Your Brand Toolbox: Part 2

1. Intro : Welcome to your brand toolbox. Part two. I'm Rachel Han. I'm gonna be your host throughout this course, I am a branding specialist. I work with marketing and communication, and this is, as I said, part to where we're going to roll up our sleeves and really create the tools that make up your brand toolbox or your brand guide if you prefer that term. And if you haven't done part one, I highly recommend you go back and have a look at that course because it explains what all the tools are and why they're important. If you're all set with your knowledge base and you've gone through part one of this course , then now is the exciting time when we get down toe work in this course, I'm going to be giving you practical techniques were going to be going through exercises together. And there's also going to be a working guide that is available in the course, is going to be in the resources tab that you can either use as a reference whenever you like, or to actually go with you through all of the chapters here. So this is a hands on. Let's make some things together, course. And because of that, we're going to be doing some brainstorming sessions, and I highly recommend that what you have with you before you start on the next chapter is some good old fashioned paper and pen. Now, maybe you've brainstormed before and you have a favorite notebook or highlighters or, you know, I like to use colored pens. Um, or maybe you've never brainstorm before, and if you haven't, that's okay. I'm gonna walk you through it. But the most important thing is that you set yourself up to let your thoughts freely roam. And in order to do that, my strongest recommendation is to turn away from, ah, like a word processing document and give yourself the advantage of using this 2000 year old invention called paper. When we have a word document open, it tends to feel very formal. Um, and it can really sort of shape. Are thinking. And what we want with brainstorming is for you to be able to go off in different directions at any given time. I will guide you through that. This is just a heads up that you should have some of these supplies on hand. before we get started. And if you have them ready, then you are all set to go through this course. When you finish this course, you're going tohave a draft for your brand toolbox or your brand guide, and when you have that, it's going to support you in making business decisions. It's going to support you in communicating your business toe others, and that's a really important tool. If you don't know that again, I suggest you watch brand basics for business success. Of course, that I've done before here on skill share. Are you comfortable? Do you have your supplies? Then let's build your brand. 2. Mission Statement: in this chapter, we are going to create your mission statement. Now, Your mission statement, as you probably know by now, is an ideological reason that your business exists. I sometimes call it the moral compass of a business because it guides every decision, no matter how big or small. And it's usually very short a sentence, maybe two, which is difficult to do. But we don't start by trying to be really small and short. We start by going big and letting all of I our ideas come out. And that's why we're going to have a little brainstorming session. Now. I'm going to guide you through this, and what I want you to have prepared is your paper and pens or whatever supplies you've decided are going to help you capture down your thoughts. Now, I'm gonna ask you a series of three questions, and I'm going to give you a short period of time to answer each question. And the reason why I'm just gonna give you a little bit of time is because I want you to go fast. I don't want you to be able to stop and think about really what you're writing down don't correct spelling. Don't try to even write in full sentences. If it doesn't makes sense for you, just get the thoughts out there as quickly as possible. And on your piece of paper, that might look like a Siris of lists that might look like a crazy spiderweb. It might look like, um, Bubbles thought bubbles or a long essay. It doesn't matter what it looks like on the paper. What matters is that you get everything going on up here down onto that paper. Okay, so we're going to start with one question, and then when your time is up with that, I will move on and ask you the next question. Remember, get all the ideas down on paper, and don't worry about if you're doing it wrong or right. There is no wrong way. There is only your ideas ready. The first question. What issues and topics are important to you? You personally. Time for question number two. If your business could make a change in the world, what would it be? Question three new piece of paper. What personal values have driven you to start this business? And that's it. Well done. You have completed your first brainstorming session of round your brand toolbox, and hopefully that wasn't too painful for you, but reflect How was that experience for you? Did you find it difficult to get things out? Or maybe you had lots of things to to say or write down and didn't have enough time? It's important to reflect not because one experience is better than the other, but that it can help you see where. Maybe you have, ah lot of things to explore or where you have the opportunity to really think through things. If you're stuck on something, that's a good sign that you need to pay attention to what's going on over there. You can always come back and try this exercise again. But for now I suggest that you put it away so that we can move on. It's really good to give yourself a break between coming and visiting each of these tools so that your brain can breathe and you can come with a little