 Thank you Can everyone hear me, okay? All right So you may have heard some of these statistics, but 50 percent 50 percent of businesses fail within their first year 80 percent of businesses don't make it to the five-year mark 96 percent of businesses File their dissolution papers before they hit their 10th anniversary 96% of businesses go out of business before they are 10 years old Why is this? It's not because people don't know how to run a business. It's not because people can't find good employees It's not because they don't produce quality products or provide quality services It's because business owners are spending so much of their time and so much of their money focusing on selling their products They're focusing on building their business They're not spending enough of their time or enough of their energy on building a brand a Business brand is what takes a business past its 10th year of business Having a solid brand. It was what allows that business to go from year five into your six and on I have been working on building a business since 2005 in the past six or seven years I've been really solidly focusing on not just building a business but building a brand So I've become pretty passionate about the subject and that's why I'm here today talking about building a brand Specifically mastering your brand image so that you can keep your business in business past the five-year mark past the 10-year mark past the time when your products have completely morphed into something different so what is a brand a lot of business owners think they spend Pretty good a pretty good amount of money a pretty good amount of time investing in the things that help them market their business There are they're hiring graphic designers. They're hiring photographers. They're Creating things that they think is a brand We're gonna talk about some of the things that a brand is not So we can kind of go into what a brand actually is and first and foremost your brand is not your logo Your brand is not your business name You can spend thousands of dollars developing a great logo all the sponsors here today have fantastic logos But if I show you this logo for some random airline company, it doesn't matter how great their logo is It doesn't matter that they spent eight thousand dollars for a graphic designer to make that logo it doesn't even matter that they came up with a business name that is Truly indicative of what they do Because as soon as you walk away, you're not gonna remember this logo you're not gonna remember this company You need something more you need something to remember them by so that when you see their logo again You something sparks in your head. Oh, that's right. That's that company But what is it? It's not your color scheme It's not your website design again something that a lot of business owners dump a lot of time a lot of money into They get graphic designers. They get whole web design teams. They spend five thousand ten thousand hundreds of thousands of dollars on building an online presence or a logo McDonald's great example, we all know the McDonald's brand They've got a pretty solid color scheme. They probably spent tens maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars on a great website But McDonald's website and their colors isn't all that different from the five guys burgers colors and website which really isn't all that different from Tji Fridays and Isn't really all that different from Burger King So clearly These are not the same companies marketing to the same groups of people Your website your colors your logo. These aren't the things that make your brand And also your brand is not the awesome products and services that you provide of course of course as a business owner You need to be developing top-notch products. You need to be providing awesome service to your customers But your products aren't what is going to keep you in business How many of you have been in the WordPress industry for more than five years? How many of you are doing exactly what you were doing five years ago one person one person all right So another great example of this 15 years ago. I wanted to get a watch I'd walk up to the jewelry stand in my little Department store, and I picked out a watch 30 years ago. It was a swatch. Those were pretty cool But today if I want to know what time it is if I don't rely on my phone, I'm not gonna go buy that watch I'm gonna get this cool thing that tracks my heartbeat. It tells me how many hours I sleep every night It tells me how much REM sleep I get it even tells me how many laps I swam at the pool Oh, yeah, and it tells time It's 345 but what's this thing gonna be like in five years am I gonna buy another Fitbit or am I gonna get a chip Put it in my hand that tells me the time Sends me my text messages. Let's me scan and the check out in the grocery lane. It's gonna be like Clearly your brand cannot be the product that you sell Because in five years the product that you're selling is not going to be the same product that it was today So what is a brand? It's not your logo. It's not your colors. It's not your websites It's not even the products that you're selling So we're gonna start with a couple of examples of pretty well-known brands Most of us recommend recognize Walmart anyone. What does what what do you think of when you think of Walmart? cheap cheap crowds Low prices what else Convenient what else great inventory inventory Yes, check out. Yes, the people in the checkout staff I asked my six-year-old this question and he said every Walmart's exactly the same and they have blue carts Walmart you guys named almost all of these low prices convenient They've got a certain type of customer. They