5 Major Components Your Brand Guide is Missing
Let’s talk about the difference between a Brand Guide and a style guide.
A style guide should be a piece of your brand guide, but it is such a small piece in the grand scheme of your brand. It should also be the last piece, and I’ll tell you why.
The visual side of your brand is adequately chosen when you have already done the work to hash out the foundations.
How can you visually represent something you don’t have nailed down yet? I’ve often seen entrepreneurs blindly choose their brand colors, fonts, patterns, logo, etc. They usually quickly change it to feel more like… well, them.
Let me explain. Here are a few examples:
If you’re a super bubbly person with a sunshiny brand voice, you probably wouldn’t want dark and moody brand colors, right?
Or maybe you’re a super calm, cool, and chill brand representing peace and calmness, but then your brand colors are super warm energetic vibes.
What about a super Earthy nature loving health coach who chooses a corporate-style font and royal blue and red
Brand foundations - you can’t see them, but you can feel them, which is crucial because, as humans, we are emotional beings.
We make decisions out of emotion. We buy out of emotion.
The brand foundations most people miss:
Mission, vision, and core values
What is the more significant impact you’re determined to create because of your product or service? What does the ultimate best day look like? What is important in life in business? How do you treat your people? What are non-negotiable behaviors for you and your team? What is your why? What is the life you are creating for yourself and your family? What do people say about you when you’re not in the room? These are the questions to revisit often and they should be in your brand guide and reflect these throughout your platforms and messaging. These are your brand foundations.
Brand Stories
Story is what connects us. Our brains are literally wired to love and connect with stories. This is why we love movies, shows, songs, plays, books, etc.
What is your origin story?
What is your disruptor story?
What is your people and community story?
(Learn how to discover your seven types of brand stories here)
Brand stories belong in a brand guide because we (our brand) are made up of stories that need to be shared often.
BONUS TIP: If your audience can’t recite your story back to you, you’re not telling it enough.
Brand positioning statement
Brand positioning is the distinctive placement of your business within the market and, more specifically, within the mind of your avatar.
Our positioning statement at The Weber Co. is: “For women entrepreneurs who are building a thriving brand and business, The Weber Co. is a brand and marketing strategy company that prioritizes human connection in our approach through coaching and our agency. We believe that having a powerful brand foundation unlocks your ability to market your business powerfully to convert an audience that become raving fans, your best referrals and repeat customers.”
Avatar details, needs, and journey
Demographic information
This first level of information tells us their age, what jargon they use, what times they are online, their needs, if they are married, if they are financially qualified, etc.
Behavioral information
This second level of information tells us what they do on the weekends, how they live their day to day life, where they shop, and why they make buying decisions.
Psychographic information
This last level of information tells us their deepest desires, core values and beliefs, fears, and needs.
Along with this detailed information, we include the story we give them and how we specifically help them achieve their desired level of success through our program.
We include the Avatar pieces in our brand guides because it supports our marketing efforts just like the rest of the brand guide. The avatar details help us tailor our marketing to attract the exact person we aim to attract.
Client Continuums:
This is probably the most underleveraged strategy for increased client retention. Having a plan in place for your client’s continuum with you is your responsibility, not theirs. This almost serves as a continual proposal for your current clients.
At The Weber Co., we serve service-based, product-based, and network marketing-based businesses and we have plans for them each to find their desired level of success while continuing to work with us.
In a nutshell, this is a simplified version of our client continuum:
Service-based:
9-5 Side Hustler > Freelancer > Solopreneur > Building Team/Out-sourcing >CEO
Product-based:
9-5 Side Hustler > Full Time - Etsy, shows, website, Shopify, vendors > Additional products/ streams OR Pivot to Service > Building Team/Out-sourcing >CEO
Network Marketer:
9-5 Side Hustler > Full Time - growing their team and customer base with a solid foundation > Develop their own offer > Building Team/Out-sourcing > CEO
Of course, this won’t be the journey for every client that walks through our programs, because they all have different desired levels and descriptions of success. However, having these plans in place for them should highly increase results and retention.
We would love to teach you the other components that we house in our brand guides! We will have something super stellar very soon, it will only be open for a limited time so make sure to join our inner circle by sending us a DM here on Instagram!