E02: The 3 Pillars of A Killer Brand!
Welcome back to the Marketing Domination Podcast! In this episode, we're breaking down the essential components of branding for small business owners.
We'll explore the three key parts of a brand: visual identity, brand persona, and brand script. But remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is a strong brand! So take your time to build a solid foundation and don’t rush through the process.
But most importantly, don’t overthink the visual identity and logo design, your messaging is what you should focus on.
👉 Listen to the first episode right here!
What You’ll learn:
Build a Solid Foundation: Don't rush through the branding process. Take the time to define your brand's essence, values, and personality.
Simplify Visual Identity: While visual elements like logos are important, they're not the be-all and end-all. Don't overthink it—focus on creating a design that resonates with your audience.
Craft Your Brand Persona: Take the time to really understand your target audience and create a brand persona that speaks directly to their needs, desires, and aspirations.
StoryBrand Framework: Use the StoryBrand guide to craft a clear and compelling brand message that positions your customer as the hero.
Strong Call to Action: Don't forget to have a strong call to action. Make it clear what you want your audience to do next.
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EPISODE 2 TRANSCRIPTION
INTRODUCTION
Sean Garner [00:00]:
So what do small business owners actually need to know when it comes to their branding? And where are 99% of them making a huge mistake? We're going to talk about all of that on today's episode of Marketing Domination.
What's up, guys? My name is Sean Garner and on top of owning multiple businesses with my wife, I'm also the owner of Sean Garner Consulting, which is a small business marketing agency that builds, fills and optimizes sales funnels for small business owners so they can get more leads and be seen as the industry leader. And what I want to do today is share with you all about branding.
If you listen to the last episode we talked about, we're going through this Marketing Domination framework that we use at our agency to help small business owners get more leads and stand out as the leader online and dominate their industry. And with that comes three different parts. We build sales funnels, we fill sales funnels and we optimize sales funnels.
So as a small business owner yourself, this is the very first episode of the build a sales funnel section. And the very first aspect that comes down to your sales funnel is your branding.
Sean Garner [01:10]:
And now I want to make sure that you guys listen to this entire episode or watch it if you're watching the video version. Because at the very end, we are going to talk about the biggest mistake that most small business owners make in their branding. So make sure you stick around in that. As I go through this today, I'm going to share with you the three aspects of your branding.
But I'm not going to do it in the order I recommend. I'm actually going to do it in the opposite order because the order that I'm going to go through today is how most small business owners think about their branding and the order they do things in. So we're going to kind of layer this up, talk about these different aspects of your branding so you know exactly what you need as well as some bonus things inside to make sure you get these things done because this is the foundation. So let's go, all about branding for small business owners. Boom.
TAKE YOUR TIME WHEN BUILDING YOUR BRAND
Sean Garner [02:02]:
All right, so the first thing when it comes to your branding is you need to realize to take your time on this step. This lays the foundation for everything that you do. So we don't want to rush through this part because it's so much easier to correct issues and make decisions now than to have to go back and change things.
You'll see things all the time where people are like, well, we're just rebranding right now probably means because they didn't take enough time to consider everything that they were doing in the get go because they were just trying to rush and get something out there really quick. So we don't want to do that. We do want to make sure that we have a good, solid foundation for our brand whenever we go to build it out. On the flip side, I also see people way overthinking, analyze this.
Sean Garner [02:49]:
And what I always tell companies all the time is like, listen, you're not, you know, Coca Cola, Pepsi or Nike or anything like that, these big, huge, world renowned brands where people could just see the logo and instantly know what it is, right? You're a small business owner. Typically you're serving a small local market. You can make a mistake, and it's not really a mistake because I think that there's good brands and bad brands, especially from a logo perspective.
But I see people overthink this part all the time, so don't overthink it, but at the same time, don't rush through it. So, yeah, maybe, I don't mean to make that sound confusing, but I see people do both. So I just want you to know that this is important. But at the same time, I've never seen a company from the visual standpoint back, man, I want to do business with them because they've got a really cool look. So we're not going to spend all the time thinking about our logo.
