STOP BEING SO GENERIC! | How to Effectively Brand & Market Your Business in 2024

Now more than ever, it is important for you to build a brand online. Long gone are the days where people are just buying just because they're buying. They want to know more about your brand, more about your story, and they really want a connection with you, whether it's a product or whether it's a person. And lucky for you, I have been in the business of building brands for five entire years. And in today's video, I am going to share how I was able to grow my brand to over 160,000 people within my first three years of business. And we are not just talking about growing your brand on social media because if you know anything about me, I don't really care much for social media for real. So I am going to be talking to you about how to grow your brand online, on social media, and off of social media. Now before I get into what I'm going to share with you, I want you to comment down below, what is the ultimate vision that you have for your brand? Put it into one sentence. What is the vision that you have for your brand if you were to think 10 years from now? What do you want your brand to be? Drop it in the comments and let's have a discussion down below. I would love to see all of the amazing things that you have planned for your life and for your brand in the future. Pause. Flag on the play. If you're watching this, there's a good chance you've seen my recent video. It's like every time you make strands, like you make strides, it's just, it's sickening, but... Which means you're probably giving me the side eye. Heck, I would be too. Well, here's the truth. The very first step I took before creating my brand revamp plan, AKA save my brand plan, I reflected on what worked well for my brand before. This caused me to realize the substantial amount of growth that I had within a short period of time. I'm talking about 30K on TikTok within my first few months, 10K on IG my first year, monetized on YouTube my first few months, so on, so on. And not only was there a different level of hunger within me, but most importantly, there was intense strategy. So here I am sharing my findings with you in a blueprinted way so you can see success with your brand, even if you're in the very early stages. And heck, I'm about to take these blueprinted steps and use them too. So let's grow our brands together. Now, how this video is going to go, I have thought about every single thing that I did within my first few years of business and the current things that I'm doing right now, and I have condensed them into five main steps. Now, these five steps I believe are crucial to your success with building a brand online. So make sure that you have a laptop or iPad or something to take notes on because you wanna make sure that you don't miss a word that I say within this video. And let's hop right in, shall we? So the very first thing that you want to do when it comes to expanding your brand online is you need to know what the difference between brand and business is. Too many times I see that people are confused with this and you truly cannot grow your brand, you truly can't even build a brand for real if you don't know how your brand differs from your business. You want to know what your brand is, what your brand's purpose is, and what your business is and what your business's purpose is. When you know the clear difference, you're able to set intentional goals and you're able to put intentional actions behind those goals to grow said thing. So I'm going to break down for you really quick what the difference between brand and business is just in case you are watching this video looking stuck. I'm gonna help you out. So think about your brand as what attracts you to a fancy new car. You've probably heard the name Bentley before, you probably are drawn to the color paint job, you're probably drawn to the fact that it has a sun and a moon roof, heated seats, an amazing stereo system, and you're drawn to the experience that having a Bentley will give you, right? Well, that is your brand, whereas your business is the not so fun stuff that goes on underneath the hood. So if you were to lift up the hood of that Bentley and see all the nuts and bolts and oil and all that stuff, it doesn't really sell a car, right? Like yeah, you have some car fanatics who care about whether it's a V6 or a V8, but let's be for real. How many times have you purchased a vehicle solely based off the engine? I can guarantee that you have bought the vehicle more times than not because of how it looks, how you feel in the car, and the features that come in the car that gives you a certain experience. That right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between brand and business. Your brand are all the things that people see, interact with, feel, experience, whereas your business, those are the nuts and bolts that keep everything going in the back end, your systems, your tools, your team, that whole entire nine. And if you're wondering how marketing comes into play with all of this, think about marketing as the dealership. They got you through the door, they put all of the fancy signs outside on the highway, and they're the people who have the salesmen so that way they can get you the best deal, they can get you a promotional price, do all of that. That right there is marketing. Once you come to terms with what the differences are between brand and business, you are ready to now put intentional action behind whatever your growth goal is for your brand. And I am somebody who I knew brand versus business for a very long time. I went to the University of Florida, and