Brand Vision: What is it, and why do you need one?
Do you struggle to find your ideal clients and grow your community?
How about defining what makes you different from everyone else within your niche?
Or how about deciding what you should be spending time on within your business?
This is why knowing and owning your brand vision can be extremely impactful.
Just some quick background information for those of you who aren’t extremely familiar with me yet, I believe branding is so much more than your logo.
I help creative business owners and bloggers build minimal, meaningful brands through defining their Three V’s: vision, voice, and visuals.
Today, we’re focusing on that first V: vision.
I would even argue that your most important V is your vision. Without a crystal clear brand vision, you can’t truly define your voice and your visuals.
What is a brand vision anyway?
Your brand vision determines your blog or business's foundational pieces. Your brand vision is made up of the building blocks that lay out the rest of your brand.
It’s the bottom of your pyramid. It’s the structure to your home’s exterior. It’s the bread to your peanut butter and jelly. Get the picture? Without that foundational layer, all of the other pieces would simply fall apart.
In order to make a big impact with your business, you need to define your brand vision.
Having a solid brand vision comes down to:
What you do and how it’s different from everyone else within your niche.
Who your ideal readers or clients are—and we’re not just talking a surface description, like “females in their mid-20’s."
Where your people spend time and how to reach them. We’re talking details, like where she hangs out on the weekend and what her favorite bog or catalog is.
Your purpose, your values, and your why. You know, those things that make you YOU and get you out of bed each morning happy to go to work.
Your brand story and owning it—both the struggles and the triumphs.
What success looks like to YOU within your business, blog, and life.
Why do you need a brand vision?
01. When you try to attract everyone, you attract no one.
Let this one sink in for a minute. A lot of new business owners like to gloss right over this key piece of their brand vision. They think, "I don't care who I'm attracting. I'll take any client that is willing to pay me for the work."
The reason I know this? Because I've been there. That was my mentality when I was first starting out, but do you know what happened when I finally took defining my ideal client seriously? I started growing an engaged community full of my dream clients and readers.
Defining exactly who it is you want to work with is something that impacts the rest of your brand decisions. How can you relate your story back to your people if you don't know who your people are? How can you determine your overall brand voice if you have no idea who you're talking to?
When you get super specific on who your people are, writing blog posts and newsletters will come more naturally to you. Not to mention, you won't have to chase after your dream clients. If you're directing all of your content towards them, they will start naturally coming to you.
02. Without a clear purpose, you're bound to get lost along the way.
Getting burnt out. Feeling uninspired and unmotivated. Going through creative blocks. You’ve heard it all before or maybe you've experienced some of this yourself. The best way to combat all of these pesky road blocks along the way is by having a super solid sense of purpose.
When you know unwaveringly what your why is and what your core values are, you will be excited to keep pushing forward and living out your purpose. When you can see that end goal, all of those tough business decisions are going to get a lot easier to make. Your purpose and values keep you grounded along this whirlwind journey.
My top suggestion to every business owner feeling lost along the way is to remember your why. One of the amazing viewers last week even related the saying back to a scene from The Lion King where Mufasa is in the sky telling Simba to, "Remember who you are."
03. Without a clear understanding of what success means to you, the comparison game will get you.
There are so many benefits to determining what success means to you. When you know where you're brand's future is headed, you will be able to stay more motivated in the day to day work and keep from comparing your wins to someone else's. Everyone is different. Your version of success might be completely different to someone else's within your niche.
For example: Maybe your end goal is to write a book. Therefore you're probably super focused on writing amazing content for your blog, website, and newsletter. Maybe someone else within your niche has the end goal to be a speaker. So they might be killing it over on YouTube, periscope, or in webinars.
If you both start comparing yourself to each other and trying out all these other platforms that don't get you to your end goal, who's really winning? At the end of the day, you have to remember what YOUR version of success looks like and what your end goals are.
04. If you can’t tell someone why they should work with you, they will probably work with someone else.
You need to know what sets you apart from others in your niche. You have to be able to talk to your potential clients and readers about what you have offer that they can’t get anywhere else.
This is not always the easiest thing to figure out, but in the words of Marie Forleo, everything is figureoutable. Once you define your unique talent, you will feel more confident in your brand and your offerings.
05. Having a clear sense direction can help manage your time.
When you know where you’re headed with your brand, you can better prioritize everything you need to get done and determine what you need to say no to. At the end of the day, time is all we have. Make sure you’re spending your time on the right things—the things that are going to advance your brand and attract more dream clients.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not working with purpose. I’m not saying you need to have a 10 year plan or even a 5 year plan. I'm a total believer in being able to grow and evolve with your brand. However, knowing where you want to be within a year, can help you determine the steps you need to take to get you there. You can better align your day to day activities when you know where you’re going.
For example: If you want to be speaking at conferences within a year, then you might start off speaking on periscope, doing guest interviews on podcasts, and connecting with other girl bosses who are also interested in speaking.
06. In order for your clients to feel confident in you, you need to feel confident in yourself.
Confidence is a tough thing to master, especially when you're just starting out. The more clients you work with the more confident you will feel.
One way to speed up the process is by having a crystal clear brand vision. When you can confidently tell your potential clients what you do and what you have to offer, they're going to take you more seriously.
Your potential clients are not going to have a lot of confidence in you if you stumble your way through the answer to their first question: "What do you do?"