#1 VISUAL IDENTITY
Sean Garner [03:38]:
So the very first aspect, whenever it comes to our branding as a small business owner, is the visual identity of your brand. This is where most people spend their time as a small business owner and getting a brand, personal brand and stuff like that started is the visual identity.
The visual identity of your brand is going to be things like your logo, the colors, the fonts that you're using, anything that visually represents your brand online or even in the physical space. Now, with this part, I do think that it is important, but I also think that this is where especially first time or newer business owners spend too much time and get a little bit too excited because, you know, they've had this idea in their mind for a long time and they finally are taking action to create this business of theirs and they have this grand vision of like, oh, man, this logo is going to be on billboards everywhere. I mean, it's probably going to be like a Super Bowl commercial. I want to put it on. You know, I'm going to brand the side of my car, all of this stuff.
Sean Garner [04:41]:
And they want this logo to be perfect. And by no means do I want you to rush it? But I also think that sometimes, and by designing multiple logos and brand sheets for clients, I shouldn't say sometimes. Most of the time what I have found is the newer the business is or the smaller the business or the more inexperienced the business owner is, the more they place a greater emphasis on this part.
I've worked with business owners that are serial entrepreneurs. They own multiple companies, pretty much the first draft for them. Like, yep, that's cool, let's run with it. Let's go. Because they know that it's important.
Sean Garner [05:14]:
You need to have something and you don't want it to be way off what you envision. But you also know that this is not going to be the deciding purchasing factor for whenever a customer makes a decision. So we need to have with our branding those key elements. Now I'm going to give you a few bonus things to ask for. So if you are hiring an agency or you are hiring a graphic designer to build your visual brand for you, these are some things that I want to make sure that you ask for them to include.
So you have everything because this, remember, it serves as the foundation for everything that you do. So another thing that I see is if a small business has an existing brand and they come to our agency and they want us to start building out their sales funnel and their website, a lot of times I have found that the original designer that built the logo didn't think about the whole visual identity of the brand and they missed some key aspects. So if you're having a designer build out your branding for you, or maybe you already have this or you're even trying to bootstrap this yourself and do it all yourself. That's awesome.
Sean Garner [06:13]:
These are some things I want to make sure that you have. So number one, make sure that you have your logo with your logo. You want to have it in a bunch of different variations. So you've got your, let's say you had a logo that has an emblem on it. You want to make sure that we have maybe just the text only, we have just the emblem only.
We have maybe it's horizontally stacked, vertically stacked, a bunch of different layouts and use cases for this. Because depending on what you're creating, you want to make sure that the designer is giving you some flexibility, whether it be on things like websites, social media, banners or print materials that you want to create.
Sean Garner [06:45]:
You want to have all the different variations of those logos. Also make sure that they're going to give them in like a background or transparent background version for you. So it looks like a PNG file or Adobe, if they're making it in like Adobe Photoshop or anything like that, give you those files. So that way you have all the different layers so you can take it to another designer, so that way they can always manipulate the file.
What you don't want is for somebody to get, for a designer to give you your final logo branding and it just to be a bunch of JPEG files because it's going to have a background on it. You're not going to be able to use it on things like your website or social graphics and stuff that you might be creating yourself. So we want to have that and all the different variations and stuff on it, as well as your colors. So whenever they are creating your brand identity, part of that should be when your brand sheet that they're creating for you is your brand colors.
Sean Garner [07:31]:
Now with this, we want you to think about your main logo colors. Obviously we want the hex codes and that's just the digital number codes that you're going to want to give to somebody else so they can make sure it's the exact same color. But not only do we want those, but we want to think about other colors for them to make. Almost like a branding style.
So it's not just the colors that are in your logo, but other colors that you will be using on things like your website, social assets and things like that. So it still stays within the same family of this visual identity that you're creating.
Other little bonus things that would be super helpful if they went ahead and created for you is something that's called a favicon. Favicon is whenever you go to build your website, if you look at the very small tab, if you're on looking at your Internet browser, the favicon is that little image on the little tab on your browser.
Sean Garner [08:15]:
So that way it shows your letter or your logo. If you don't put that, it pretty much always defaults to whatever CMS or website builder platform that you have. So if it's like WordPress, it's the little “w”, if it's Squarespace, it's the black little square Shopify, it's a little cool. So we want to make sure we can kind of customize that because that's just one of those things that helps you visually from a branding standpoint, stand out and elevate your brand so you look more professional.
