My top 10 tips to DIY your branding
So you’ve started a business and you’ve decided you want to DIY your branding to save a few dollars. Well, a bit more than a few dollars. Branding isn’t cheap. And if you find someone who is, then I would red flag them!
A lot of work goes into branding, especially good branding. I like to break it up into two components - Strategy and Design.
Strategy should always ALWAYS come first. This is going to be the core and backbone of your business and branding. Having a brand strategy will help you make the best and right decisions when it comes to design.
So here are my top 10 tips if you’ve decided to DIY your branding.
STRATEGY
#1 Know your ideal client
You’ve probably heard it before but that’s because it’s the single most important thing you must have down pact if you want to conquer your branding. You must know your target audience. Who do you want to buy your product or service? Where are they located? What’s their demographic?
Why is having a target audience so important?
Well you need someone to market your product to. Once you know the behaviours of your audience it gives you the power to create convincing marketing campaigns and ultimately end up with higher conversions and more sales. If you don’t know your target market then you will be marketing to everybody therefore targeting nobody. You don’t want to be generic and cater for everyone, you want to stand out and bring in the clients or customers you want.
How do you figure out who your ideal client is?
Have a think about the best client you have ever had. Are they the loyal customer that buys loads of your products, or hires you for your services? Someone who is easy to work with? Now write down everything about them and create a profile of your dream client.
Once you’ve developed your ideal customer you can tailor your branding to suit and appeal just to them. They’ll feel like you’re talking to them, communicating with them on a different level. They’ll feel an emotional connection to your brand which is exactly what you want.
#2 Uncover your why
What is your why? Your Why is your purpose. So ask yourself what is my purpose? Or what is my business’ purpose? It’s whatever drove you to start your business in the first place and whatever drives you to continue making your business the best it can be.
Why does that matter? Because people want to relate to, and have an emotional connection to brands. If you are passionate about your business then show it in everything you do and this will help to concrete your branding.
To figure out your why write down all the reasons you started your business. Reasons other than money. What gets you out of bed everyday and drives you to work in your business?
#3 Work out your brand keywords
What are brand keywords? These are words that describe your brand or how you want you brand to feel to your ideal client or audience. These will come in super handy once you start design. You can always go back and reference them to make sure your designs align.
I recommend choosing anywhere from 5-8 words that will help visualise, describe and define your brand.
#4 Figure out your tone of voice
Your tone of voice relates to your target market. It’s the way you communicate with them. Once you have your ideal customer profile you can ask yourself how do they communicate with others? Are the casual and relaxed? Are they loud, fun and vibrant? Are they spiritual and passionate?
Whichever one it is you have to communicate with them the way that most feels comfortable to them and of course to you.
DESIGN - THE FUN PART
#5 Creating a mood board
So now we come to more exciting part of the process where we can start to visualise our brand. A mood board is a great way to gather ideas on how you want your branding to visually look and feel. It’s a collection of images, colours and text organised on a page that helps you evoke the feeling of a certain concept, aka your brand.
My absolute favourite tool for this is Pinterest. The ultimate library of beautiful images. Make sure you have a free Pinterest account and start a new board and call it ‘my brand board’ or something similar.
Then go wild and search for images to pin to your board. This is where you can utilse those keywords you’ve already come up with. You can search whatever you like from fabrics, textures, patterns, interiors and graphic design. The world is your oyster here.
But remember not to spend too much time on it. It’s definitely a rabbit hole situation where you can get lost pinning for hours!
#6 Choosing a colour palette for your brand
Once you are happy with your mood board you will be able to see some consistency in the images you’ve pinned. There should be a certain Vibe about them and some colour consistencies.
If you take a screen shot of your mood board you can use a tool like https://coolors.co/ to help you find a colour palette that aligns with your board.
Canva also has a similar tool where you can upload an image and it will generate a colour palette for you.
Just be sure to check back on your keywords and make sure the palette aligns with your keywords.
#7 Choosing the right fonts
Choosing the right fonts can be difficult but I have two main rules I stick by.
ONE Choose one font that is a bit fun and has some personality. You will usually only use this font for small sections of text like headings.
TWO Choose one font that is simple, easy to read but still aligns to your brand keywords and overall vibe. This font will be used for larger pieces of text. You want this to be easy for your target market to read.
For free fonts I use Google fonts but if you’re wanting something a little different and a bit fun my go to is Creative Market. They have a great selection of fonts you can purchase.
#8 Designing your logo
If you are creating your own logo I highly recommend keeping it simple! You can have some fun with it by using a cool font but don’t try to go over the top with it, especially if you’re not a designer.
It’s always good to have a main logo which is the name of your business and a brandmark or sub logo which is a smaller more compact version. Perhaps something like initials.
Just remember, you don’t walk into an Apple shop and buy their products because you love their logo. You go in there for the brand experience and the quality of products.
Don’t get me wrong logos are an important part of branding but they are not your brand!
#9 Incorporating pattern
Patterns are not an essential part of a brand but they do enhance your branding and can be a great asset to have and use for increased brand recognition.
Patterns can be made up of shapes, colours or even brand elements like different versions of your logo. If you’re not confident creating your own patterns you can purchase some readymade ones of sites like creative market.
Probably sounding like an old record by now but make sure the patterns align to your brand keywords and mood board!
#10 Brand Style Guide
Finally bring everything together into your brand style guide.
You’re probably thinking, what is a brand style guide? It’s a one pager that is a summary of your brand. It should consist of your logos, brand keywords, fonts, colour palette and mood board. It’s a great piece of reference material you can always go back to when creating other assets of your brand. It can be easy to get sidetracked with cool new design trends, fun new fonts and colours. This style guide will make sure you are staying consistent and true to your brand.
So there it is. My top 10 tips for DIYing your branding.
To make it a little easier for you I have created a FREE brand style guide template to help you on your DIY journey.
If you decide DIY is not for you, we offer semi-custom branding packages for a fraction of the price of our custom branding. Check them out here.
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