bit of a fresh perspective. You can also in the future, if you'd like, use the working guy that that is a part of this course, you can use it separately. on his own later, or you can use it as we go through this course, it's up to you. It does work as a stand alone, and that is available in the resources tab. Now I want you to take the paper that you've just created, put it in front of you and take a moment to look at the answers you wrote down to these three different questions. Do you see any overlap? Are you seeing similar things that were in answer to issues that are important to you and maybe the change that you want to see in the world or your personal values? Wherever you see this overlap happening, I want you to just make a note like a physical notes somehow of these things that are recurring in the different questions because these signals that their core to what you want to do with your business and that's really important. It would actually be great if you collect those and then write them down on their own separate piece of paper. I'll give you a moment to do that. Now you have a piece of paper with a collection of these recurring words or phrases or ideas about what you want to achieve with your business, and I want you to take some time to look at it and ask yourself how you could turn that into a statement. A sentence? What kind of words could you add, or how could you structure it to turn those thoughts into a cohesive sentence? Some words that can help you that are very common in mission statements are action words like create, build, help and become. Another part of this is to identify the who that's coming up or the what that's coming up. Who benefits? Is it the environment? Is it underprivileged Children? Is it other small businesses is at school systems identify who's benefiting and that is going to likely fit into your mission statement with this action word of create, build, help take some time to play around with those things and come up with a few sentences. It doesn't have to be really short and snappy and witty, but just something that when you read it, you go. That's about right we're aiming for. That's about right, because you're gonna have a chance to come back and refined these. But right now we want to find the core and the feeling in the idea. And when you've done that, you have a draft of your mission statement. Take your time, go ahead and pause me before going on to the next chapter. And when you are done with that draft, lovingly and passionately and with all respect, lay that mission statement draft aside and hold on to it for the end of the course. 3. Business Idea: Welcome to the next chapter where we're going to be working on your business idea. You did it. You made it through one brainstorming session, and we're going to do another together. So your business idea if your mission statement is the guiding star, the business idea is the path you take to get there or the vehicle that you're traveling in . The mission statement and the business idea work very closely together. But right now we're going to focus on business idea, and we're gonna use a similar approach to the last chapter in how we're going to brainstorm . So pen, paper, sticky notes, everything you need. Have them ready. I'm going to do the same thing where I ask you three questions and give you a short amount of time between them to get all of your reactions to that down on paper. Are you ready? Let's begin. What do you give to your clients or to customers? What resources do you use your offer? How does your business help you to achieve your mission statement And it's OK that your mission statement is just a draft right now. You have a good enough idea about it. That you can answer this question well done. You've made it through another brainstorming session with me, and now you have hopefully a collection of ideas about what your business idea is down on paper. How did that feel? Was it easier than the 1st 1? Maybe harder, maybe the same. Where did you rub up against obstacles? Or where did your thinking perhaps start, stop flowing so much? It's interesting sometimes and helpful to take a moment to reflect on where we get stalled and what kind of problems that might point to or opportunities. Now that you have all these ideas down about your business idea, I want you to take a look at your answers to these three questions and again see where you have overlaps. You can highlight them or circle them or just make a mental note right now. But what really stands out? Is there anything that you feel very strongly about in terms of your business idea and your answers that you have done in this brainstorming session? Now gather those overlapping ideas just like we did last time and collect them on another piece of paper altogether. I'll give you a moment once you've identified some of those overlapping ideas and you've collected them on a separate piece of paper. Now I want you to take the time to try to turn those overlapping ideas into a statement and some words that are very common in business. Ideas that might help you are words like support, offer and make. Of course, there are many other words, but just some ideas there to play around with and take the time pause me. I'll be here when you're done. Try to make a sentence or two about your business idea. How is it that you are going to achieve your mission statement? What is it that your business offers to the people that you want? Offer it to that can be in there, too. So give me a pause and we'll see you in a moment. How'd that go? Do you have a couple of sentences that sound like they're your business idea? Well done. Take that business idea draft and set it aside in your precious corner with your mission statement and seriously pat yourself on the back. This