Designing your brand for your business isn’t easy.
But when your funds are limited, you may have no choice but to create your brand yourself.
As you puzzle through figuring out your business name and tagline, your message, your colors, fonts, and designing your website, you might start to feel overwhelmed.
Do you ever dream about handing it all off to a professional marketing firm so you don’t have to deal with it?
Even if you have thousands of dollars to put toward hiring a pro, I’m here to tell you why you should resist the urge.
Designing your brand yourself is one of the smartest moves you can make for your business. Why?
Designing your brand? You’ve got to know your business well
The process of creating your brand starts with taking a good, long look at the kind of customer you’d like to reach.
You examine their demographic information — age group, gender, and the like — and then look at their lifestyle, and think about their challenges.
- What do they like?
- What do they dislike?
- What problem can you solve?
- What kind of transformation can your product or service provide?
Your customers are looking for something that YOU can deliver.
You also need to think through how you’ll communicate with them, and what you’ll say. You’ll develop a “verbal brand:” the standard words and phrases you’ll use when talking about your business.
Related: Branding Yourself or Your Business: Personal vs Business Brand
Your verbal brand includes your tagline, your “brand promise,” and any business-related terminology you want to use consistently over time.
Developing this “below-the-surface” body of knowledge may seem like a thankless task. After all, you can’t see your demographics!
But getting this information straight from the very beginning will inform everything you do going forward. You’ll build a better brand, because it will be based on real people and their needs.
Take heart: You have passion on your side
No matter how professional the marketing firm you hire is, or how polished the designer’s portfolio you review looks, there’s no one — no one — who cares about whether or not your brand succeeds as much as you do.
That’s why even if you end up hiring someone to design a logo or a website header sometime in the future, going through the branding process yourself first is going to get you a better long-term result.
Because in the end, whose passion are we representing here? You know who your prospects are, you understand how to meet their needs, and you care more than anyone else that your business — and your brand — succeeds.
Have confidence in your expertise
By the time you hit mid-career or midlife, you have a ton of skills to bring the table.
You also have life experience. You’re resourceful and resilient.
You know how to handle the inevitable ups and downs that come with everything from running a business to simply being a grownup.
Take that confidence and resourcefulness and apply it to designing your brand.
Designing your brand yourself means you can get it done on your schedule
Ever hire someone to do a job and find out they can’t even start it for a few weeks? Busy marketing consultants and design firms sometimes get backed up for months, and if you want to hire them, you have no choice but to wait.
The beauty of creating your own brand is that you can do it on your schedule. If you want it next week, you can have it, once you understand step-by-step how to build it.
Related: How Can I Make My Own Website Rock?
Related: How to Build the Perfect Online Business for Your Current Life
5 simple tips for designing your own brand
You don’t have to be a design expert to create your own brand.
- Keep it simple
You can create a visual brand with just two colors. - Don’t overthink it
Color and font choices can take you down a rabbit hole. Try setting a timer to help you stay focused. - Keep your customer in mind
Don’t be afraid to pick a niche. You can focus your marketing message better when you know your best customers well. - “Design” your content
Format your content for screen reading. There are simple ways to get more people to read your content. Make the most of them! - Express your brand personality
Get your brand personality down in writing so you can benefit from communicating your business’s identity. Be clear and consistent!
Remember, your brand is more than a logo, fonts, and colors. Those are important for your visuals, but designing your brand means creating an entire customer experience.
When you’re consistent in your visual style, customers will recognize you.
When your customers know your values align with theirs and you deliver great service, they will remember you.