And then the other thing that would be great if they could go ahead and create is not only once they have the logo files, but we want to have all the different color variations of those logo files. So for us, for example, our main color is blue, we have a red accent color and it's blacks, grays and whites. So whenever we create our logo files for the Sean Garner consulting brand, we have it in a transparent background of all those different color variations. So then that way, no matter where we're using it, we already have those files created.
Sean Garner [09:02]:
And so it's a lot easier to just whip up graphics really, really quickly and make things a lot easier for the small business owners. The other thing that would be awesome is if they're making the visual identity. This kind of goes into a different part of your sales funnel which we just call your digital storefront which is all of your social assets. But most of the time, unless your brand is a personal brand, you're going to want to have the logo as your social media profile.
So make sure they go ahead and create those no square formats for you. So you can use the logo on your social media profiles, whatever color combination makes sense and then possibly your banner images and everything as well. So that is everything that a business needs from a visual standpoint to get themselves started for their brand. Now the second aspect of their brand, so like I said, we're going to go in the order that most businesses do this in.
#2 BRAND PERSONA
Sean Garner [09:51]:
But I think it's the wrong order. I actually think it's completely backwards. I think that should honestly be the part of your brand you focus on last. And as we go through this at the very end, you're going to see why it should be done that way. The next part of your brand is what I would call your Brand Persona.
So this is going to be, not to get too ethereal with this, but this is going to be the part of your brand that is your character, it is your essence, it's how you show up online and in person. It's the words or it's the tone that you carry. It is the mission of your organization and it is the foundation of who you are.
Sean Garner [10:30]:
Because if you think about that, if you have those things, depending on those within the visual identity, it kind of could change that, right? Like if you're, if you're branded for us, Sean Garner consulting. We use big bold words and bold fonts like “awesome, dominate, crush it”. We use those kinds of words. We have really bold, bright colors like that really bright red of pop to really stand out.
One of the other businesses that my wife and I own is an IV therapy medical spa, it's a lot more softer and gentler. With the tones that we use, we're trying to create a spa-like atmosphere. So the colors, the visual identity is more flowy, it's softer colors. But because we have our brand Persona and we know who we are, then it much easier reflects the visual identity and the visual aspect of that.
Sean Garner [11:18]:
With part of your Brand Persona, what we want to think about is the type of person that would be attracted to that. That also wants to dictate kind of how we show up. I think your brand is much more than just the colors. When I say show up, that is, there's some part of it that's almost kind of intangible. It's the character of your brand, it's the character of who you are.
If it's a personal brand, like with the agency, it's Sean Garner Consulting. So a lot of the branding elements that you see is actually my personality. So they kind of, if you see this branding and you like that, you like the words that we say, if you like the things that we talk about and how we show up, well, then that's just, you're going to be a great customer and a great fit for us because we put those things through.
Sean Garner [12:08]:
Another part of your Brand Persona to think about is your mission statement. And we can do, and we will do a whole episode on just creating your mission statement because it also goes into your messaging aspect of what you do. But it's more done on an internal framework or an internal setting with your mission statement.
A lot of times also, small business owners overthink this aspect and they create something that sounds like poetry, but it gets zero action and zero results. Us coming from the StoryBrand world, the certified StoryBrand guides we love Don Miller's Business Made Simple framework for creating a mission statement that gets results and drives success. I’m going to do a whole episode about that in the future.
But one thing with it is it needs to be some, it needs to be very goal oriented, it needs to cast vision, it needs to have deadlines on it, and it needs to have the why behind it. And the most important thing, everybody needs to know what the mission statement is, if it's their mission, right? So we gotta have that.
Sean Garner [13:06]:
So that's the second aspect of our brand, is our Brand Persona. So the first thing, and this is how most small business owners do it, they're gonna create their visual identity, they're gonna create their logo, their colors, their fonts, they're gonna hire a graphic designer that, God bless those graphic designers, they're probably gonna make them do about 20 revisions on the logo.
