Sarah Lakhani Consulting

Helping entrepreneurs build businesses with clarity and ease through strategic business design

brand strategy

7 Essentials for a Powerful Brand

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Mercedes logo on hood of car representing a powerful brand

Real quick – having a powerful brand is key to ensuring continuous growth in your business without the hustle.

Now that we have that out of the way (and agree on it!), let’s look at the 7 essential elements to have in place when you’re developing your brand.

Because here’s the thing… you already have everything you need to stand out in whatever crowded online space you’re in. I fully believe that. All you need to do is find a way to extract your uniqueness, develop your brand around it, and then embed that brand across your business – from your products/services to your marketing, sales and your end-to-end customer experience.

You see, the one BIG mistake you’re making that’s hurting your business and keeping you from bringing in higher levels of revenue (I’ll be honest, I made it, too), is that you’re hiding in the “safe space”. You’ve got to get out there and really showcase your brand in order for it to work for you. And yes, a lot of that is in your marketing, but you’ve got to also have the products/services and the experience to back it all up.

But we’re not getting into that here. Right now, we’re focusing on the elements you need to include when you’re building out your brand. And I’ve got to really stress on this here – you need to know this before going to a branding agency to get your branding done. This is brand strategy, and while there are some branding agencies that will help you develop this, it’s always a lot more powerful if you’ve had the time to intentionally think these through.

So without further ado, the 7 essentials for a powerful brand:

Brand Essential #1: The Brand Statement

Your brand statement is your anchor. It sums up what you believe in as a business, what the real reason is behind the products/services you decided to create and sell. I love to start my brand statements with the words “I believe” or “We believe”. Even if you hire a branding agency and they edit this, have something in place before you go. Ask yourself: What belief do you want your customers to connect with?

Brand Essential #2: Your Vision

Think of your vision as your ultimate North Star. It’s something aspirational, and truth be told you might never achieve it. For example, “to help a million women build their own scalable online businesses”. Ask yourself: What impact do you want your business to have in the world or for your target audience?

Brand Essential #3: Your Mission

Your mission is different to your vision in that it describes the “how”. It’s how you intend to accomplish your vision.  What will you do to get to where you’re headed? Is it by providing specific services, providing access to resources or creating affordable products? For example, your mission could be “to provide a variety of business support services at different price points that allow women to lean into the containers that work best for them”. Ask yourself: What will you be doing or providing on your path to your North Star?

Brand Essential #4: Brand Values

You’re going to need about 4 to 6 brand values. These should include elements of what you promise to live by as a business, and what you intend to demonstrate internally and externally. Try to get creative. We’ve seen enough “customer centricity”, “respect” and “trust”. Ask yourself: What do you want to be a leader in? 

Brand Essential #5: Your Brand Personality

Your brand personality comes through in your communications more than anything. But if you do it well, it should also come through in your sales, your actual products and services and in the channels you choose for your communications. Ask yourself: If your business were a person, how would you describe them?

Brand Essential #6: Your Brand Language

Your brand language, also known as your brand voice is developed as an answer to how you want to come across in your written and spoken communication. Think back to your brand personality and make sure these two match! There is nothing more unnerving than expecting a type of brand language after interacting with a brand and receiving something completely different. Ask yourself: Are there specific words you want to use that can eventually be associated with your brand?

Brand Essential #7: Visuals

Visuals – the thing most people start with when it comes to your brand is actually the last thing you should work on. Visuals refers to the colors and the graphical elements that you’ll use consistently (consistency is key!) across your online and offline content. Colors and visuals have emotional impact, so you want to be intentional about this. Ask yourself: What colors and graphical elements do you want to use to bring out everything you’ve developed as your overall brand?

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How to Create an Authentic Brand

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The world is full of businesses – and full of online businesses now, too.  Knowing how to create an authentic brand gives you the opportunity to connect more deeply with your audience, creating strong bonds.  And those bonds are what will keep them loyal, so long as you continue to be authentic.  

