s voice.

Once you land on a personality for your brand, consider it written in stone for consistency’s sake. Consistency is the currency of your branding. (Just know that’s it is fine for brands to evolve slowly over time.)

Name your brand

Some may start with a brand’s name. While it’s not wrong to do so, just make sure that if you already have a name in mind, it reflects your target audience, focus and personality of your developing brand.

If you’re starting from scratch, take a breath first. Your brand’s name is undoubtedly a big deal. It’s the first thing consumers will notice across multiple marketing channels and through interactions with your business. It also holds a critical impact on your logo and other branding assets. But don’t let all of that scare you.

The goal is to brainstorm what name would be clear, memorable and reflective of everything your brand encompasses. Naming considerations include:

Uniqueness
Memorability
Specific enough to be identifiable but broad enough to allow your business to expand into new products or services as it makes sense to do so
Domain name availability, which you can best address with our tips
Social media handle availability across platforms

When determining a name from scratch, the sky’s the limit truly. Brainstorm until you have at least 10 to 15 options that you like and then share with colleagues. What resonates most with them? If you notice a common thread with the most-liked options, you might want to conduct a second brainstorming session to really explore that thread further until you hit gold for your brand.

Decide on your brand’s colors and fonts

Color has a huge impact on your brand. It affects your website, logo and all other branded materials.

Using a signature color can increase brand recognition by about 80 percent.

Of course, before you simply pick your favorite color that you’ve loved since you were a kid, consider our breakdown of the influence colors have on digital marketing.

You also can check out this color emotion chart from The Logo Company.

Ideally, your colors help you stand out from your competition. That’s the goal.

When it comes to fonts, you can definitely go down a wormhole on all the available options. Just remember that you’re not picking a single font. You’ll want to identify several fonts to use in your:

Logo
Graphics
Headings
Body text

Again, consistency is key.

Create your brand’s slogan

While determining a name might be tough, nailing down your slogan can be just as difficult (if not more so).

Think Nike’s “Just Do It” or Walmart’s “Save Money. Live Better.”

A slogan can help you spark interest in potential customers, while it also can help consumers remember your brand.

All that being said, a slogan is definitely optional but also highly recommended. Go through the same process you went through for your brand’s name and see what rises to the top.

Keep in mind that a slogan can evolve over time (just like your brand’s personality). You just want it to be catchy enough to stick in consumers’ minds.

Check out this list of 100 brand slogans for inspiration.

Design your brand’s logo

Your logo is your brand’s most important visual asset and possibly even your most important piece of successful branding. It will appear everywhere.

Again, you want to be unique and memorable. It also should be scalable and have at least a couple of variations that make it flexible to use everywhere and on everything.

For example, if your main logo is text-only or text-based (which typically makes it more of a horizontal shape), consider creating an alternative square version.

Different types of logos include:

Lettermark, which involves turning the initials of your business name into the logo (such as the IBM logo)
Wordmark, which only consists of your brand name (such as the Coca-Cola logo)
Icon, which only consists of a graphic and makes the most sense for previously established, well-known brands (such as the Twitter bird logo)
Abstract, which are made up of different shapes and colors (such as the Google Chrome logo)
Emblem, which are typically a circular shape with both text and an emblem (such as the BMW logo)
Mascot, which includes an illustration of your brand’s mascot if you have one (such as the Wendy’s logo)
Combination, which incorporates various styles of logos into one logo (such as the McDonald’s logo)

If you’re not a graphic designer, you can definitely hire one, or consider trying one of these 11 free graphic design tools for the non-designer.

Develop your branded content

Branded content comes in so many different forms and types. Whether it’s a video series on YouTube, a weekly blog post on your website, or something else, the content you create should serve a purpose: to connect with your target audience.

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing. Also, consider incorporating premium content into your strategy for lead generation and more.

In conclusion

Once you’ve determined all the critical elements that comprise your brand, we recommend documenting everything in a brand style guide. Not only will it help you stay consistent over time, but it makes it easy to communicate your branding elements to others on your team so that they can properly reflect your brand as well.

As you create your brand from scratch, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, such as automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 tips to build your fitness brand from scratch

First impressions are everything, especially when it comes to your fitness brand.

In fact, it takes only 10 seconds for a consumer to cement his or her first impression of your fitness brand.

Fitness is a crowded industry with many similar-sounding and similar-looking brands. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd.

Want to make an impact on potential customers? Then, you must create a fitness brand that is memorable and stands out from the rest.

The following are eight tips to help you build a successful fitness brand from scratch.