And then after they do that, then they're going to start thinking about, well, what's our mission statement? What kind of a person do we want to create? And then they don't even actually think about this next step.
And if you are a small business owner, this part right here, I will say 99% of small business owners are missing this. And the ones that are doing it, very few are doing it intentionally. Out of the ones that do have this last aspect of their brand in place. There's a very small segment that were intentional about it.
#3 BRAND SCRIPT
Sean Garner [13:56]:
The others have been successful because it unintentionally happened. And that last aspect of your brand that you must have is your messaging. These are the words that you use to connect with your customers. A quote that I love. It may be cheesy, but it is “facts tell and stories sell”. That is very true and it is very true in your marketing. So what we love and what we are a part of is the story brand community as certified storybrand guides. So we believe the best way for you to create your brand messaging is with the story brand framework.
Sean Garner [14:39]:
Now what the StoryBrand framework is, it is a seven part messaging framework that creates all the talking points of your marketing and it positions your customer as the hero and you as the expert guide for them. These are the seven parts of the story brand framework. And I will tell you guys, if you put this in place in your business and you leverage it properly, your business will grow.
It's not enough just to have this on a doc or have this on a poster somewhere at your office. If you have this and you understand what it actually is, and you leverage it properly in all of your marketing and all of your communications, whether it be sales or internal, your business will grow. So here's the seven parts of the story brand framework. The first thing is your character. The character is not demographics and psychographics like most people would think of. That's more your Brand Persona.
Sean Garner [15:32]:
The character is your customer, and your customer wants something. That's the first thing that you need to realize is your customers want something and it's not your product or service. What they want is a result of the second part of the brand script is they want to have a problem. They want something, but there's a problem that's standing in their way now with the problem aspect.
It has three different levels. It has the external, which is the main thing they're dealing with, the internal, which is how that problem makes them feel, and the external, which is why it's just morally wrong that they have to deal with that. By the way, side note, we're getting ready to go through my personal brand script so you could actually see how you can apply this to your business.
Sean Garner [16:14]:
So the third thing is then they've got this problem but then they meet a guide. That's where you finally step in. And as a guide you have to show empathy and authority. You have to know what it's like to be in their shoes. At the same time, you have to have solved that problem for other people.
After that you want to give them a three step plan or a simple plan in order to go from where they're at to where they want to be. And you have to do the fifth thing which is to call them to action. If you don't call people to action, most people will just choose to stay where they're at and be complacent.
Sean Garner [16:48]:
And we call them to action step five so we can do step six which is help them avoid failure. What are all the bad things that your customer is going to continue to deal with if they don't get this problem solved by working with you?
And then step seven is the happily ever after, the success. What are all the good things that your customers will experience if they do business with you and they decide to work with you?
When you understand those seven key things and those talking points, you will be able to have all of your marketing done. And every time you talk to a customer, whether that be a sales pitch, a sales deck, call, internal communications, marketing, messaging, you're going to hear this statement all the time.
Man, It feels like you were talking directly to me, that’s because you were, you took the time to actually identify your customer, the things that they want, the problems they're dealing with, and you say those things. Another good marketing quote that I have is really good marketing. Two things. One, really good marketing is entering in the conversations and entering the conversations in the head of your dream customers.
Sean Garner [17:52]:
And then two, it's attracting the right people and then repelling the wrong ones. So with those seven key aspects of the Brand Script, I'm going to give you guys what my brand script is for Sean Garner Consulting. So you can understand and actually see how this comes to life.
Because with this Marketing Domination show, I want to have everything practical so you guys can take as a small business owner you can take these things and see how you can start applying them to your business, okay?
SEAN GARNER CONSULTING BRAND SCRIPT
Sean Garner [18:23]:
So this is my brand script for Sean Garner Consulting. And if you're listening to this and you're like how it sounds like he's talking directly to me. It's probably because you're the perfect customer for us. And that's also probably why you're listening to a small business podcast that helps you with your marketing.
Sean Garner [18:38]:
That's got to be what we want to work. So the first thing is our characters. So our customers, guess what? They don't want a marketing agency. They don't. They don't even want a website. They don't want the main thing that we sell, which is a sales funnel. What they want are more leads, more customers, and to be seen as the industry leader. That's what they want.
