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Green Leaves
Writer's pictureJade Weya

Authentically Building Your Brand: A Complete and Comprehensive Guide

When the foundation of your brand is clear, so is all of the content you are producing from it. When we hear the word "brand" in relation to building one's business, we think about a logo, color schemes, possibly even the general aesthetic of one's business, but a complete and cohesive brand actually includes a lot more factors to be considered fully established. This post will be dedicated to helping you get clear on how you can fully establish your brand as a holistic healer so that you can present your mission to the world with purpose and power!

 

This post is part of a series called ""Thoughtful Thursday". For more informative and uplifting blog posts such as this one, click HERE, or go to the "Thoughtful Thursday" section on our blog homepage. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to share this content with you, and we hope that you find exactly what you need today. You are here for a reason.

 

The Brand Building Essentials


When it comes to building your business' brand, these are some of the essential focuses:

You may or may not already have some of these down, so if you'd like to dive more into just one or two of these focuses, click the one you'd like to explore to be sent directly to our breakdown of that topic. If you're unfamiliar with most of these focuses, or the words "brand messaging strategy" make you feel a bit overwhelmed, we recommend that you read through the entirety of this article so that you can discover for yourself just how simple this whole process actually can be! Remember, you know yourself best! When building your brand, work with the skills, talents, and vibe that you already naturally exude. The people who want to work with you want to do so because of who you are, so don't feel like you have to mirror someone else's brand in order to be successful (although doing independent research and receiving inspiration is totally okay!)



Defining Your Mission, Vision, and Values


Defining your brand's mission requires you to dig into the core of why you even started your business in the first place. The vision and values accompanying this mission can only be truly defined once you have that main intention/purpose clarified. So what is your mission statement? Why did you create this business and what do you want to achieve with it? What major long-term goals do you have for your business? What guiding principles or morals does your brand abide by? Once you answer these questions, you should have a short and comprehensive outline of what your business is all about and what it plans to bring into the world.


Example:


Ayalaweya LLC's mission is to assist holistic healers in finding their funk, their most authentic expression, so that they can share their medicine with the world and become successful with ease and grace. We intend to eventually create a community of empowered healers and a retreat space for these healers to offer their unique medicine to the world. At Ayalaweya LLC, we abide by integrity, authenticity, and vulnerability as our greatest values and actively work on creating a more conscious, loving, and healthy society in any way that we can, starting with the healers of this world.



Getting Clear on Your Target Audience


When it comes to defining your target audience, we encourage you to determine what kind of client you WANT to be working with. You may have already been running your business for some time and have many clients, but maybe you don't feel like you're fully able to connect with them for some reason or another. As a holistic entrepreneur, you have to be mindful of what feels good for you as well, because when you feel good, you do your best work!

What does your ideal client look like? Describe them in as many details as you can. What age group are they in, what is their background, what are their challenges in relation to how you can help them, what are their goals and visions of their own futures, etc. When you can get into the nitty-gritty of just who it is you're delivering your medicine to, it makes the deliverance of your medicine THAT MUCH EASIER because you know what kind of content that individual responds best to, their preferred methods of communication, their ideals and morals in relation to your own, and so much more!


Example:


Ayalaweya LLC's ideal client is a holistic/spiritual practitioner between the ages of 18 and 40 who is looking to expand their holistic business powerfully and authentically. Our ideal client is someone with a big heart who loves what they do, but needs some assistance on how to grow further and become more successful in their endeavors. This ideal client loves the earth and wants to uplift humanity in any way they can. Our ideal client believes on some level that they are meant to change the world, whether that is through 1:1 conversations with people or through mass media influencing.

Our ideal client may also simultaneously or singularly be challenged by their own authentic expression. They may know that their medicine is powerful and important and can help many people, but they are moving through some internal blocks that prevent them from fully expanding into the world and offering this medicine the way that they envision themselves doing so.



Discovering Your Brand's Voice


This step is often overlooked, but is very important when building one's brand. Your brand's voice is the speech style, tone, and overall verbal/written expression across all of the platforms it exists on. Your brand's voice is the voice you use when writing your Instagram captions, sending our weekly newsletters, and creating content of any kind for your brand. It is your brand's personality! It has a lot do with how people perceive your business and can make or break someone's interest in your business. For example, maybe your ideal client is someone serious, ambitious, and in their late 60s. If your brand's voice is playful, humorous, silly, and childlike, you will not be appealing to this ideal client as a business they want to work with.

To discover your brand's voice, it should be something that make sense for you as an individual as well. For example, if YOU were that super serious, ambitious 60 year old, your brand's personality would not be playful, humorous, silly, or childlike. If you are going to be the face of your brand, which you probably are if you're reading this, you can build your brand's personality around your own. What adjectives best describe your brand that are in alignment with the personality traits your ideal client would find desirable to work with professionally? What kind of language or writing styles does your brand identify with? These questions will lead you to being able to discover your brand's voice.