have employee relationships You know, you think a little bit about how Walmart treats their employees. You know the convenience they're gonna have the exact same thing at every store that you go into and They have a certain customer experience. You feel a certain way When you think about shopping at Walmart Apple how many of you own Apple products? How many of you own more than one Apple product? Did anyone put their hand down? Why do people buy Apple? They don't buy They don't they don't buy Apple phones because they are technically better than their sanson counterparts They don't buy Apple products because they make the best software most of the people in this room that have an Apple computer are probably running Microsoft Word Why didn't you just buy a Microsoft computer? you don't buy Apple products because They're so much better. You certainly don't buy them because they're cheaper than their counterparts Now you buy Apple and you continue to buy Apple because you love the brand Apple's done something to give you an emotional connection to your brand There's a reason that you bought your iPhone for five times more than the Samsung that was sitting next to it And there's a reason that when the next iPhone model comes out even though you've just spent a thousand dollars on the last one You're gonna be the first person in line to buy the new model quite a few years ago Back in the 1990s Apple was going through a pretty tough time. They had a downturn in sales They weren't selling as many products the computing age was changing and They looked as though they were in danger of going out of business and right around this time is when they Really took a shift in their marketing and Apple started focusing not on selling their computers, but on selling their brand They developed a unique brand that people could relate to They came up with a corporate culture They made it their vision and they made it known that they were going to empower people through technology They put Apple computers in all of the schools They created a unique and consistent visual image along with a unique and consistent vocabulary If you open up a new MacBook and you start the installation process you get the hello screen, right? You open up your iPhone same thing I've had same thing you open up the box What do you get a little black book with the Apple logo on it and the first word you see hello Super consistent Apple has established trust with their customers and for this reason they have gained customers for life Mark globe marketer and author of emotional branding Wrote an article talking about the 1990 collapse of Apple and how they were able to rebound and he said without the brand Apple would be completely dead. The brand is what they have. That's all they have It's the power of their brand that keeps them alive It has absolutely nothing to do with the products So to summarize all of that your brand is exactly how other people feel About your business Your brand is what makes people want to buy from you. Your brand is what makes people keeping Coming back to purchase from you again and again Your brand is why you have customers before you release your next product So take a second to look at all of these different logos Most most companies that are well known will evoke certain emotions inside of you. How do you feel when you think about Walmart? How do you feel when you think about Target? How do you feel when you think about your cable provider? Your cell phone provider How do you feel about the social media networks that you spend half of your day on? How do you feel about Uber and Lyft? Looking at these logos is not just pretty pictures on a screen There's an emotional connection that you have behind all of these because of the experiences that you've had which each with each and every one of these companies Your brand is the emotional connection that people have to your business It is how people feel about your business, but most importantly your brand is how people talk about your business If people feel warm and fuzzy about your business if they have a great sense of who you are as a company They're going to talk positively about you to their friends to their family to your other customers Likewise if people get a bad experience about your brand if people don't understand what your brand is If they don't if they get confused by your brand messaging They're gonna talk badly about your brand Which begs the question does your Does your brand spark joy a? Joyful brand is gonna make other people feel joyful and they're gonna be super excited and super happy to share Their experience working with your brand with their friends and family If they don't have a good experience or if they don't have an experience at all because you don't have a brand You know what they're gonna do they're gonna throw it out doesn't spark joy. Let's discard it So inevitably the bad news here if your brand is how other people feel about your business and the emotional connection that other people have Your customers are really the ones who determine your brand So what are we gonna do about this? The good news is that you do have control over how people perceive your business And this is what we're about to talk about What I'm gonna talk about today is how you can turn your customers into your brand advocates Six simple things that you can do in your business to help you master your brand image so that your customers are crystal clear on who you are as a company and Want to come back and continue to purchase from you How do we do this? So your customers are gonna interact with your company in a lot of different places. They're gonna find your website They're gonna see you on social