I also have corporate brand and marketing experience. So although I knew the difference though, I did find that sometimes I would get caught up in the way and I would shift focus too much on what my business was doing than what I needed to do to align with my brand. I hope that makes sense. I'm willing to dive deeper into that in a podcast episode, but I did find myself doing that. So it was nice to know what the separation was so I can give myself a constant reminder of what I needed to be doing and what I didn't need to be doing. If you are new to this channel and you're wondering, how the heck do I know all of this stuff about branding in the first place? Well, hey, hello. I am Chanel, the brand hustler, and I am your favorite brand strategist for your product business, whether it is digital or physical. I helped you build a brand and I help you grow online and in person, okay? Because these things work in person too. But if you aren't subscribed, make sure that you hit the subscription button. Also give this video a thumbs up and share it if you find that these are some really juicy tips that someone that you know can use. After you understand the difference, step number two is to know your target audience. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say what everybody else says about target audience because you've heard it all before. But what I am going to tell you is that you need to have a deep understanding of who it is that has the problem that you solve or the need that you provide a resource to. Specifically, what I love to focus on is something called psychographics. So you have demographics, you have geographics, but you also have a layer called psychographics that I find that sometimes people forget about. And so when we think about psychographics, we're really tapping into our audience's mind. We want to know their interests. We want to know what they value, their thoughts, their inspirations, that whole nine, because your thoughts drive your actions and your actions are what we call behaviors. And the goal of your brand is to trigger a behavior within your audience members so that way they give you a rewarding action. I hope that makes sense. That rewarding action can be a paid conversion, like a sale, or it can be a non-paid conversion, like joining your text list. But whatever that is, that is a rewarding action that's going to benefit your business and it takes you knowing how they think, what they value, and what they're interested in in order to drive that action in the first place, which is what drives their behaviors. I am going to give you another layer of advice here, right? Because believe it or not, your audience can change. Your audience can change. I'm gonna say it again. Your audience can change. And I'm not saying that to say, okay, well, just target everybody. What I am saying is that as your brand grows, your business is going to grow, your product development may grow, the way that you provide services may also grow and improve, and so therefore, you cannot be stubborn or you cannot neglect the fact that your audience has the right to grow as well. So your audience may mature or you may have to shift. And here's an example of that. Let's say that you are a brand that targeted millennials. Well, back then, millennials were all in their teens and in their 20s, but now, as a millennial myself, I'm 30, millennials go all the way up to 40-something and they stop at 27. So if I, back in the day, was targeting people who were 18 to 25 and they happened to be millennials, if I wanted to stick with that age group or stick with that generation, I should say, I need to now mature my brand to mature with my millennial audience. Or I need to shift my brand to now focus on the Gen Zers because they now are in that age group bracket and that means that I need to alter how I speak as a brand. I need to alter how I present myself as a brand because what Gen Zers are currently attracted to are not what millennials were attracted to when they were in that same age group. So it takes you as a CEO and as the brand to continuously evolve, continuously educate yourself so that you can continue to level up and mature or shift as your audience grows. Step number three is to develop your brand story. This right here was probably the biggest key to me growing so fast and growing so large. You have three different types of stories that you can share when it comes to your brand. You have what I call a CEO story, which is basically the story of how you founded this business, what journey you went through, did you experience any pains that your audience is going through, so on and so forth. You then have your product story. So whatever product or service you're providing, whether it's a digital product or physical product, you want to think about what the journey to developing that looked like, that's a story. And then you also have your customer story. What is your customer currently experiencing and how can you put yourself in their shoes, whether it's telling a story of an actual customer that you have right now, or whether it's creating a fictitious story that just takes them along the emotional journey that they are currently going through, but puts it in front of them in a fictional format. Now, after you've developed your brand story, you then want to connect your story to your audience through content. Now, before you say Chanel, I thought this was about social media and not about social media at the same time. It is. When I say content, content is not only social media. And that is a big taboo in the world, and I don't know why, right? Because content is everywhere. Content