is some really mental gymnastics that you're doing, and it's very helpful. It's very taxing at times, but you've done it and you should be proud of yourself for getting this farm. And now I can say I think that it gets a little bit easier here on out with our tools. So take a deep breath and we can move on to the next one. 4. Define Your Audience: in this chapter, we are going to work on defining your target audience. And as you know, a target audience is really important because you're not going to be able to effectively communicate. If you don't know who you're trying to communicate with now, in this chapter as well, I might refer more commonly to a person or a customer. But this applies if your target audience is another business or organization. So just keep in mind that they are basically the same thing. And when we talk about describing your perfect customer, it could be another organization as well. We're going to do two exercises in this chapter, and the 1st 1 we turn back to our trusty paper and pen for a brainstorming session. In this brainstorming session, I want you to describe the absolute perfect customer for your business. Tell me everything about them. Tell me how old they are, what kind of clothes I liked aware the music they listen to maybe their favorite social media. Are they student do the live on a farm? Do they like cat videos? Are they tall? How much money do they have? Where do they like to go on vacation. Do they have a best friend? You can make up this person and tell me anything that you think is relevant or even irrelevant about them. Their favorite snack is catch of flavored potato chips. Just tell me everything. There is one perfect customer and you are going to tell me everything about them. Are you ready? Go. The next exercise we're going to do for defining our audience is to create personas. Now you've generated this big list or all these ideas about what a perfect customer is, and now we're going to actually describe a couple of perfect customers. Personas is something that companies used to help them with their marketing, where they basically make up a character, um, and and give them as many details as they can. And that helps them to imagine how toe actually communicate with that person. And the truth is, there are probably multiple personas that fit your definitions for a perfect target customer. But they might have some things that are different in about them in their characteristics in their life situation, and it's helpful for you to know, for instance, maybe all of your target customers I really love ice cream. But it might be important to know that some people in your audience are single parents and some people are students, and that could make a difference as to how you decide to communicate with them or, more likely, where you decide to communicate with. Um, no. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit here. But what's important for you to remember just for this exercise is we're basically creating imaginary people. Now I'm going to put a list up on the screen of characteristics to identify for each persona that you create. I recommend you try to make at least to personas, but maybe you feel compelled to do more. And that's cool. Have fun with that. I think two is good because you can see off the bat some diversity in your target audience . If you do that now, the character six I'm putting up. They are by no means written in stone as the ones that you have to define that as the ones that you have to define. But there a suggestion for what might be helpful for you. I will also make this list available in the working guide that is with this course, you can do this exercise now, or you can leave it for later when you feel like you have a little more brain space. I just recommend that you have these because it does help you when you're in a situation where you need to make some decisions about how to communicate to actually sit down a persona in front of you. Maybe you're gonna call that persona Josephine and think, How do I talk to Josephine, Who loves baseball, is a student with a part time job and is almost always on Instagram. Once we've gone through all the tools in this course, there's a chapter on market research, and your personas will be helpful in that chapter. Or in that endeavor, when you do come to trying to understand your market better so you can put personas aside for now if you like, or you can take some time to dig into them. Either way, you have completed the Define your audience chapter, and we're ready to move on 5. Your Identity: in this chapter, we are going to identify your identity. We're going to stay with the idea of personas that we ended the last chapter with. But instead of thinking about the persona of a perfect customer, you're going to think about what the persona of your business ISS imagine through the magic of Hollywood, your business was transformed into a real person. What is that person like? Get your brainstorming tools out your trusty paper and pen. I'm going to give you a little bit of time to capture all of the ideas that you have in reaction to that question, and I really want you to just go wild. I mean, maybe you know what country they're from or car they drive or how they talk to their friends. Where do they live? When's the last time they went to the dentist? What keeps them up at night? Pretend your business is a person and described them in as much detail as possible. Ready? Go! Well done. You finished that brainstorming exercise good for you. How is it? Was it difficult? Were there certain areas that you got stuck? Maybe describing physical attributes that's interesting to pay attention to. Maybe you need to spend a little bit more time thinking about what your business is gonna look like, How you're