Sean Garner [18:59]:
If that's what you want, hey, guess what? We help you with that. So you don't want the thing that they're selling. They want something at a deeper level. I was in the fitness industry for a long time, so I always tell people like, nobody wants a personal trainer. They don't want a meal plan, they don't want a gym membership. And most of the time, business owners sell those things. That's not what people want. What they want is to feel confident in the way they look.
Sean Garner [19:23]:
What they want are increased health markers. What they want is to increase strength, lose body fat. Those are the things that they want.
And that's one of the biggest mindset shifts, if you can take that from this whole episode, is stop selling your products and services and start selling and connecting customers by giving them what they want and positioning your products and services as solutions to the problems. That's keeping your customers from getting what they want.
So the first aspect of the brand script is your character. Your character wants something. Ours is they want more leads and sales.
Sean Garner [19:58]:
They want to be seen as the industry leader and dominate online. But there's a problem. So the second thing that our customers are dealing with is the external problem.
The external problem that they're dealing with is they don't have a consistent marketing system in place to fill their sales pipeline with potential customers and showcase you as the go-to expert. That's the problem, right? You want those things, but the problem is you don't have a system in place to give you those things, which the next level of that problem is the internal.
How does it make you feel? Dealing with it probably makes you feel frustrated that others in your industry are seen as the leader and they are growing and people view them as the expert even though you have more knowledge and expertise than they do. That hit anybody right there?
Are you frustrated that others are seen in your industry and they seem to be growing and they are viewed as the expert, even though you have more knowledge and expertise than them?
Sean Garner [20:52]:
Well, what we think, and that third level deep, is we believe your marketing should be simple, consistently get results, and make the real experts dominate their industry. So with each one of these problems, the deeper that you're able to go, the more you're able to connect with your customers. So that's the second thing.
So the first thing is, what do they want? Second one is the problem. That problem is done at three different levels. The third thing is the guide. So what makes us, our agency, the right person to solve or guide these customers through this problem? So the first thing is empathy. With empathy, we want to show that we understand what it's like to be in their shoes.
Sean Garner [21:33]:
The second aspect is authority. How have we gotten results for other people like this in the past? And those things need to be in balance. If you guys haven't read, I very much would encourage you guys, get the book Building A StoryBrand by Donald Miller.
It is incredible. It will have a complete mindset shift. It will go through all of this information that we're talking about on the podcast. I'm a certified StoryBrand guide, and that is the framework that we use for helping our clients win and dominate online. And with that, you have to have a balance.
Sean Garner [22:01]:
They talk about in the book between empathy and authority. Again, coming from the fitness world, I use tons of fitness analogies. So imagine this. You go to a personal trainer and you tell them, hey, I really want to lose weight. I'm struggling, though, because I've got these late night ice creams or late night cravings where I always want to eat ice cream.
And they just sit there and they look across and they go, man, you know what? Me, too. In fact, there's this really good ice cream place across the street. You just want to go get ice cream right now.
Sean Garner [22:26]:
Like, tons of empathy, right? They can connect with you. They know exactly what it's like, but absolutely zero authority. The flip side. And then side note, this is a problem I saw with a lot of personal trainers. You tell that exact same story, they go, oh, man, you're just being weak. You got to dominate. You got to stay focused. You got to meal prep.
Sean Garner [22:41]:
You gotta eat chicken, broccoli, and rice every single meal. Do you want abs like this? Right? Zero empathy and tons of authority. What you want is that person to guide you that has a balance of both.
They're going to say something like, man, I used to struggle with that same exact thing until I developed this nutrition system and I was able to curb my late night cravings and finally see the results that I want. And, you know, not only did it work for me, but it worked for other clients just like you, right?
That sounds like a lot better of a guide that you would want to hire versus one that was super friendly, he's going to ice cream with you. And then two, the guy that doesn't relate to you at all as the guide for your business.
So for us, how we position ourselves as the guide is, I tell a little bit of my story. So I have just a really quick sound bite to where I say, I know how frustrating it can be to see others in the industry have more success online just because they were better at marketing what it is they do.