Identify your target audience

Audience is everything. Who you’re targeting, as well as what their needs and wants are, is the first step to creating your fitness brand.

However, it’s important to be as specific as possible.

This can be challenging because it’s tempting to want to target “everyone” because that will lead to more customers and greater success, right? Not so fast.

When your brand message is broad and directed to “everyone,” it usually resonates with no one and falls short of delivering the results you want.

Again, don’t be afraid to get specific:

Age, gender and other demographics
Lifestyle
Behaviors
Challenges
Needs
Interests

For example, you could target new moms between ages 25 and 35 who have limited time in their day and crave connection with a supportive community of other new moms.

Whatever it might be, nailing down your audience niche will go a long way to shaping your specific fitness brand.

Research your competition

Who else is targeting your ideal customers? What is their niche? How are they raising awareness about their fitness brand? What are they doing well? What are they lacking?

These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself in a competitive analysis. The more you can understand your competition (especially for your target audience), the better you can decide what to do with your fitness brand so that you can stand out and appeal to potential clients.

One way to find similar competition is through Google searches. Type the queries you would want people to use to find your fitness brand.

Set your mission

Once you understand your specific target audience and know what else is out there competition-wise, it’s time to settle on your mission statement.

A mission statement explains what your company’s passion is and the values you offer to your clients. It’s your company’s reason for existence. Remember that the more you can relate to the wants and needs of your clients, the more likely they’ll choose you over a competitor.

This is an important step in creating your fitness brand because your mission will help inform all future strategies and marketing messages.

Your mission statement also will inform your logo and tagline.

Determine your unique benefits

As part of your fitness brand, you must decide on the benefits you can offer that no one else can. Think about your audience research, your competition analysis and where the two intersect.

Where can you fill in the gaps?

For example, this could tie into the type of exercise equipment you feature, the affordability of your rates, a unique training environment, etc.

These benefits are integral to your fitness brand and should be thought through as part of your brand development.

Then, you’ll want to make sure that you highlight these both in writing and visually (images and videos). The videos especially will play into consumers’ first impressions of your fitness brand.

Pick the best name

This could be an obvious step (and maybe you already have a great name in mind), but nonetheless, you’ll want to consider all the key factors before settling on a permanent fitness brand name.

In addition to thinking of a word (or words) that accurately speaks to the services you’re providing and the clientele you’re targeting, be aware of:

Simple spelling
Easy pronunciation
Uniqueness (not sounding like everyone else)
If a domain name is available online

Especially when it comes to domain names, check out our beginner’s guide.

Once you’ve brainstormed and settled on a few top choices, run them by friends, family, colleagues, strangers, anyone.

Are they as easy to spell and pronounce as you think? Do they convey the right idea without any other information? This feedback will help you narrow your list down.

Design your logo

Whether you’re designing your logo or you hire someone else to, the fact remains that your logo is critical to your fitness brand.

About 75 percent of people recognize a brand by its logo, with 60 percent by its visual style, 45 percent by the brand’s signature color, and 25 percent by its unique voice.

Your logo will be used on your website, social media accounts, print materials and any additional advertising.

Start by developing a specific and distinct color palette, with consideration of color psychology and how different colors impact us. For fitness, think about what colors (and color shades) will drive motivation and/or energy.

Of course, this also is the time to decide on your branded fonts, iconography, photo styles, overall web design and any other visual elements that can come into play.

The best visual branding will be recognizable after seeing it a few times.

Again, you’ll want to run your drafts by others for feedback, which is invaluable to going with the best possible visual combination for your fitness brand.

Discover your voice

Think of your voice as how you express your fitness brand and communicate with others. You’ll want to consider the wording, expressions and tones that can be brought together to create your style.

For fitness, ask yourself if your brand should sound motivating, authoritative, friendly, informative or even something else entirely.

Check out our eight tips for finding your voice and reflecting your brand’s personality.

Once developed, you’ll want to use it consistently across all platforms and in all instances.

Build your fitness brand personality

All of the above elements should come together to inform your overall fitness brand personality.

Ideally, this personality is a reflection of you and your own personality, whether that’s high energy, exclusive, educational, fun, so on. Build on your strengths and allow all the pieces of your fitness brand to stand on their own.

No matter what direction you go in, remember that brand currency online is authenticity and trust, where authenticity leads to trust from your target audience who eventually can convert into clients.

Never lose sight of the opportunities to connect in meaningful, honest ways.

