How to Build a Brand That Converts | Christian Small Business Owners

Most business owners, when they hear the word branding, go straight to their logo, color, palette, and maybe even your font. And look. Those things matter, but those are just a small piece of your branding. There is a portion of your branding, however, that is far more impactful than you might think. And it's the part of the brand that makes someone decide, sometimes in a matter of seconds, if they trust you enough to say yes. And most people overlook the depth of this part. Welcome to the Faith Led Founders Podcast, the show for Christian entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to grow a successful business with the overwhelm. I'm Lauren, a marketing strategist and business coach with over a decade of experience helping businesses simplify their marketing and build systems that create real growth. So if you're ready, grab your coffee and let's dive in. Okay, before we get into today's topic, I want to start with a question. When you think about your brand, what comes to mind? Is it your website? Your logo? Maybe your Instagram feed? If those are some of the things that your mind went to, you're not alone. But I want to challenge that today, because most business owners are actually building their brands from an incomplete definition of branding. And that's something I want to redefine with you today. So your logo, your colors, those things are not your brand. Those are what are called brand assets. And yes, they're very important. But after over a decade in marketing, I realized that it's not the most important thing to focus on when you're building your business. One of the most important pieces of your brand is going to stem from the full experience someone has every time they come into contact with your business. Now, there's this saying that you all probably have heard. People may forget what you said, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Now, it's very cheesy, I know, but that is branding. It's a feeling and an emotion that is created, and that is what your brand actually is. And this is important for us to understand because people will absolutely notice your logo. They'll notice your colors and, you know, your branding. But really, when we're marketing and we're trying to engage clients or partners, they're going to feel something that either draws them into our business or pushes them away. And when we can look at branding from this angle, it's going to allow us to build our business through a series of touch points. And that's what I really want to teach you about today. This. It's really gonna change how you look at marketing. Your business, you're not just gonna think about things like advertising discounts on services or products, or the aesthetic of your Instagram feed. I want you to start thinking about things like when someone lands on your website for the first time, what are they? What do they feel? Do they feel clarity or confusion around your services or the products that you're selling? If they call into your business or send an email, how are they going to be greeted? Does that response feel warm, professional, scattered and unprofessional? And for those of you who have like a brick and mortar business where people can walk into your business and into a space, and this is where I get really excited, is what is the atmosphere and the culture, what is the energy that are going to be met with by your team members? Because every single one of those moments is either building trust or breaking it with clients that are current clients and future clients. And so what I found working in businesses for over a decade now, or even just being a consumer myself and interacting with businesses that I love, is that so many business owners focus on a very select few touch points and they're completely unaware of all the rest of the and that can really be a problem and over time drastically hurt your profitability and your ability to grow your business. Now where it gets exciting for me, and hopefully it'll start to get exciting for you too, is I am such a people person and I believe that every business is built by people, for people. So as we build our business, we should build it around serving people. And as a business owner, our business actually becomes a reflection of us, whether we believe that or not. And as faith led founders, I believe that you started your business with a purpose that is from God, it's divine, and it's meant to serve a very specific group of people. And this is amazing because this is your opportunity to do self reflection and really make sure that you build your business in a way that it reflects your values. And it's through the way that you communicate and the standards that you choose to set for your business. Every single one of those things begins to build a brand experience. And this is going to force you as a business owner to self reflect and grow. And so that you don't become the bottleneck or the stumbling block in your business. Because we can become the reason why our business stops growing again. The things that we're going, going through that, the standards that we choose to uphold or the things that we overlook in our business begin to tie into and show up in our brand. And this is something that I'VE observed time after time and with business owners, if you have a business owner who is not focused on serving their employees and really building up team culture, you can fill it in the energy of the business. And that does, over a period of time, drastically affect your. Your ability to grow your business. So you get to set the culture, the systems and the values for your business. And. And this actually is going to be what creates a brand personality that connects positively or negatively with your clients. And so the reason why I'm talking about this today, and I want to share is I happened to have a conversation with a client of mine a few weeks ago, and it really got me thinking around this topic of brand personality. And so, you know, this client, she has been going out trying to establish referral partnerships, and she's doing great. She's been very consistent. She's putting in the work. But she came to me and just feeling frustrated because there are business owners out there that she absolutely wants to work with, and they're just not seeming interested in working with her. And it was kind of getting frustrating and, you know, hurting her feelings. And I completely understand that most people might just write off those other business owners take it as rejection. But the thing is, is I know that she is great at what she does, and she's so knowledgeable in her particular skill and the service that she provides in her business. And so when she came to me with this frustration and, you know, we. We had time to talk together, my mind immediately went to looking at her brand personality and the touch points. There's nothing wrong with