4 Key Elements You Need In Your Brand Strategy
If you were to look at your top 5 favorite brands, what would you say makes them valuable? Is it their products? The services they sell? The visuals and designs of their content? Is it the person behind the brand that you admire?
In this creator economy, most people will automatically assume that a brand is valuable based on external factors like its brand visuals or how well-curated the brand is online. However, the elements of a brand that truly make it valuable aren’t always visible.
Brand assets are the part of your brand that supports your identity, your place in the market, and the space you take up in the minds of the people you serve. Once you establish your brand assets you can become a force in the marketplace (online or offline) and discover ways to amplify your impact. Let’s discuss the four brand assets every solopreneur needs.
Asset #1 - Unique Experiences
Your unique experiences are considered the #1 brand asset. Why? They are unique to you and can't be easily replicated by AI. People may be able to research your accolades, awards, achievements, and even your failures, but they will never know the what and how of your life experiences. When you embrace your unique experiences you learn to own your story. You can share that story in different ways through your content, your conversations, and the connections you make online and offline. Your unique experiences also define your brand approach or the value you bring to the marketplace, but you have to get clear on those unique experiences.
Identifying your unique experiences
I’m a firm believer that everything you’ve experienced in life has influenced where you are today and inspired you to do the work that you do. Now, identifying those experiences takes intent. You could easily start to ask yourself a series of questions, you'll likely struggle to dig deep enough into your memory and pull out specific points in your journey that matter in the work you do now. So, an alternative way to take inventory of your unique experiences would be to categorize them into 3 areas: personal, professional, and practical.
Personal experiences
What have you gone through personally? This is a loaded question, but it’s to get you to recognize that your personal experiences are where you draw most of your value from. I can easily recall one personal experience from 2011 when I decided to go natural & wear my hair in its natural state. I did a big chop during my sophomore year at a predominantly white university. From there I decided to join the online natural hair community and connect with other black girls. Around this time the natural hair movement was huge. Eventually, I started a natural hair blog and YouTube channel, documenting my hair journey. After getting questions from family and friends, I started presenting myself as a natural hair care educator, helping other black women care for and nurture their natural hair. I leveraged my personal experience to build my first brand. This is how personal experiences play a role in building your brand and understanding how your personal experiences align with your work helps amplify your brand impact.
Professional experiences
There’s no doubt that a job or professional opportunity can influence the work you do. It is typical for people to leave their professional careers to find joy, freedom, or the flexibility of working for themselves or doing something that fulfills them. Regardless of your professional resume, you can easily pinpoint a job or opportunity that has equipped you to run and operate the brand you’re building. The opportunity may not be in the same industry, but you can still pull out key moments that have inspired you to step into your current line of work.
Practical experiences
Examples of practical experiences are classes you've taken, certifications you've earned, skills you've developed outside of your profession, or ways you've used your talents and expertise to help someone. Knowing how your knowledge and skills can be used outside your usual environments can be the leverage you need to set yourself apart and create an unduplicated brand in the marketplace.
Asset #2 - Branded Frameworks
Have you ever noticed that the “experts” always have a specific “way” of doing something? It’s called a brand framework. There’s power in frameworks. The purpose of a brand framework is to serve as a guide or roadmap. Creating your brand frameworks is about packaging your expertise into a clear workflow that leads to a transformation or a clear result. Your framework(s) should have at least have 3 core steps with specific steps under each major step. Your major and minor steps must make sense and be easy to follow, remember, it's a roadmap.
Asset #3 - Signature Content
Signature content should not be confused with creating and posting regular content to your brand channels like blogs, videos, social media, etc. The purpose of signature content is that it dives deep into a particular topic, subject, or issue to showcase your expertise and authority. Your signature content is how you persuade people that you are a voice of value and encourage them to take action on what you have. A few examples of signature content would be:
Workshops/Trainings
Guides/Books (Digital or Physical)
Lead Magnets
Presentations
Whatever type of content you decide to create, remember that your signature content should highlight parts of your brand frameworks and speak to the solution you offer. This is your opportunity to showcase your value to the fullest. To give people the option to say yes to what you have to offer. Another way to understand the importance of your signature content piece is to view it as an introduction to your brand. If someone were to come across your brand for the first time, your signature piece of content would be the first impression. It could also leave a lasting impression if the person engages with your content and doesn’t continue to follow you either by signing up for your email list or subscribing to anything else you have to offer.
Asset #4 - A Clear Transformation
What you do matters, especially to you, but how do you get people to find it important? You do it by helping them aspire to a transformation. It’s not enough to provide information. There is no shortage of information on the Internet and in the world. Besides, the majority of us are experiencing information overload. What the marketplace needs and what most of us are searching for is transformation. We are all searching for a breakthrough in various areas of our lives personally or professionally. When looking at your brand, ask yourself, what are the intentional & intrinsic results someone can achieve by engaging with your brand? Intentional results can be measured, they are evident, and they promote growth/progress of some kind. Intrinsic results on the other side are internal, like clarity, sense of direction, confidence, focus, etc. Once you are clear on the transformation you can create, you’ll never have to convince someone of your value, again.