going to present yourself, physically or visually. Maybe it was really fun for you. And if it was great, I'm very happy that you were enjoying this course. Another reason you might have struggled and had a hard time getting things down could be because your business isn't focused enough right now that you're not really clear on who you're trying to communicate with. Because, as I've said before, there are very few businesses that really are for everyone, and it's very hard to communicate to everyone. So perhaps it's time to look at that. Maybe you need to be more specific about who your business is. Four. But as I said, if you had fun, if it went well, then that's wonderful. And if you struggled, that's wonderful, too, because you're gonna figure out what's tripping you up and then you're going to be able to solve it. Now that we've done the brainstorming, we're going to move forward with a few more specific questions, and these questions are designed to help you identify the two main parts of what identity is, and one is how you speak and one is how you look. So I'm gonna put these questions up on the screen one at a time, and this is not like the brainstorming sessions where this is a time initiative. I want you to be ableto pause the screen, look at the question, write down your answers and feel comfortable with them. So there's no need to rush at this point in time. And you're prepared to answer these questions now because we've done this brainstorming session where you've got all of your ideas flowing about what your business looks like as a person. So we'll take these questions one at a time, starting with finishing the following statement. What are the key words that describe your business personality? Some examples for a collection of keywords for a specific business could be suddenly playful, reliable, kind or another. Business could be professional, trustworthy, straightforward, traditional. Another could be experienced, steadfast, caring, encouraging. So there are no wrong answers here. There's no right amount of keywords to come up with. I think at this point is probably better toe have more than less so just take a moment to think about the key words that summarize your businesses personality. Overall, our next question is, How does your business speak to others? It could be. We speak with authority and confidence, always gently guiding our customer. Or maybe we speak like one friend to another. Never too serious, but always truthful. So make a statement. How do you speak toe others? Our last question for this chapter is what color or colors represent your business? You don't have to be super specific right now in terms of like the C M y que code or anything like that that you probably have an idea of, maybe the color scheme. Maybe it's earthy tones. Or maybe it's traditional colors, black and white. Or maybe you have a really strong idea about an accent color. So just take a moment to answer that question. What color or colors represent your business? Hello and welcome to the other side. Also known the end of the Identity chapter. You have done a lot of work well done. I think that you should pat yourself on the back again. Really, I'm not trying to be silly here. This is a lot of mental gymnastics to be doing. And if you've been doing these exercises, you've already created a pile of documentation. That is the beginning of your brand guide. Very cool. So take these questions that you just answered about your identity, the three questions we just did and the brainstorming about what your business is as a person. Put those aside with all the other things we've done so far and get yourself ready for the next chapter. 6. Unique Offer: this chapter is about your unique offer. What makes you stand out from your competitors from the businesses that offer similar services or skills? If you are a single person business, a consultant, the chances are very likely that your unique offer is the fact that there's no one on the planet who is exactly like you who has had the same experiences. Education training has lived in the same places, met the same people. I mean, you are special. Of course. We all get a participation ribbon. Yeah, I know, but you really are unique just because of who you are. And that's the approach I take with my personal brand. There are lots of people who do branding, who do marketing, who are writers. But there's no one out there who has my specific blend of skills. And if there is, then there's no one out there who has those specific blend of skills and lives in Sweden and is a Canadian and really likes chocolate and goes for hikes. Eccentrics. You get my point. Hopefully, so you are unique in who you are. But maybe you're not a single person business or ah, single person brand, maybe you need to think a little bit more about what your unique offer is, and that's okay. I'm here toe walk you through that when I'm using the term unique offer, I don't want you get tripped up by the confines of the word unique and that you might think that you really have to be the only company or business out there offering this one thing. It could be that you have other competitors in your market in the area who are offering it . But what I mean by unique is that it's not common that it does make you stand out. So, for instance, let's use the example that you are a company that does floor installations tiling, hardwood, etcetera. Now there's probably lots of other companies in the area who do that. But maybe a unique offer you could have is that you partner with local interior designer who can do consultations with your clients to help them choose flooring. It's a big investment. It can be very anxiety inducing to decide what to pick, and an interior designer could help to alleviate some of that stress