Brand Design: Pretty Logo? Or Something More?
Most business owners think brand design is about making things look pretty. They're wrong.
In fact, this is something you already know deep down, even if you’re thinking isn’t that concrete. As a business owner, you can’t imagine paying thousands of dollars for a pretty logo and a shiny new website. Your capital & hard earned dollars are more valuable than pretty & shiny. I know that, and you know that.
Why are you investing in design & strategy?
To make more money
To acquire more customers
To ensure you’re attracting the right customers in the first place
To raise your prices
And so much more
How do a pretty logo and a shiny website help you achieve these things?
They don’t.
So if brand design & strategy only get you a pretty logo and shiny website, the investment is a complete waste of money. Full stop.
However, and it may surprise you to hear this - brand design & strategy actually results in massive return on investment, qualitatively and quantitatively. That’s right, brand design results in both subtle, implicit benefits & cold hard revenue.
If that does come as a surprise, then I have to apologize on behalf the entire design industry. We’ve led you astray and made you believe that we are artists. We’re not, (I even suck at drawing). Design isn’t art, it’s design. Where artists look to express themselves, designers look to solve solve problems in a creative way. Artists would say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but design should not have subjective outcomes.
So, design should solve problems, so the logical question is, what kind of problems are business owners looking to solve when hiring a brand designer? Well, think about what you’re struggling with right now:
The audience that you are attracting is unaligned.
If you’re getting eyes on your offers but customers aren’t actually purchasing, it’s because you have a messaging and conversion problem.
The people seeing your stuff aren’t actually interested - you’re audience isn’t aligned with your brand.
A brand designer who works with you to formulate your message so that the people seeing your stuff actually are interested solves this problem.
People don’t view your offers as valuable.
You’re charging for $X but potential clients think that number should be lowered by 50% and that you’re charging too much. So what do you do? You lower your prices, even though you want to make more money & scale your business.
So now you’re stuck, because you feel like you can’t charge more than you’re charging right now even though you want or need to. Brand design helps your audience see your services as more valuable, allowing you to raise your prices without losing customers.
You don’t know how to tell people what you do.
You’re not in an extremely niche industry or vertical, but for some reason every time you tell someone what you do, you have to dumb it down or change the specifics so that people can understand.
For example, if you’re business coach and someone asks what you do for work, you might say “I’m a business coach” or “I consult other businesses”, instead of the whole truth: “I help solo entrepreneurs get clarity about their marketing and business strategy so that they can make more money.”
Why is the whole truth more effective? Because when you just give someone your title, you’re not helping them understand what you actually do and who you do it for. So in this example if that person you were speaking with had a friend, who fits your target audience perfectly, they would never even know!
A brand designer who helps you understand your mission, vision, and target audiences gives you that clarity to communicate more effectively. If the majority of your marketing happens through actual conversations with other people, this effective communication is all the more important.
You don’t understand your target audience
Another way clarity helps is in your actual marketing. When you don’t understand your target audience, or the people you’re trying to sell to, you can be really distracted and inefficient.
So if you’re a consultant to non-profits on fundraising and grant writing, Instagram & Facebook shouldn’t be your primary marketing channels! It should be LinkedIn & in-person events.
Why? Because your target audience should dictate the way you market your business, not the other way around. A brand designer who gives you clarity on your target audience and how to reach them makes your marketing efforts so much more effective.
And there are literally so many other examples of problems that brand design & strategy solves.
So when you begin working with a brand designer, it’s important to know that you’re not committing to checking a box off of your to-do list & expecting a pretty logo and a shiny new website after your project.
That’s not worth the thousands of dollars you’re investing into the project.
And I mean, think about your goals. Maybe you want:
To make six-figures
To drive community impact & serve your people well
More clients & projects
A better client experience
More press features & opportunities
Brand design & strategy helps you achieve those things. When you begin working with a brand designer, your committing to establishing the foundation that will shape your brand and drive cold hard revenue into your business.
Here are ways I’ve seen my own projects directly impact the clients I’ve worked with:
Increased revenue
Increased website conversion rate
Elevated customer onboarding and experience
Increased community buy-in (one time, because the brand authentically lived out the values we established during the Strategy phase of our project, & because they so faithfully served their customers, a customer got the logo I designed tattoo’d on their leg because the brand meant so much to them. think about the revenue that amount of brand-loyalty drives.)
Increased clarity and confidence for business owners about their brand
And so much more
So there is a profound potential for ROI when working with a brand designer. That is, if the project isn’t just for a pretty logo and a shiny new website.
If you’re looking for serious, objective outcomes and for a brand your serious about that serves people you’re even more serious about, reach out today!