is on YouTube, which I don't consider YouTube a social media platform. Content is in your email newsletters that you send out. Content is in your text messages. Content is technically in ad campaigns. Content is everywhere. Content is just the words and visuals that someone consumes for a specific purpose. That's it. Social media does not own content. So when I say tell your brand story to your target audience through content, I'm not just talking social media. So how you can do this is you want to think about your audience. What are they currently going through right now? What are their current thoughts? What do they value? What would they be attracted to if they were to see it? And then think about how you can position your story in a creative way to attract them. And then that's how you come up with the content ideas. That's how you develop content pillars. That's how you develop content themes, campaign themes, all those types of things. That is how you develop that. And then once you've done steps one, two, three, and four, step number five is to replicate the steps everywhere. Okay? So when we think about content per se, I like to think there's three types of content. You have what I call connection content, which this is gonna be your deep emotional stories that you can share on and off social media. You can share these things through email, in person, so on and so forth. You then have what I call solution content, which is going to be providing quick wins or how-tos to your audience. This is maybe a self-care routine or how-to file taxes or whatever it may be. It's going to be something that can provide a quick win to your audience. Then you have realtainment content, which this is super relatable content that people can also find entertaining. This can be you making a joke of something. This can be you dramatizing something. Whatever that looks like, that's what that type of content is. And then you also have selling content, but this is about growing and expanding your brand, so we're not really talking about selling content. But nine times out of 10, you're probably already posting selling content if all you post is book now, shop now. You're already doing it. In step number five, what you want to do is take all those different types of content and because you're telling your story to your audience through the content, your steps are already intertwined, so now all you're going to do is then figure out how can you replicate that in several places. For example, how can I replicate what I am doing on Instagram, per se, on YouTube? How can I replicate what I am doing on YouTube via email? How can I replicate what I am doing via email in person at an event I'm sponsoring or an event that I'm a vendor at? How can I duplicate this? I'm going to give you two different examples that you will find super helpful. So when it comes to you going to pop-up shops or events and things like that, you want to have what's called a brand power statement, or at least what I call it. I don't know what everybody else refers it to, but I call it a brand power statement. This is pretty much what it is that your brand stands for, what exactly does your brand do, who does it help, and also how does it help them? That's basically what you want to develop into a pitch, per se, and that brand power statement is what you will use in conversations when you are in person, and before you just say, hey, buy this, you want to really ask the person questions about themselves and their journey because you know your audience, and then from there you can intertwine certain things about your brand's power statement into your responses as you respond to them. Another example is via email. You can definitely create more kind of transparent emails versus just buy this, buy that, so that can tap into your connection content. Another thing too is you can start a blog. If you don't want to bug people with emails, you can start a blog and you can just tell people when you have a new blog post. I find that product-based businesses who have blogs or who go a little bit deeper into storytelling, they tend to do really, really well, and honestly, that's what sets you apart. If you've been trying to figure out how can you be unique, your story is what makes you unique, and the fact that you're able to package that story in a creative and attractive way for your audience is what makes you successful. That's what's going to grow your list, that's what's going to grow your following, that's what's going to grow your bank account, okay? So there you have it. These are the five crucial things that I did to grow my brand to over 160,000 people within my email list, followers, subscribers, the whole nine. And if you are wondering, okay, Chanel, well, I don't even know where to start when it comes to my target audience, I am going to link an actual ebook that I created for you. It's called Money Magnet. I'm going to link that down below so that you can grab it and do the exercises in it. I am also going to link an additional video where I share why you need to develop your target audience, what are some of the core things that you want to think about. And so after you grab the book, watch that video and do the video alongside the book, and you will be golden. If you have watched this entire video, comment down below, what brand, to show me that you've made it all the way to the end. Make sure that you give this video a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, follow me on Instagram and on TikTok at the brand Hustler, because I share insightful gems over there as well. And I will see you in the next video. Bye hustle babe.