The First Steps to Developing Your Brand & Promoting Yourself in 2021
Written By: Dr. Chaunell Abrams (@livingwellwithdrnell)
This year of 2020 has definitely been a crazy year for all of us. There has been so many changes for everyone. Consumers, employees, and business owners have all had to pivot and adapt to COVID crisis in order to survive and maintain some level of normalcy. Because a sudden increase in unemployment rates, many of these former employees sought refuge in business ownership. As wonderful of business ownership sounds, there is so much that goes into to owning a business than filing for your tax ID number and selling products or services. Starting a business can be very hard, especially if you don’t understand how to brand and market yourself to the world. The benefits of starting a business in 2020–2021 is that you literally have the world at your hands!
Steps to Developing Your Brand & Promoting Yourself
1. Discover your business identity
2. Find your niche & research your target audience
3. Research others in the industry who are successful
4. Create your business name
5. Design your logo and choose your colors/font for your brand
6. Social Media Marketing & Networking
Discovering Your Business Identity
Just as each individual has an identity, a business does as well. Branding your business starts with first discovering who you are, what your business represents to you, and the how you want your business to be perceived by the world. These questions are major in your journey to business ownership to provide guidance and a visual for where you want your business to go.
Find your niche & research your target audience
A niche is a specialized segment of a market for a particular kind of product or service. When you specialize in a niche instead of the general population, your business can speak directly to a specific group of people and meet their specific needs. For example, in physical therapy you can generally see all orthopedic cases in outpatient, but you are marketing to a larger group and it will be harder to use specific language that speaks to each and every person. On the other hand, you have some physical therapy clinics that are highly trained in a particular diagnosis or area, let’s say woman’s health and pelvic floor. Now, education and marketing can be focused on becoming the best woman’s health provider and researching what problems women are often having. When you discover your niche, your job isn’t to solve everyone’s problems, it is to solve those specific needs of your niche population. Research Google Trends on various topics and join Facebook Groups for your niche population and other providers in your niche to gain a deeper understanding of concerns, likes, dislikes, and successes. Doing this will provide much more success to your business and reduce stress from trying to please everyone, instead of a specific group of individuals.
Research others in your industry who are successful
It is important to take note of others in your industry who are successful will help you map out the things you need to do to also be successful. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Duplicating basic methods that others have already proved to be successful will help you optimize your time and reach success sooner than trying to figure it out on your own. When researching others in your industry, take note of everything — business names, colors, marketing strategies, target audience, word selection, etc. The words we use determine the effectiveness of artificial intelligence and its ability to work in our favor or not. When we use words that others are constantly looking for, artificial intelligence will naturally place you in front of the people looking for what you are offering. If someone in your field is on Instagram and makes a post, make a post similar down to the hashtags to see if you too get the results you are hoping for. If others in the industry are offering free material, take advantage of those opportunities so you can learn what you need to be doing as well.
Create your business name
Your business name is a part of the branding process and will probably be one of the first big commitments you make as a new business owner. Your business name will impact your logo, domain, marketing, and trademark registration if applicable. Depending on the type of business, you also want to think about future plans when considering a name. If you have plans to expand your product lines in the future, you may want to consider a broad business name rather than a product specific name so that it’s easy to pivot later down the road when your business grows. There are several approaches you can take when selecting a business name.
Make up a word — Pepsi or Nike
Reframe an unrelated word — Apple for computers
Use a suggestive word or metaphor — Buffer
Describe it literally (CAUTION: THIS IS EASY TO IMITATE) — The Shoe Company
Alter a word by removing letters, adding letters, or using Latin endings — Tumblr or Activia
Create an acronym from a longer name — HBO (Home Box Office)
Combine two words — Pinterest (pin + interest)
Because your business name will guide your domain/URL for your website, you also want to make sure that you shop around to see what’s available first before you decide. It is always a great idea to run your thoughts for a name by a focus group of close people to make sure it’s well received, nothing else is similar that you’re unaware of, and there is no underlying meaning or bad message.
Design your logo and choose your brand colors/font
Your logo and brand colors will be what make people remember and think about you. Colors have the power to communicate the feelings you want to convey and create consistency across everything you do. If you are looking for some ideas for colors that work together, consider using tools like Coolors to brainstorm and discover what it is you’re looking for. When it comes to font, try to keep it simple and limit yourself to two fonts at most, one for the headings and one for the body text, not including anything your logo may use.
Your logo will be the face of your company, so you want something that’s unique, identifiable, and scalable to work at all sizes. Logos can be made from icons, abstract designs, mascots, emblems, letter marks, wordmarks, or a blend better icon and word marks.
Social Media Marketing & Networking
Now that you have your business all set up, it is time to get yourself out there and build your business. Marketing is one of the most important pieces of business ownership and if you don’t learn to sell yourself well, your business will suffer. That’s why researching your target population and others in your industry are vital. When making social media post, you want to one consider your audience and the platform (nstagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.) you are using because how you interact will all be slightly different from platform to platform. Regardless of platform, you want to make sure you are using the same language as your target audience. How do you find this language you ask? RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH! It is important to do your research. Go to the profiles of others who are successful and read their post, along with the comments on those post. Those same people engaging on their post are the same people you want as well. Read, learn, and take time to interact through responses and answering questions on those post. This is build curiosity and make others visit your profile as well. But, when they visit your profile, you want to make sure you have engaging information and post to capture them. Building your social media takes time and effort. It is important to schedule content creation and your post to reduce day to day stress. Social media marketing requires research, consistency, and willingness to interact on pages daily. The beginning will always be there hardest, but stay consistent, determined, and optimistic. Things will get better with time. Networking is also a powerful tool to connect with others who either do what you do or looking for someone like you for your service or product. Join groups to advertise your business and also support others. Go to networking events and practice speaking confidently about what you offer. Depending on what you offer, you can schedule to be a guest speaker on podcast or blog to get yourself out there. At the end of the day, social media and networking is all about showing the world who you are and exposing them to your business. These opportunities are also great for learning and connecting with others who are where you want to be.
There is a lot that goes into starting a business, but the most important thing is just taking that first step to start. Remember that business ownership is a process and won’t be built overnight. Follow these steps. Seek mentorship or help in areas where you feel you’re lacking. Stay positive and find ways to keep yourself motivated, especially when times get tough. You got this!
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