Why does being authentic help?

As human beings, we’re all social creatures.  Yes, even the introverts among us!  And as social creatures, we all have deep-rooted needs to be part of a tribe, to connect with others and to feel understood and accepted.  When you create a brand that is authentic, you open up the possibilities for others to see you and connect with you in the manner that is deeply ingrained in them.  It also helps for people to connect a real person, and especially someone they can relate to, with the business they are either already doing business with, or could someday do business with.  

What does being authentic as a brand entail?

The easiest way to create authenticity as a brand is build the environment that allows connection to your audience.  And to do that, you need to stop hiding the person behind the brand.  In other words, stop hiding yourself! People want to know you.  People want to connect with you.  People want to hear and share your story and your experiences.  At the end of the day, people connect with other people, not with businesses.  You make your business feel authentic through your brand.  It is through your brand that you are able to have a voice and a personality that is associated with your business.  If you’re a service provider, this is likely your voice and your personality.  But for product-based businesses and for businesses with multiple founders or partners, you’ll craft your brand voice and personality to suit your business.  And so knowing that being authentic as a brand means showcasing the “personality” and using your “voice” to talk about business and other topics, what are the specific things you can do to showcase the authenticity in your brand?

Talk like you normally would

First things first.  To be authentic as a brand, you must master the art of writing as you would speak… so you can sound like a real person.  A lot of us with corporate backgrounds have been conditioned to writing in a way that doesn’t sound AT ALL like what we sound like in real life.  And that, unfortunately, makes it very difficult to connect with your readers, your audience, and your ideal customers.  It makes sense though, doesn’t it?  If you don’t sound like a real person, your reader won’t associate your brand with a real person.  So write like you speak.  Make it sound human.  People like people.  People don’t like businesses, and they especially don’t like corporate businesses.  So stop sounding like one, and just be… you.  That’s all they want.  

Share your brand story

Next is something a bit more nerve-wracking to do.  If you’re the type of person who likes to keep things private, this is going to push you a little.  But it really helps you build authentic relationships with your audience, and that’s the aim here, isn’t it?  So this next step is to develop your brand story and share it with your audience.  The key here is to choose a brand story that is relatable.  We all have stories we can tell about how and why we started our businesses and are where we are.  But the key is to choose the angle that’s going to help you develop that bond with your audience.  Of course, the only way to do that is to then share your story, and share it often so that you reach as many people across your audience as possible.  

Side note: In my Unleash Your True Potential program, there is a lesson dedicated to finding your brand story. This powerful exercise helps create the connections discussed in this article.

Be honest and transparent

The third thing to focus on is transparency.  In other words, be honest.  There is nothing that will break any hard-earned trust faster than being caught in a lie.  So choose your words and your stories carefully.  Make sure you are upfront about anything that could potentially backfire.  And always be honest.  Being honest and open, and even vulnerable, has a lot more benefits than drawbacks.  Even if you lose some of your audience because of something you share, you can rest assured that they wouldn’t have stuck around in the long run anyway, as evidenced by their jumping ship at the first disagreement.  A true tribe will stick with you, so long as you’re always honest and transparent with them.

Connect and engage

And to build that tribe, you need to be connecting and engaging with the audience you have in your circles and across your platforms.  But more than that, you need to be connecting and engaging with them in a real way.  There is nothing more annoying than being spoken to with the fishy smell of a request lingering in the background.  If you want a tribe – which you should want! – then build one in the same way you would build your friendships.  Through mutual interests, real conversation and engaging with no other motive but to get to know each other.  

Conclusion

In today’s day and age, being as authentic as possible is no longer an added advantage.  It is an absolute need.  Spending the time that it takes to build the brand that allows you to be genuine and authentic is a key business requirement.  The question of how to create an authentic brand, then, becomes a key business discussion and should be given the rightful place in building your business and your brand.

