Self Employed Success

When we think of branding, we instantly think of branding for products, right?

Let me tell you a story about the importance of good brand design when launching a new service.

For six months, my JV partner Pamela Wilson and I had been working on a new mastermind group program. We realized we wanted it to have its own brand, its own personality, separate from either of our existing business names/brands. Together we went through a series of steps to identify not only the brand, but the program itself. I’d like to share those steps with you so that you have a checklist for branding your services.

Here are some things to think about when you’re creating a brand for your new service offering, whether it’s a group coaching program, a training class, a mastermind group, or a special package of services you’ve bundled together:

Ask the big questions first.

Start with the most important questions: Who is this service for? And what do they need?

This will help you to get a clear understanding of your target audience, and from that knowledge you may find that the name of your new service offering comes to the surface easily. For us, we said we wanted this mastermind group to be for small business owners who have been in business 3 or more years and were ready to take their business to the next level. The name Leap Year came easily once we defined our target audience and their needs. (It didn’t hurt that the Leap Year program would begin in 2012 — which was a leap year! :))

Decide on the personality of the service.

Is it serious? Is it playful? Is it creative? Is it linear? Come up with five adjectives that describe how you want people to perceive the brand of your service. With Leap Year, we wanted it energetic, powerful and inspiring. So when Pamela created the logo, she melded those adjectives together and came up with the perfect logo:

Be consistent in everything you do around your brand.

Branding isn’t just about logos. It’s about the colors and graphic elements you use, about the words you choose, even about the music you select. Use your brand in all your marketing and communication materials, even down to the handouts you create or the ebook cover you design.

When putting together our website, we wanted to create an invitation video with an animation to start it out. Pamela used the logo and colors to create the animation, then enlisted her son Gabriel Zurek (who was majoring in composition in college so that he could learn to write scores for films) to come up with several musical themese for the video. After watching the video with each of the different pieces of music, this one stood out as being perfect for how we wanted to portray our brand:

By putting all the branding elements together, you present a cohesive package to your customers through your time with them, from marketing through delivery. Start small: put a brand name to your service packages, groups and classes. From there, you can grow your brand with logos, colors, text…and maybe a little music, too!