media. They're gonna have content emails Videos you've got meetings in person. You've got meetings over the phone You've got your employees talking to your customers You've got you as a business owner talking to your employees your networking you're in conferences your customers are gonna interact with your Company in a lot of places and the key here is to be super consistent There are six different areas that you need to have extreme consistency in so that your customers aren't confused about What your brand is so that they know What they should feel about their brand and how they should talk to other people about your brand as Steve Jobs said he knew a little bit about marketing Marketing is about values So the first thing the first step in mastering your brand image is Going to be to determine what your brand values are this exercise right here This is a three-hour exercise that is going to be more valuable than a $10,000 website this exercise for Three four hours of brainstorming is going to bring more to your business than the best design logo you can afford Create values that your customers will care about create values that you will care about care about if you have a team Get them involved with this process a few years ago. My team and I sat down and we had a list of a hundred different values Personal values corporate values and everybody sat down and highlighted the values that rang true to them And we talked about it for an hour. Why why is customer service important to you? Why is being responsive important to you? Why is having fun important to you? Why is community? Why is family? Why are all of these things important to you? And we came up with a clear set of brand values for our business and these change they modify over time our customers change a Little bit the products and services were selling Change but every time we have a full team meeting on the first page of the agenda. I make sure that I list our brand values What do we care about what do our customers care about? What are we showing our customers? This gives you something to sell It's your customers to understand what your values are no more about your business Brand values can help you get out of really really sticky situations eight ten years ago Taco Bell got slapped with a big class action lawsuit for selling fake meat meat. That's not meat Anyone remember that? Yeah Ah So they they weren't they could have been I mean this could have been doom for Taco Bell They had thousands of peoples This was all over the newspapers all over television all over social media. Holy cow. Taco Bell is not selling real meat So what did they do they lean on their brand values? You'll care about Taco Bell Taco Bell has some brand values including humor and honesty So they publish full page advertisements saying thanks for suing us Tongue in cheek. Let's be super honest here. Yeah, the beef we buy is 100% beef But now that taco filling 800% beef. You know why? Because plain ground beef is boring So here's our recipe here are the other ingredients we put into there because our honesty Let's tell you all about the reason that we add these things and then they went even a step further They released a series of cartoon commercials With mr. Bland and his llama trying to spread blandness all over the universe People are eating bland food for lunch and the super delicious ingredient force from Taco Bell steps in and they put all their secret ingredients in and they just change up their recipe a little bit because Because plain hamburger is just boring Their brand values humor honesty this got way more social media coverage way more interest Way more advertising than the class action lawsuit their brand recovered from this They could have been in a seriously sticky place last night. We walked by a Taco Bell cantina on Newport Beach Their brand is only growing So you've got your brand values, you know why you're in business, you know Your customers know what you value your customers are gonna want to work with you because they relate to your brand values The next thing you have to do is tell them why you're different has anyone heard of a unique selling proposition So a USP unique value proposition unique selling proposition is the one thing that makes you stand out from your competition What are you doing? That's different This is another great exercise This might take you a little bit longer You may have to do some significant market research another thing to bring your team in on if you work with contractors If you hire out photographers make sure they know your unique selling proposition as well and make it the life blood of your business We incorporate our USP For website developers who answer the phone we incorporate that into everyday talk in our office and We put little humor twists on it But when you bring your USP what makes you different Into your business and make that the focal point of what you're doing Put it on the homepage of your website Have it as a headline on the about us page. Your customers are going to start to see that They're gonna start to remember that and that's what's going to make them different every time I go to a marketing meeting or a networking meeting and I stand up and I get my 60 second commercial in front of 30 people And I have 60 seconds to talk the first thing I say is our unique selling proposition The last thing I say is our unique selling proposition and that is the lot the only thing that people leave the room remembering I don't care about all the services that I want to sell them What they care is why we're different if you have a team Absolutely bring them in on your brand values for bring them in on your USP, but give them a purpose