Sean Garner [23:36]:
And whenever I get into the longer version of this, I tell my story about how I was in the fitness industry for over a decade and I saw somebody go get a week insert, somebody that I knew go get a wake insert, start posting some Instagram pictures, and instantly they were making about five times what I was making online with having less than a month of experience.
I was so frustrated by that. Cause I thought it was, I just gotta get better at being a personal trainer. I gotta take all these certifications. And then they learned how to market and position themselves as an expert and they ended up making a ton more money. And then from the authority standpoint, what we do is we list all of our certifications. So obviously I'm a certified StoryBrand guide. We're a certified Semrush SEO agency, and then we list all of our client testimonials.
Sean Garner [24:17]:
There's tons of ways that you can demonstrate authority, facts, stats, but it's always really good to have real life case studies and customer success stories that we can do. So our website, if you guys have seen it, it's full of time, though.
The next thing that we do is our plan. So what is the three step process we use? So maybe somebody's come to our website, they've heard some of our branding and they've seen some of the things that we're talking about. Like, man, okay, this agency seems like they could be a good solution for me. What are the three steps I need to do to get it? Well, the ferry, what we do is we, I shouldn't say it's always three steps. It should be three steps, but we want to give them a plan in order to go from where they're at to where we want to be. And these are our three steps.
Sean Garner [24:54]:
If you have more than three, I don't remember the exact stats, but conversions drop dramatically because people are really good at remembering threes. So number one is we want people to schedule a call, go to our website. The very first thing you need to do to schedule a call. The second thing that you do is we build your sales funnel and the third one is you execute and dominate online.
So we have a very simple three step process to take you from what you want, deal with the problem and get you exactly where you want to go after that. Those two are calls to action. So in calls to action we want to have two in our branding. The first one we want to have is a direct call to action, which is what is the main thing we want our customers to do, to do business with us.
Sean Garner [25:32]:
And the second call to action is called a transitional call to action. So this is for those people we talked about in the last episode. They're not necessarily ready to buy from us or do business with us, but they're still interested in what we want to do. So that's going to have some type of a lead generator call to action for them. So for us, our main call to action that we use is to schedule a call. With your calls to action. They should be clear, simple and direct. Do not if your website right now says discover more or learn more, stop it.
Sean Garner [26:02]:
Change what you want them to do. Do you want them to schedule a call? Do you want them to book an appointment? Do you want them to start a free trial? Do you want them to buy now? What is the thing you want them to do? Make that change today and I promise you you'll start to see your business grow. If you are just clear with the call to action that you want people to do now.
For those people that aren't ready to buy, we have a transitional call to action. This is our lead generator. We have a couple that we promote, but our two main ones are our marketing domination checklist where if you guys want that, you can go to https://www.seangarner.co/ the link’s obviously down in the description and you get a free marketing domination checklist which is everything that you need in your business to make sure that your marketing dominates.
Second thing that we have is we have a FREE Marketing Assessment to where what you can do is it takes about five minutes to fill out but it actually generates this awesome PDF. It's about 55 to 60 pages.
Sean Garner [26:47]:
It's customized to you based upon your business. This gives you the next steps that you need to do on your marketing. That same thing, just go to https://www.seangarner.co/ and see the FREE Marketing Report tab on there. Be able to find out what you need to do in your marketing next. But that's our transitional lead generator. Right? So the people that come to the website, they're not ready to schedule a call. They do our transitional lead generator and the last two aspects of our brand messaging script is the failure.
Sean Garner [27:10]:
So what are all of the things people are going to continue to deal with if they don't do business with us? For us, this is what we've identified with our customers. So they're having their competition stand out. As the industry leader, they're missing out on clients and opportunities that should have been yours.
You continue to feel frustrated that your website isn't getting you the leads you need to grow your business. You're losing clients to your competition. You're wasting time on creating social media content that doesn't put you in front of more customers. You're going to continue to spend money on ads and marketing campaigns that don't convert. You're going to continue to deal with confusing marketing that doesn't work. That sucks, right?
Sean Garner [27:45]:
So we don't want to be super Debbie Downer, but we want to make sure that we have those things in our marketing and they're listed so we can speak them to our customers. Because most people, and we'll get into this more whenever we talk about how we plug all this stuff into a website, but most people think it's not going to get any worse.
