Simplifying Your Brand

Simplifying Your Brand

Sean: I want to know, how do you break a brand down? How do you simplify it? Is there a process that you use to do that?

Jennifer: A lot of whiteboard space and markers and pens and paper? It’s really just been like, just that, like, literally it has taken me a long time because they are some of the – one of the difficulties when you look at building a brand, it intertwines into really everything in your business. Right.

It all kind of intertwines with your business. And there are so many layers in it that all work together that all affect it’s – I always give the analogy of kind of like it’s making like a sauce, the things you put into your brand, you add one thing and you change your color and it changes, it affects everything else and you’re a brand, right?

It is difficult, you know, and it’s taken me a while to work out. Right. What can I give – self-false is the philosophy that it’s a really powerful self-contained nugget that they can take and run with and never get, you know, never worked with us again. And it’s been trying to pull those out and really just, like I said, honestly, just spending hours and hours going right.

It started kind of with over a kind of a big program and then breaking that down. And if I have this module and this is, you know, a self-contained /module, right. Well, how can I break that module down now? And then breaking that down even more and just kind of working from there. And there’s some stuff that I would never do as kind of micro kits because they weren’t self-contained.

That would probably do more harm to their business than good, you know if they tried to do it and didn’t implement it correctly or do follow up with it. So it’s pulling out those nuggets that I can give them. And then eventually in the membership, what I plan on doing is actually doing live teaching and the group in the community with some of the more complex.

So filling in those gaps between the nuggets that they have and giving them that, giving them that kind of live interaction, that if they have questions or things like that, then that they can ask.

Sean: That’s amazing with these nuggets that you give to the leadership. I wonder how often do they say that – hey, you know, yeah. I agree with that, that’s something that we need. And how often do they say, you know, that doesn’t really make sense? And how do you phrase that or convince them that this is it, this is actual data that you need and you not seeing this is actually detrimental to your business?

Jennifer: Well, it’s funny because when they first came into the online space, but maybe about a year and a half or so ago, and we started, you know, doing a bit of marketing, and it was really what we were doing was testing, you know, testing some stuff with our brand, putting out ideas and content, doing some beta testing with different things.

And my whole approach was very, you know, I kind of led with my sage and was very much like, this is what you need to know. I’m not using the word branding, I’m using brand development. We’re going to talk about morphological analysis.

We’re going to do this. And I had an audience going, what is she, what is she talking about? I don’t need that. I don’t know. I just want pretty colors. You know, I just want those, I just want that. And that was our research. And like, I know you don’t have to make and it’s, but that was our research.

That was my kind of research. So I learned then, and this is again, kind of an important lesson to get to know your audience is, and you do have more than one audience group, get to know your audiences. So with us right now, like we did the initial launch with branding and flash at the end of it was like, 1st of January, we just launched it for a couple of weeks.

Got some feedback, things like that. And then we’ve just reopened it again. You know, it’s been great because – I just asked them, I asked the people, I say, look, what do you know, what do you think, I have been able to kind of model as well. Because we did all of that ground, that research and that initial, you know, looking into audiences and things of that nature, I’ve been able to sort of pinpoint, right.

Here’s a particular audience group. So right now the main audience we’re target targeting knows that they need a brand they’re higher up on that product pyramid. They know that they need a brand they’re actually searching most of them for, right. I mean, I need branding burning per se. A lot of them have already bought courses programs, or they’ve tried to ask somebody to do it for them.

So they are very product aware. Now kind of a strategy with us, which maybe would be an interesting strategy maybe for some of your people and listening to be that one, what we’re going to do, cause that’s going to be our entry product and to our main entry product, right. That we do ads with and stuff like that into our world, because we know we have more than one audience group for that product because we’ve done our research, right. And put the time into it.

What we plan on doing is we have identified about five or six very particular sub-niches out of the main group that we have. So one of them is very early startups who doesn’t know, oh yeah, I need a brand. I need brown Dean. I didn’t think about that. So therefore our language with them and our approach with them via our ads on our landing page is going to be very different than the language that we’re using on the current learning page.

We will have one aim that may be like designers, social media, strategists, people like that. Who just want you have the skill sets, maybe, you know, visually, but they need a bit more. How on the, on the backend of that to create better stuff for, you know, better logos and things like that, or social posts for their clients or people who just do products, cause that’s, you know, there’s a bit of a twist there if you’re just doing products.

So we have different groups that we could create very specific messaging for an approach for not changing our brand, but it changing the way that we communicate with them and using their language. Because we’ve used our brand to do that research. Right

.And we’ve been able to do that. So it’s just meeting them where they are. And you probably know that yourself, and you’ve probably heard that yourself when you’re doing your marketing and your sales, you need to meet people where they are. We create products for what they need. But most often people don’t know exactly what they need.

They’re lower on the pyramid. So you need to make them with what they want. So I want pretty colors, or I want this. And that’s what you talk about. This is going to help you create those pretty colors. It’s going to help you do this, but really what it, we know what it’s going to do is help to fill and give them cohesion.

Now, if you look on the sales page now for branding in the flash, see it talks about cohesion because that’s what those people are looking for. They have a brand out there, but it’s not cohesive and it’s not clear. So it’s meeting them, doing your research in your audience, meeting your audience where they are in your messaging and things like that is really helpful.