Give your team members a why why are they coming to work every day? Why do they want to help your customers? Why do they want to help your company? Linked in an imperative release a study in 2016 surveyed a whole lot of people Most adults spend most of their waking time at work Yet only 30% of the people they surveyed were satisfied with their jobs And the reason for that Was because they didn't know why they were going to work. They were going to work to collect a paycheck They didn't have a goal Their company didn't have values 58% and this is part of the survey. I'll go back if you want to take a picture of this slide I would recommend this is great. That's a short link directly to a PDF full results of the survey There's a lot of interesting information in there great for a business owners to read through and go back All the way for a sec, but they found by and large that companies who paid attention to their values and companies who involve their employees in their values and in their Goals and they make goals that gave employees a reason and a purpose to come to work every day 58% of companies with clearly divine visions goals purposes Saw a 10% more than 10% increase in growth Well, 42% who did nothing did not give their employees a goal did not give them a reason actually saw a decline in their business giving employees a purpose a goal a vision a reason is Not just going to make them want to come to work every day It's going to make them form stronger bonds with their other co-workers They're all going to get behind your company's vision. It's going to lead to a more productive workplace It's going to lead to longer employee retention and it's going to lead to a much better product in the end of the day a Quote out of the this is in the intro to the study that linkedin did Imagine what would happen if every person in your company was connected to a purpose to a job that mattered to them Imagine how much more productive they would be Think of what we could collectively accomplish You have the power to make work more meaningful. You can create engagement by inspiration by connecting purpose to your work So the first three parts of building your brand is really about the emotional connection What can you do to emotionally connect your customers to your business values to your business vision? How can you bring your employees in to get on board with your values with your vision? next it boils down to What business owners are dumping a lot of their money into which is the actual design the logos the visual aspects content Keeping your content consistent is a huge way To make sure that people don't get confused about what your brand message is How do you do this the easiest way to create consistent content is to pull your values your goals your vision Into every piece of content that you write If you think hey, let's write this next paragraph with our primary vision in mind You're probably gonna create a consistent message throughout every platform that you advertise on if you have a website With content written in one tone of voice make sure that your social media matches the style that you're using on your website Make sure that your brochures match And thing you can do is create a voice guide for your brand talk about the person you want to talk in first person like a person third person Along with keeping your content consistent of your colors icons pictures I showed this slide to my six-year-old and he bust out laughing and I'm like, why do you think this is so funny? And he said well you're given to talk on penguins. Why'd you put a giraffe in there? Stop doing this with your business people do this all the time How many times have you gotten a business card from someone with super swirly fancy? Golden boss ink and you go to their website, and it's using a different color and different font How many times have you had a takeout menu from a Chinese restaurant? you don't know if that's the right takeout menu because the sign that's hanging above their establishment is different color or Because it's exactly the same takeout menu as the Chinese shop down the road. Yeah Stop doing this make sure that all of your colors are consistent across all of your branding If you have red business cards have a red website have red flyers If you use open sans fonts on your website use it on your letterhead put it on your business card It's not that difficult to do You can create a brand guide in the next slide on here I have a link to a template that you can use to create your own brand guide, but Some things that you want to include in this are going to be information about your photographer Who's writing content for you? Who are your graphic designers? It's a really great idea for all of the people who are playing a part in Designing for your brand or writing for your brand can connect with each other or have or have resources to be able to So here's an example brand style guide Something I definitely recommend every business take the time to do So we're gonna include in this your logo You're gonna have the colors that you're using make sure you have them in all different forms that your print That your embroidery that your website graphic design RGB CMYK hex Make sure that you use consistent contact information You have 15 different phone numbers that robbed to different places. Let's simplify that. Let's have one phone number Do you have a PO box and a street address? Why are we confusing our customers here? Let's pick one Do you have an email address at Yahoo, but a website at your domain? What's going on here? Let's create some consistency Make sure that every place you're publishing your contact information is the same create a