Example:


Ayalaweya LLC's personality/voice is friendly, heart centered, and well spoken. We convey our messages clearly and sprinkle in compassion in appropriate dosages. We intend to create a sense of comfort and safety in our expression. We utilize common internet slang here and there as well, as our target audience is familiar with this kind of verbiage.



Creating a Style Guide


A style guide is a cohesive PDF formatted showcasing of your brand's visual personality. It contains your business' logo, color scheme (we recommend having 3-5 colors to work with), typography (the fonts your brand uses), and general imagery associated with your brand. It also includes some of the key characteristics of your brand's voice. Having a style guide is VITAL if you are outsourcing graphic designers or website developers to help you elevate your business because this will give them an idea of what you're looking for and what they're being asked to deliver to you. Having a style guide is also a powerful resource for you to look to when creating new content or deciding to collaborate with others. Does your idea or collaborative effort match with the overall vibe of how you've decided you want to express you business to the world? Your style guide is also meant to be a living, breathing document that changes and evolves as your brand does, so if your new idea or collaboration consideration does not match with your brand's overall style, you can adjust your style guide to match where your brand is now heading visually, aesthetically, and tonally. We recommend Canva (not sponsored, just a personal favorite) as your style guide building tool, as it can also be utilized to create amazing content consistent with your brand (check out their brand hub feature), but you can also use Adobe Creative Suite, Frontify, Lucidpress, or Google Docs.



Cultivating an Effective Brand Messaging Strategy


A brand messaging strategy is essentially a consistent method of delivering your business' message to your ideal clients. To cultivate one that is effective, you have to know your target audience and what language or content will make them perceive your services/products as desirable. You also have to be clear on what your business' key messages are. They should be short and memorable so that they leave an impact on potential clients. This is where you start brainstorming your business' tag line and common messages that you would want any potential client to be familiar with before booking a service or buying a product from you. What message do you want to convey to your potential clients, how can you deliver these messages in a way that is short and memorable, and in what ways will you be delivering these messages (ex: Instagram, YouTube, Emails)?

Cultivating an EFFECTIVE brand messaging strategy will require trial and error, as some things may not work or generate results in the ways that you intended them to. Be open to experimentation and external advice on how to communicate your message more effectively when cultivating your brand messaging strategy. Another key to your messaging strategy is consistency. The more consistent you appear, the more reliable you seem. This builds trust with potential clients. Pick a strategy that works for you and is manageable for your level of resources at this point in time that you can stick to for at least 3 months.


Example (key dialogue/messages underlined):


Ayalaweya LLC was created to help people find their funk! We believe that everyone has a unique and important medicine to share with the world and want to empower holistic entrepreneurs to authentically share that medicine with grace and ease. We share valuable and transformational information on how to do this on our website's weekly informative blog posts, our Instagram page that we post on 5+ times a week, and our free discovery calls.


Choosing The Best Ways of Acquiring Brand Engagement


If you want more engagement with your brand, you have to effectively exhibit to your target audience that what you're offering is high quality, valuable, and worth their time! There are many ways that you can do this, but here are some of the most important ones:

  1. High Quality Content. Is it time to invest in a better camera? (Pro tip: if you're creating content from an iPhone, take your videos with your back facing camera in cinematic mode. Thank us later!)

  2. Build a Strong Media Presence. Maybe the quality of your content is awesome, but you've only just started out so there's not much of it. Keep up the good work, and remember that consistency is key to building trust that your brand is reliable and ready to provide its services/products to potential clients.

  3. Offer Exceptional Customer Service. Who doesn't love working with a business that makes them feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated?

  4. Host/Sponsor Events. This may not be within everyone's means, but if it is, GO FOR IT! This is a powerful tool for building trust with large groups of people at a time while also expanding into circles you may not have been seen in otherwise.

  5. Encourage User-Generated Content. Ask people to share their experiences with your products/services through photos, testimonials, and shout outs on their stories. This is one of the best ways to build credibility and overall increase not only brand engagement, but also sales!



And there you have it! Ultimately, creating your brand should be an enjoyable process. As a holistic entrepreneur, you more than likely love helping make other people's lives easier and more enjoyable. You shouldn't be making your own life more uncomfortable or stressful in order to fulfill this desire of service. If any of this content feels overwhelming or unattainable, take a moment to breathe deeply and remind yourself what you're capable of. You can do anything you put your mind to. If you feel called to outsource assistance in building your brand, you can book a discovery call with us to find out if Ayalaweya LLC is the right business to assist you. If you've read through the entirety of this article, you've probably learned quite a bit about who we are and what we represent, and if that all aligns with you, we'd be happy to schedule your free booking with us down below!

Your brand is an extension of you, and you are wonderful. Remember that practice make progress and the first go around with something is not always successful. Honor your process and congratulate yourself for how far you've already come. We wish you all the best and send you so much love! Stay awesome.





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