Sean: That’s awesome. And I’m learning so much from this one recording that we’re doing.

Jennifer: I can talk for ages, so just feel free to go, right. Jennifer.

Sean: I want you to go I’m. I mean, learning so much. I’m so excited about the listeners, what they’ll be getting out of this because branding is critical, but it’s also so elusive that a lot of business owners actually don’t think about that.

And I don’t know there in Ireland, but here in the Philippines, branding is just not prioritized. It’s just not there. It’s not at the top of the list. It’s not even on the top 10 if you’re an entrepreneur. So it’s just sad that way, that I’m so happy that we’re talking about this right now because this is the first episode I think that we’re doing on branding in leadership stack.

It’s very good. Very good. You mentioned earlier about leadership. So I’m going to veer away a little bit from branding here. We talked about leadership and you mentioned how you don’t see yourself as a leader, but more of an entrepreneur, which I think is a very interesting perspective about yourself.

How do we struggle? How does one person struggle or fail in leadership? How do you tell yourself I’m not a leader, I am more of an entrepreneur?  Because that’s what you mentioned earlier, and I’m curious about that. Like what happened there? When was that point when you said I’m more of an entrepreneur than a leader? You know, tell us a story.

Jennifer: I think it’s – comes with maturity in your business, you know. Because we start off thinking, this is my business. I am the leader, like you said, I do everything. And you do everything in your business. Right? You do social media. You do, you create products. You more or less deliver the products you do, the sales, you empty the bins, you know, you, you do everything.

And of course, we’re a leader in certain, you know, in certain aspects. But when I say I am not a leader, really kind of what I mean under Brand Evolution Academy is that I don’t see myself as putting my foot down and going right, this is all mine. This is all me. You know, everybody has to do it my way.

I think I’ve matured enough that I can say, right – you know, I have awesome skillsets. I see the skillsets and my zone of genius. I rock it. I rock it like most other people don’t and I know that, but I don’t rock everything. It’s being aware of, Hey, there are themes that, yeah, maybe I’m not as happy doing and see, to be honest, you know, as things would grow, would I be happy somebody else may be coming in, you know, running some of the day-to-day stuff when I could go play and make up new ideas and just teach and work with the community. Yes.

That’s what I would love to do. So for me, it’s not,I have to be seen as I run the business and I’m the head. For me, it’s more, yeah, I’m an entrepreneur. I love being an entrepreneur. I love coming up with ideas and I love helping others to gain the skillset, to know how’s of it that they can, you know, bring their ideas to life.

Sean: Really sure. Because how would we define leadership here is influencing someone by serving them and you do serve other people. By being an entrepreneur. That’s good news for you right there. And hope that that helps you.

Jennifer: I can say, Sean has said now, Sean has that I am a leader.

Sean: We literally hold that up in a flag because more people in my team in SEO-hacker, we’re a team of 50 people. Most of us are millennials cause I’m 33. I founded the company 10 years, a little over 10 years ago.

So everyone’s younger than. And we tell people we want to be the leaders, don’t be a leader because you think you’ve earned the position or you want to be served. But because you want to serve people. If you have the heart to serve people, then talk with me about being a team leader or a leadership position.

We’ll give it to you. We expect you to serve other people in the company. So yeah, that’s leadership for us and I think you’re doing that, so there you go. And lastly, Jennifer, if people want to get mentored by you or they want to consult with you, they want to get in touch with you for whatever reason, how do they reach you?

Jennifer: You can check out brand evolution, academy, that’s the website. We have, I guess our first micro kit is out branding and flash, so you google that. And right now there is an extra bonus free sort of public group with it. That’s actually going to be the foundation for the membership, which is launching soon.

So it’s really kind of just coming into that space. I don’t do any one-on-one marketing anymore – consulting. What I will be doing inside that community will be flash intensives. So I might do a, you know, say like I’ve got an opening for a three-hour intensive where we can go through and really work through somebody need something, you know, quickly done or they’re really, really stuck with something.

So I might do the odd one of those, but every, most of it’s going to be put through the membership and put through the community because I do also believe. And especially when you’re building a brand, well, I’m all about all aspects of our business.

You know, we need feedback. We need those sounding boards. When you’re working with your brands, very, very easy to get distracted. Everybody has an input and so much in branding and copywriting and messaging and everything else. Visual branding comes down to taste. You know, what’s my taste compared to your taste? What do you like to do? Everybody has an opinion on it. 

And it’s very overwhelming when people are asking people who aren’t really in their markets, you know, what do you think of this? And it just kind of confuses them. So yeah, either you can check out also Lady Rebel club – there’s a Facebook page for both that and brand evolution academy and then branding in a flash you can Google as well.

Sean: That’s awesome. Well guys, we will have that in the show notes just go to leadershipstack.com look for the episode with Jennifer Cairns that’s C A I R N S. And you will find her show notes. All the links are going to be there. We’re also going to put her LinkedIn there. Definitely go ahead, check out her website.

If you want to learn more about branding, Jennifer’s the expert there. Go ahead and hit her up. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for this episode. I’ve learned so much. I’m sure the leaders are learning a ton and we are better for it.

Jennifer: Well, thanks very much for having me.