her. It was really the brand experience that she was creating without realizing it. When I look at her website, her Instagram, and kind of her partnership pitch, it's just really misaligned. And because of that, the brand isn't communicating the level of expertise that she actually has, which is making her have to work harder to grow. You know, she is the right person for these partnerships. She's the right person for her clients. And. But her brand isn't just telling the story in the right way. And that is what I want you to think about today. You can really be excellent at your business. Whether you are a service provider or you sell a product. You can have something that is amazing for your specific ideal client and still lose out on opportunities because your full brand experience is really creating misalignment. And so how do we fix that? It starts with getting really clear on your brand personality. Every brand has one. It does. You have a brand personality right now. If you've been in business for a long time. But have you built that intentionally? And it really, really. The overhanging question or the over, I'm sorry, the overarching question becomes, is your brand personality working for you or again, against you? Your brand personality is the set of human characteristics your business carries. That's like the most simplified way to think about it. Is your brand warm, very informative? Is it bold or maybe understated? Is it nurturing or direct, Approachable or aspirational? All of these characteristics we as humans have, we can showcase through how we build our brand. And for us faith led founders, there is another layer to look at when we're building our business. Is our faith going to be very visible and loud in our brand, or is it something that is just a quiet foundation of our brand and how we operate? So when your brand personality is clear and consistent across every client touch point, something really powerful is going to happen for you in your business because it starts to draw in the right people and the wrong people will naturally begin to opt out of working with you. And I want you to get okay with that and comfortable with people saying no to you, because not every person is meant for you. That's why we do a lot of work around having an ideal client, an ideal person that you want to work with and an ideal client that you want to come into your business. So we get okay with a no because we want to draw in the right people. And we do that through our brand personality and clarity. So when we build systems in our brand to ensure a cohesive client experience, you and your team are going to know how to show up every day and how to sell the business. It's not going to be, you know, throwing darts at a, at a board and hoping that something sticks. Your marketing is going to begin to just get easy because you're going to know how you show up. You're going to, you're going to show up authentically through your brand. Just like we have to know who we are in Jesus. You know, I know who I am and I'm going to show up like that person every single day in my business, at home, out in the community. That is who I am. I, as Lauren Kim, have a brand of who I am and clarity in who I am. Clarity into what my business stands for and what your business stands for starts to build trust. And trust is what makes people say yes and commit to your brand. Okay, so all of this to say, you know, we are talking today about brand personality and touch points, because if we're not looking at building our brand and the brand personality and the touch points. With this bigger picture of what branding is, your marketing is going to feel really challenging. And business growth is going to be challenging because it's going to take a lot more effort to warm up future clients. It's going to take a lot of effort to find the right people. You know, our branding really should be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. And so once we have clarity around our brand personality and we build out very intentionally these touch points, you know, this brand experience, it's going to be so much easier for people to say yes to us. It's going to be so, so much easier for us to build marketing campaigns that build trust and that draw people in. And so today, I really want to leave you with an exercise that I think will really help you practically figure out where you might have gaps in your brand experience. And this works for whatever stage you're in in business. You know, if you've been in business for years and you've just hit a plateau and there's no growth and you're wanting to break through that ceiling, this is something to absolutely look at. And if you're just getting started, this is a fantastic place to start. So I want you to think about the last five people who may have interacted with your business. And again, if you're a startup, think about five people or five different touch points they might come to your business and approach your business from. So this could be a website visitor, a client that just walked into your space, a referral partner, someone who may be called in or emailed, and even a past client, because that's where we get retention and referrals from. So we want to look at all of those different client touch points. And for each one of those people, I want you to map out what did they see, how did they feel, and how were they maybe spoken to or treated? What is the interaction with your business? What are the, you know, almost from a five senses perspective, what did they see? What do they hear? How do they feel? Maybe what do they smell even? So, does that person have clarity on what you do, or are they left feeling confused? Because maybe your website has way too much information on it or way too much jargon that they don't even understand, or are they met with warmth or indifference? And as you do this exercise, I think you're going to start to see the gaps in where you want your brand experience to be and where it actually is right now. And I think this will kind of serve as your starting point to build out an impactful brand experience for your business. So I hope that this episode left you with, you know, a better understanding and building a brand. A better understanding on creating an experience and drawing out emotion when people come through your doors or they interact with your business. Cause this really is so important and not enough people talk about this when they are building businesses or they're developing brands. And this is something that I thrive in. I absolutely love looking at our brand personality and how someone feels when they interact with a business, so I hope this was helpful. Please leave a comment below. I would love if you rate and review this podcast every time you do. It helps me get in front of more business owners like you who love Jesus and want to serve people. Have a great day and I look forward to hearing from you guys next week.