tagline that matches your brand values Put those in your brand style guide list your unique selling proposition Put your goals your vision your mission Put an example of content that you would use on your website Maybe pull out the first paragraph on your home page. So anyone who is working with your business knows how you talk about your business Circulate your brand guide to your graphic designers give it to your Photographers in fact put your graphic designers information on your brand guide put your photographers information on your brand guide If you rely on stock photos Pick one stock photo source try to pick one photographer or at least pick a couple photographers that Have similar style and put that information on your brand guide So that anybody who's working for you or part of your brand your employees yourself Has a clear vision and knows exactly how they need to move forward Finally, and this is the most important one. We've got our values. We've got our USP. We've got a purpose We've got colors. We've got a logo Make sure you're representing your brand Everywhere you go in person. You're attending meetings with your customers. You're taking sales calls. You're answering the phone You're going to networking events. Maybe you're here at a conference today as part of your company Maybe you donate maybe you run philanthropic events. Maybe you host Fundraisers for local charities. Maybe your team just goes on a bunch of social outings Fall back on your brand image refer to your brand guide before you go out so if you're maybe running a business With black and red colors you use an animal As one of your low as your logo elements you'd like to speak at conferences and so you put slide decks together Right, it might be a good idea that when you attended conferences That your slide decks matched your branding maybe a little bit if you have a professional headshot on your website It might be a good idea that that professional website's not six years old so that when people see you they can recognize who you are You might even consider dressing in a similar fashion Make it super easy Don't confuse your customers if I was standing up here in a full-length dress Y'all be like who is that person standing at the front of the room? Be consistent Be consistent in all of your marketing Have consistent brand values Talk about them with your employees share them with your team Create a unique selling proposition People don't fall in love or people don't buy from Apple people don't buy From Microsoft Because of the product that they sell They buy because they love the brand It's a summary My slides are up online Feel free to download them or tweet me And I think we have time for some questions Any questions? No, maybe Yes It can be the question is is the tagline the same as your USP It can be In our case our USP is we're web developers who answer the phone And so we do pretty much use that as our tagline But a lot of businesses will have a unique selling proposition that is not exactly the same as their tagline Tagline should be super memorable should be short Yes I'll repeat The question was do we do personality assessments for our teams? We do actually We have every team member take the strengths finder assessment Usually right after they start oftentimes prior to starting depending on their role in the company We just went through a really big team building session where we did Myers brings personality Typing and we spent a full day talking about our personality types and just really breaking it down Personality typing definitely a great A great way to get insight about the strengths that your individual team members have Lean on those absolutely Yeah, yeah any other questions Five minutes we got five more minutes Yeah The question is does your event brand evolve over time? Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Um Especially in this industry Things are changing for us for us Uh specifically, you know, we have we have grown And gone from, you know, just a one person team to a two person team to a four person team to a nine person team And so the type of customer that we work with Has changed as our business has changed the type of products that we enjoy projects that we enjoy working on have changed So, yeah, the brand can change. Um, like I said earlier, you know It's really great to maintain consistency for as long as you can there have been companies that have gone through complete rebranding With success I would say the core elements behind your brand your values Your usp to some extent although that can change but but your values should remain consistent And if you are going to make a change, you know Change in a way that makes sense to your customers And don't confuse your customers. Make sure they know why you're changing Be super open about the change Yes Yeah, so the question was, you know, for bigger companies you obviously need to have kind of the corporate brand But a lot of freelancers they've got themselves as their personal brand And then they have their company that they're running a freelancer under should you distinguish those and I think the answer is really It depends are people buying from you because they know you and they like you Can you use your strengths your values your mission to further build out your brand? I think that any business owner That starts a business with brand values that are completely opposite from their personal values Is just setting themselves up to fail. So in some respects even large corporations The very heart of it. There has to be someone who is connecting emotionally the owner of the business to those values That's what makes them work. Any other questions? Thank you, everyone