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Brand Strategy: 3 Essential Elements to Help You Stand Out

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I absolutely love talking about brand strategy.  In addition to your product/service or offer, branding is a powerful differentiator for you and your business and really helps you to stand out.  That’s why I’ve packaged up my three essential elements in this article.  

When you think about specific businesses, it’s quite common to think of them as “brands”.  You likely think of Coca-Cola as a brand, Nike as a brand, and Sephora as a brand.  Yes, these are all businesses, but the brands these businesses are or have created are the containers. 

So before we dive into what you can do almost immediately to begin building your brand, there is something that is worth giving some thought to.  

Do you need to have a “brand”? 

This is a question that comes up in entrepreneurial circles and discussions, and it really throws me off.  Of course you need a brand!  As a service provider, you are very closely connected to your brand.  You and your personality are likely mirrored in your brand.  After all, when someone choose your business, they are choosing to work with you (or your team, who follow your ethos and way of working).

Brand Element #1: Design

I knew even before I started my business that my visuals would be completely different from other people, resources and businesses that emphasize strategy, management consulting, and anything in that realm.  I always knew design would be a big element of my brand strategy.  

If you look at all my visuals – my website, my workbooks and guidebooks, my instagram page… you’ll see that I use colors and graphics to make the content more visually appealing. That’s partly because visually appealing things keep people around for longer, giving me a better chance to help them and to start a relationship with them.  And it’s also because it’s more “me”.  In fact, when people at my previous job saw my website, they said “it’s so you!”.  And that’s exactly what you want the design of your brand to surface.  It should be a visual representation of who you are.  

Brand Element #2: Language and Tonality 

A common thing we see here is sounding like others in your industry.  It may seem like a good plan – copying the language and tonality of people who are successful in your industry, but it really won’t translate as well.  

The reason for that is people can sense authenticity, or in this case, lack of it.  The people you follow who use specific language so that because it’s true to them.  If you try to use the same language, it’ll likely be uncomfortable, a bit awkward and for anyone who knows what you’re really like, confusing.  

So when it comes to mapping out the language and tonality in your brand strategy, you really want to think about what is going to sound like you.  One of the best compliments I’ve received about my articles is that they are fun, easy to read and understand, and “like you’re having a conversation with me”.  In fact, that part in the quotes was said by more than one person!  That was exactly what I was going for.  

Just for fun, compare my articles on strategy, business models and positioning to the more traditional sources for this information.  You’ll immediately see how our languages and tonalities are different.  

I want to point out that almost all strategy and business-resource information is written in this more traditional way.  But I still chose to be different.  And that’s because I think it can be easier to consume when it’s provided in a more friendly manner. Not to mention, more fun, and definitely more likely to be implemented!

Brand Element #3: Personality

And lastly, we have personality.  Personality is a very big part of brand strategy.  Similar to what I was saying about language, but taking it up one level, I’ll point out that although the world of strategy is absolutely my interest, I recognize that it is a dry, buttoned-up, corporate-focused world.  Most articles on strategy are full of jargon, long and not as captivating as other topics.  Most people talking about strategy don’t showcase their fun and easy-going side (do they have a fun and easy-going side?).  I’m not saying my way is better.  It’s just different.  HBR isn’t going to lose customers because of me, and neither is McKinsey.  But for the people who are interested in strategy but wish it could be delivered a different way, I’m the person they’re looking for.

You get to see my personality through my workshops, my webinars, my occasional instagram stories and other video-based social media content.  When you do that, you instantly get a feel for what my brand is like – because my brand is based on me and my personality.  

A brand with two founders

With businesses that have two founders, you’ll have to identify the personality, language, tonality and visuals that you want to use.  Ideally, they should be a good mix of the two or more founders.  They should absolutely not be so far removed from the founders that they don’t represent them well.  Afterwards, a good test to see if you nailed it is to check (separately) that the founders describe the brand in the same way.  

So there you have it.  Three essential elements to designing your brand strategy.  Work through these, make thoughtful and intentional decisions and then begin to implement them.  You should find your brand coming together quite quickly after that.  

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