In fact, common mistakes you’ll want to avoid while building your fitness brand in general include (but are not limited to):

Focusing on yourself and not others
Inconsistency in branding, messaging and/or visuals
Ignoring feedback

Your brand being a reflection of you is a great thing, but your mission is about improving the lives of others. That’s what will resonate most.

In conclusion

Once you’ve developed your fitness brand, it’s time to launch your website, strategize and promote. Consistent brand presentation across all digital platforms increases revenue by up to 23 percent.

See our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

While you’re working on promoting your new fitness brand, consider DailyStory. Our digital marketing platform integrates with MindBody and Rhinofit to better serve fitness studios and gyms and offers such features as SMS text message marketing, email marketing, automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

Find your voice: 8 tips for reflecting your brand’s personality

You may hear it often these days. Your “brand voice” is everything online.

It helps people connect with you, engage with you and (hopefully) come to trust you.

As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

But a brand voice is nothing more than the personality of your brand, and while we largely view this as an online requirement, it transcends to any other medium (print and broadcast included) where your brand may express itself.

See our nine tips to help build a new brand from scratch.

Here are eight tips on how to find your brand voice so that you can be consistent and engaging.

Start with your company’s mission statement

The purpose of your brand should drive the type of tone and voice you create. In other words, your personality should reflect what you care about.

Review your current messaging

If you’re not starting from scratch and already have content created, it’s a good idea to perform an audit. You’ll want to look over your website, any blog posts, social media posts, videos, etc.

Is there consistency among the tone and messaging? Or, is it a bit all over the place? Take note of the best-performing pieces because they could be a signal of what is already connecting with your audience.

Deep dive into your audience

How old are there? Mostly one gender or evenly split? Where do they live? Education? Occupations? How did they hear of your business? And whatever other data you have is helpful.

If you’re looking to reach more middle-aged women, this voice looks a lot different than if you want to reach more college-aged men.

See our seven tips to help you determine your target audience.

Play the ‘We’re this, not that’ game

Okay, it’s not exactly a game. But it’s a great exercise to narrow down what your brand is about.

Simply fill in the blanks: “We’re ________, but we’re not __________.”

You’ll want to do this at least a half dozen times to drill down to the essence of how you want to sound. For example: “We’re laidback, but not lazy.”

You can and should take your audience research and most successful content into consideration while working through this.

Choose three words to describe your voice

If you let yourself go on the “We’re this, not that” exercise, there hopefully are a few keywords that now stick out to you.

If your brand was a person, ask yourself which three words you would use to describe this person’s personality. And how do these traits make you different?

Make a ‘brand voice chart’

Once you decide on the three traits that best represent your brand’s personality, you can build a chart so that you can flush out how each one should be used in your messaging moving forward.

Create a table with four columns. The first column is the list of brand characteristics you’ve already decided on. The next column is a description of how that trait relates to your company or brand. The third column are all the “Do’s” related to accomplishing that (such as using strong verbs if you’re passionate or being playful if you’re irrelevant, for example), whatever actions will reflect that trait. Then, the last column should have all the “Don’ts.” These are the actions you’ll want to avoid in the pursuit of reflecting that trait (such as using too much slang if you’re quirky or over-promising if you’re authentic, for example).

You’ll want to work through that chart for each personality trait, essentially creating your road map for your brand’s voice and tone that can be referenced moving forward.

Translate your ‘brand voice chart’ into guidelines

Because as we all know, it’s one thing if it’s just you communicating as your brand. It’s a whole other world when bringing a team together to share and express a single brand voice.

A deep dive into your brand’s core personality
A reflection on tone (how you’re communicating that personality, especially on different platforms)
A look at the specifics (that can be formatted as a “do this, not that” and even include recommended spelling, grammar and jargon use)
A description on multimedia use (ranging from videos to emojis)

The power of your guidelines does come from the time you invest in it to make it the “holy grail” of communication for your team.

Be ready to evolve as your brand does

Just like people, brands can grow and change over time. Be nimble about what this could look like for your brand and ready to adjust your ‘brand voice chart’ and guidelines as needed.

On the flip side, you don’t want to change too many things too quickly. It could confuse your team and your audience.

And above all, know that discovering and conveying your brand voice will be filled with some trials and errors no matter how much planning you do. Just keep an eye on your content’s performance across platforms and pivot as needed.

While you’re examining your brand voice, consider these seven tips to be more conversational and relatable in your marketing. In addition, see our 10 tips to build up your personal brand and grow your business.

Plus, check out our Digital Marketing 101 Guide for Beginners to get inspired about your own brand’s marketing efforts and focus.

As you begin to find your brand voice, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.