for ah, small additional. See now you might not be the only company in the area who has that kind of partnership or arrangement. But you definitely wouldn't expect that arrangement from any company that comes along who's doing flooring. Hopefully, that example helps you to understand what I mean with this approach of unique unto the exercise. This is not going to be a time session, either. These air going to be a series of questions that I'll put up on the screen that I'd like you to answer. And you just answer them however you like in the time that it takes you to, you can pause the video and let the question just sit on the screen while you work and again. If you are a single person, business or personal brand, you may have a really good idea that that's your unique offer, and that's great. You can still go through this exercise or, if you prefer, you can just skip on to the next chapter. So here come the questions. What do my competitors offer? Is there anything about the way I work that's different? Do I have any special skills or certifications? What kind of other businesses or other people would we partner with would I partner with? So if you answered those questions, you should be able to look at your answers and in there find some clues about what your unique offer is, and perhaps you don't have a unique offer at the moment. But then you're going to find hints of what could be your unique offer, what you could develop as a unique offer going forward again, collect your answers, put them to the side and prepare to move on. 7. Market Research: How to: this chapter is a bit of a bonus chapter, and it is about market research. Who? Okay, not the sexiest thing to think about. Maybe, but it might be really important for you in your business right now or in the future. And what can be really tricky about market research is the accessibility of it. Global companies spend thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands millions of dollars conducting market research, and that should tell you that it is valuable. I mean, understanding how your potential customers are acting, how they're making decisions, who they are, is on Lee going to empower you to reach them in better ways. But you probably don't have millions of dollars to spend on your market research if you're a single person business or a small business or start up. So how are you going to find out about your market? I have a grass roots approach I'd like to share with you. And really, all you need is the ability to converse with another human being and a little bit of spending money enough to buy a couple of cups of coffee. This technique requires you to go back to your personas that you created when you were identifying your your perfect customers looking your personas and ask yourself, Does this sound like anyone I know? Does it sound like my neighbor? Does it sound like Aunt Alice, maybe a former co worker? Does it sound like my my partner in life? Does it sound like my cousins Kids? Who do you know that fits these personas? And I truly believe that there's someone somewhere in your life that is going to roughly match up with some of these personas. Once you've identified a person or people who fit a persona that you've created as a target audience member for your business, I want you to politely and graciously invite them out for a cup of coffee and let them know that you would like to have a little bit of their time to just ask them questions about themselves so that you can better understand them and let them know it's toe help you with your business that you're trying to understand your target audience Better. Um, just be nice. Be honest. Some people are going to say no, and that's okay because you probably have a few people on your list, and once someone says yes, just do that, take them out. Have questions that you know you're gonna want the answers to. They might be general questions like, What new sources do you like? They might be really specific questions like, Are you comfortable telling me how much money you would spend on a service like this? Um, I'll give you an example. Maybe you are in the business of renovating bathrooms. You awful offer those services. So there's probably someone in your life that has renovated a bathroom in the past or even is thinking about renovating it Now. Asked him out to coffee and ask them questions like What's important to you in someone that you would hire to do this? What kind of budget do you have? What is your timeline for your project? Who's your favorite pop star? I mean, you can ask them anything. Just be kind and be thankful for the time that they spend with you. And here's one of the best parts of reaching out to someone at the very end. Ask them. Hey, do you know anyone else who might be renovating a bathroom in the future or has renovated in the past, would you mind sharing their contact info with me so I could ask them some questions, too? And today Ah, your market research continues. So ask someone out to coffee, ask him some questions, pay attention and ask them for even more people. You could speak Teoh. That is how I conduct grass roots market research. And you can, too, on a shoestring budget, some cups of coffee and some time from your day. 8. Put It Together: you have made it to putting it all together. You have done a lot of work, and you probably have quite a few pieces of paper with scribbles over it, and that is a wonderful thing. You have made drafts of all of the tools in your brand building toolbox, and now you're going to put it all together. And this part of the process is one of the easier ones, Believe it or not, because what you're doing is just taking the hard work that you've done and you're transferring it to a more permanent and accessible medium on. What I