We have to remind them of the present pain that they're in. I don't want to go super over the top with this, where I'm like, you know, if you don't hire this marketing agency or you don't get this problem solved, your spouse is going to leave you, you’re going to end up living under a bridge like, no, we don't want to do that.
We want to be realistic with people, but we still want to remind them of the current pain that they're in with StoryBrand. They use a bread baking analogy a lot to where we want to think about a good ratio of flour to salt. If you're making a loaf of bread, right? So this failure section is going to be salt. We want just a little bit of pinch for flavor.
Sean Garner [28:34]:
We don't want too much or it's going to ruin the loaf. Whereas then success is the flour. We want a ton of that so we can make a big loaf of bread for our customers.
So second, the very last part of this brand script is the success. This is the 7th part of this is all the positive things your customers are going to experience after they do business with you. So the things that for us, for example, that we list are, you know, they're going to stand out as the go to leader and expert of their industry.
You're going to have a clear– you're going to have a marketing funnel that works to get you leads while you sleep. You're going to have a clear marketing message that makes it simple for customers to understand how you help them and how to do business with you.
Sean Garner [29:10]:
You're going to rank higher on Google Search, you're going to get consistent leads coming in. You're going to have confidence in your marketing strategy. A fractional CMO that's there to help you make decisions.
All these awesome things, we got a huge list of them and we have all of those things in our marketing message that ultimately helps us to create with our branding, an identity transformation of taking somebody from an overwhelmed and confused business owner to the go-to expert in their industry. That's what our messaging of our branding looks like and what your branding should look like too.
And so last few things before we kind of wrap this up, guys, is how you actually use this and implement this as you're creating your brand script, this is not creating copy. That's one mistake I think that people make when they think about this is they think that they have to write the exact words that they're using in their marketing. It's not.
Sean Garner [29:58]:
This is like a bullet pointed list of talking points that you're going to use and you want to ensure that you have every aspect of it. Just like we talked about the bread making analogy earlier, you wanna make sure that you have all of the ingredients so you can actually create successful marketing campaigns, successful sales presentations, keynotes. We wanna make sure we have all these ingredients and that we talk about them in the right ratio.
And then one of the aspects of this that we're gonna do a whole episode on next time is going to be your one liner statement. How do we take all of these talking points and put them into an elevator pitch that helps customers connect with you quickly and makes you stand out online.
So guys, quick recap of everything today of what small businesses need in their branding. Now I'm going to flip it. And this is the order that I think you should create it in.
Sean Garner [30:44]:
Number one, I think you need to create a brand script. I think every small business owner should create one of these. If you haven't read the book, get the book. Building A StoryBrand by Don Miller goes into much more detail of these seven key talking points or hire a certified StoryBrand guide, just like us. And we'll help create all of these talking points for your small business after you do that.
Second thing you need to do is you need to create your Brand Persona. What are all the talking or what is the essence of your brand? Your mission statement, your tone, how you're going to show up online and present yourself. That needs to be created so you know the type of person that you want to go after.
And the third one is your Visual Identity, your logos, colors, fonts and how you are going to visually represent your brand for this awesome business that you're creating. So make sure you guys have those three aspects in all of your branding.
ACTION STEP OF THE WEEK
Sean Garner [31:23]:
Make sure you check out the next episode. So here's the call to action. I did say every episode is going to have a call to action. What are you missing on your brand? We'll do a self-audit/self-assessment.
Do you have all the things that we talked about for the visual identity you have? Have you even thought about your Brand Persona and how you even show up? Because especially as the company grows, if you are a smaller business right now, if you don't think about those things, don't assume that your team is going to automatically default and do it like you. We need to have those things documented and your Brand Persona created and written down.
Sean Garner [32:01]:
And the third one is, is your Brand Messaging. Do you actually know what your customers want and are you saying that, are you just talking about your products and services? Do a self-audit.
Make a list of the things that you need to get correct and go out there and take action on them so you can grow your small business and start dominating your industry.
Guys, thanks so much for watching. Have an awesome day. We'll see you on the next one.
