Read more about clarifying your brand strategy
How to Define Your Brand Values + Five Questions You Should Be Asking
Your brand values are the guiding principles that help you connect with your target audience. These five questions will help you define those North Star values that guide your business and brand decisions. “Where are you? Why aren’t you responding? I expect you to...
What Makes a Good Brand
A good brand is built with intention and purpose. When done well, a strong brand can support your version of success and bring more ease and enjoyment into your business. When I first started our home renovation blog, North Country Nest, I would spend hours and hours...
How to Know When it’s Time to Rebrand Your Business
It’s not always easy to know when it’s time to update the look and feel of your brand. Here are five common signs you’re ready to dig in and rebrand your service-based business. Let’s set the scene. You’ve been in business for a length of time - perhaps six months,...
How to Define Your Brand’s Positioning
Your brand is positioned in the market whether or not it is intentional. Walk through four steps on how to strategically position your brand with ease. When I think of the type of person who invests in an Apple computer, I immediately think about someone in the...
The Four Phases of the Customer Journey
We're walking through the four phases of the customer journey so that you can create a consistent brand experience tailored to your customer. The way you communicate your brand with someone who is well within your circle of influence is different from someone who is...
How to Identify Your Brand’s Personality
Seasonal Brand Theory is an easy way to help you identify your brand personality so that you can create a brand identity that resonates with your ideal client and business vision. Do you remember those Apple commercials with Justin Long? They started with him,...
How to Identify Your Ideal Client: Seven Questions to Ask
Whether you’re new to business or have been around for years, these seven questions will help you identify your ideal client so that you can understand how to best serve them. The question I see time and time again is, “How do I get more ________?” Insert clients,...
What is a Brand & Why Your Business Needs One
Understanding the answer to what is a brand will help you lay a rock solid brand foundation that connects with your audience, builds trust with your community and supports your version of success. The definition of a brand can be such an ambiguous question and if you...
What a Good Brand Experience Can Do For Your Business
A good brand experience, one that is consistent and cohesive, increases trust between your audience and community, and your brand. After three-plus years in branding, here’s what I whole-heartedly believe to be true: When you have a strong, consistent and cohesive...
What is Brand Consistency + Why It Matters
What it means to have brand consistency in your visuals, voice and messaging, and why it matters as a service based business. As a business owner and service provider, I am going to assume you know that competition for time, attention and clients is not going down so...
The Clear-Cut Guide on How to Audit Your Small Business’s Brand
We're walking through the three steps on how to audit your small business's brand and what to do next with the evaluation results. Now that we’ve discussed what a brand audit is, it’s time to actually dive into the auditing process. But first. As you’re working...
What is a Brand Audit?
A brand audit is the process for evaluating the effectiveness of your internal and external brand experience. Today we're sharing what it is and why it's important. When your business is brand new, more often than not, you’re DIY’ing all the things. Your business, and...
Three Common Brand Mistakes You Might be Making
We're walking through three common brand mistakes that hold back business owners from achieving their version of success. The idea of building a strong brand can be an ambiguous, frustrating and time consuming process. However, there are three common brand mistakes...
Brand Strategy and the Customer Journey: Building Brand Awareness
Learn how to utilize brand strategy and the ideal client during phase one of the customer journey - building brand awareness and attraction. During phase one of the customer journey (the awareness and attraction stage) the client is moving from not knowing that your...
Creating a Brand That Feels Right
i Do you feel like you want to change your brand design every six months? Whether it’s because something doesn’t fit or you see something that inspires you to change, you find yourself wanting to update your brand visuals. I remember when I first started our home...
Crafting an Elevator Pitch That Resonates
Check out the four ingredients for writing an elevator pitch that is effective in communicating the amazing results you provide for clients. I recently surveyed my Facebook community (join us over at The Brand Building Collective!) about what they struggle with most...
How to Differentiate Your Brand
When you intentionally differentiate your brand, you get clear on what makes your brand special so that you can best serve your audience. I think it's a pretty safe to assume that you're in a saturated market/space/category/industry, especially in today’s...
Brand Consistency vs. Consistent Marketing
It's no secret I'm a big fan of consistent branding. In fact, I dedicated an entire post to the topic that you can read here. However, I think there's a focus in the digital space, specifically with service businesses that are selling their expertise, on making sure...
The Best Way to Improve the Value of Your Brand
Focusing your attention on the overall customer experience is the best way to improve the perception of your brand's value. We're starting today with a riddle: What costs little to no monetary investment and yet can dramatically increase the value of your brand?...
How to Share Your Brand Message at Each Stage of the Customer Journey
Learn how to tailor your brand message to the specific needs of your audience at each of the four customer journey stages. When you think about someone who has no experience with your brand, the way you communicate with them is going to be vastly different than with...
Four Steps to Build a Strong Brand Foundation For New Business Owners
You have a business name, now what? Follow these four steps on how to build a brand for your new business that will set you up for success! It started with a little inkling that you could start a business. That you loved something enough to monetize it. You even have...
How to Create Content That is On-Brand
If you’ve been following along for a little while, you know that I preach consistency. If I’m being honest, I think it’s the number one factor to building a brand your audience trusts. Brand consistency doesn’t just mean using the same colors and fonts and photography...
How to Bring More Personality into Your Brand
Sharing five quick and easy ways to bring more personality into your brand so that you can create a stronger brand connection with your community. Today, I want to dig into the idea of personal branding, where that line is between infusing personality into your brand...
6 Reasons Why It Might Be Time to Update Your Brand
Check out these six reasons why it might be time to update your brand and hire a professional, or start digging deep and doing the work yourself. You have this business that you've worked on tirelessly for months, years, maybe even decades. Clients are coming on....