mean is that you're going to go through each of the documentations for each tool, and you're going to put the final draft version from each one into a digital document. That's my recommendation. Of course, you could write it down by hand into a collective document, but the idea is that it will be in one document altogether. Instead of all of these scattered brainstorming pieces of paper. I keep my brand building tool box in a word document in my business files, and it's called my Brand toolbox and the date, and that way I can keep track of different versions cause I've definitely gone in there and I have updated things or tweaked things or change them as I felt was appropriate, and I recommend you to do the same. In fact, Step one of this. Putting it together is what I just said. Move all of the written the analog and put it into one collected spot. And don't worry about making it perfect. It is definitely still going to be in more of a rough draft form. It is not perfect, and that is wonderful and okay, but collect it all together. And once you've done that, I want you to go to your calendar app. Or maybe he's got a good old fashioned date book. Whatever. Look. Three days into the future, what are you doing? Can you find half a Nower in your calendar on that day? Maybe it's the weekend, so go a couple of days more whatever, but find half on hour in the next few days and write down Review brand building toolbox. Once you've had a few good sleeps and you can have a bit of a clearer perspective, you're going to come back. You're going to read through this document that you're putting together and you're going to let yourself at it a little bit. Maybe you like to change the wording on your mission statement Or maybe, ah, part of your visual. I d didn't feel right or you wanted to add to it Whatever you want to dio. But do that in a few days. Right now, you've done a lot of work. Capture it, keep it and congratulate yourself. 9. Course Project: Of course, there is a project for this brand building toolbox course, and you have already done a whole lot of work. So all I'd like you to do for this project is to share with us One of the tools that you have created. It could be the draft of it, or, I mean, maybe you want to share the crazy brainstorming session you had. So take a picture, a couple of pictures of all of your scribbles in your notes and your sticky notes and highlights and marker doodles, and put that up in the project section of this course Share with us. Let us know how you felt making it, how you felt in the process. And if it's your mission statement business idea. If their marketing personas whatever you would like to share, I would love to see it. And it's also very helpful to see other people's work. So the more who share, the more we can learn together. So please go ahead and identify one of the tools that you would like to share with us that you've created and post that in the Project gallery. For this course, I'm really looking forward to seeing how you're brainstorming sessions went and how your drafts have turned out 10. Wrap-up: here we are at the end of your brand building toolbox. Part two. You have created a draft of your brand guide. You have gone through all of these steps well done. You. It is a lot of work is a lot of thinking. It's a lot of question asking and a lot of writing. Hope you don't have a cramp. There's a lot that went into this course, and if you've made it this far, congratulations. I hope that you have enjoyed it. I hope that when it's been a struggle, you've been able to maybe identify some ways that you congrats or ways that you can improve the way you're thinking about your business. As I've mentioned, there are other courses that I have offered on branding. Of course, the part one of your toolbox, which is really important to understand if you're going to be going through this course. Then there is my brand basics for business success, where I talk about branding as a general concept for your business. I recommend you check those out if you have the time and I thank you if you already have, and if you have checked those courses out then I think you have an understanding of how important this brand guide this brand toolbox can be for your business, and I truly believe it's going to help you. And I really hope that you find it useful in the work you do with your business with your personal brand with your startup. Whatever endeavor you are on right now, thank you is all I really have left to say Thank you for your time. I think that's a very precious resource. Thank you for your attention, and please don't hesitate to reach out. I love to hear from students. I love to get questions about branding and random trivia tidbits about pretty much any topic in the world, so don't hesitate to say hi, and I wish you all the best. 11. Bloopers: Here we go. This is how we get ready for war. The camera. This is how we get ready to be a star with coffee and on your piece of papal paper. Need to know a little bit more guiding document. Let's let's use the same words over and over again, but in different orders. Is this till thing? Oh, I think it iss after that. That that That That that That that that that, uh I think I forgot to mention who I am. Take to God look good for the cameras. Gotta look good for the people looking at my notes, but it is what I'm having. Stone your imagination, cap. Oh, I don't has a weird phrase putting use your imagination. And if you if you're feeling like some you food, I was just gonna cut that part out. Do they watch sports ball? Do they play the online games? What else would I like to say? Got lots of text messages popping up on the screen. Exciting things happening in my life deliveries. Okay. Deliveries happening. Yeah, I think I said it well enough.