The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 214: Creating Brand Awareness

Today, I am diving into a key aspect of filling spots in your programs and making sales, brand awareness. We are going to chat about what brand awareness is, how it can help support your business, and what you can do to create brand awareness in your business. I will also be sharing some examples of what brand awareness can look like for you.

Creating Brand Awareness

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast. Over the last few years most of my programs have shifted into an evergreen model. This means that they're open year-round. We fill spots in each of these programs year-round. We fill some of our programs weekly depending on capacity. I am often asked, how are you able to sign clients so often and also sell multiple programs at one time? One of the reasons is exactly what today's podcast episode is going to be all about, brand awareness. Brand awareness around me, Melissa Lin, a seven figure business coach, brand awareness about my programs and my Fierce Business product suite. Creating brand awareness about me and my business is what helps my business grow. It also helps improve conversions at the end of the day. I really want to get into all things brand awareness for you and your business so that you can start to really move the needle forward. A few things that I want to get into today are the importance of brand awareness in your business, examples on what brand awareness can look like for you and your business, some actionable steps for you to boost your brand awareness, and so much more.

The Importance of Brand Awareness

The first thing I want to get into is the importance of brand awareness in your business and the why behind it. In order for somebody to buy a program or product of yours, they first need to know that you exist. Creating brand awareness and that visibility in the online space is so key, especially with the growth that we’ve seen in the last few years with the online space. The online space is growing every single day. Before you start to ask yourself, is it getting too saturated? Yes it is, but there’s only one you that has your program, your way of teaching, and your way of helping others. Even though the space is growing, the number of people who need your help is also growing. You will always have an abundance of clients, that’s something I deeply believe.

Your audience needs to like, know, and trust you before they buy from you. They need to be able to really connect with you, learn from you, and recognize you. For example, when your logo pops up does your audience immediately know that it’s you? When your podcast episode comes up does your audience immediately know it's your intro song from your podcast? Are they able to recognize you and also recognize what you do and how you help people? If you're wondering why that's so important, think about the last time you watched a TV show and a commercial popped up. Anytime a certain commercial popped up did you recognize that brand or that business? For example, anytime the Progressive gal Flo comes on TV I immediately know that it’s a Progressive commercial. That is brand awareness. Any time the green gecko from Gieco comes up, that is brand awareness. The red circle from Target, again, brand awareness. Without even hearing the commercial, just by visually seeing something, we know exactly what company that is, what some of their values are, what they stand for, their brand, and their business.

The same exact thing gets to happen for you. We get to create that awareness for your audience. The goal is to make you and your business just as visible and valuable to your audience, before they even need to hire you. Start to ask yourself some of these questions: does your audience know your vision? Do they know your mission? Do they know who you’re here to help? Do they know some of your values?

For example, I talk a lot about my community and what it means to be a Fierce Business Babe, who that type of person is, and what that type of person embodies. A Fierce Business Babe has four main qualities. The first is inspiration, they're fiercely inspiring. They always empower others to see the possibility for themselves. They’re always inspiring others to step out of their comfort zones and take risks. They are always wanting more for themselves and for others. The second quality that a Fierce Business Babe has is that they are powerful. They stand their ground. They have boundaries. They respect themselves and have limits. They aren’t afraid to say no and run their businesses like true CEOs. They’re fiercely powerful and fiercely authentic. While talking the talk, they’re also walking the walk. They live a life of integrity and love treating their clients like gold. The last quality is that they are also fiercely profitable. They are profitable in many ways in their lives. They add so much value and are intentional with all things that they do. Those are the main qualities of a Fierce Business Babe. As I share those qualities I immediately think about people in my audience.

The same goes for you. What are some of the qualities of people who are potentially embodying whatever your brand is? I have my clients go through a whole brand awareness exercise about their business and I'll be going into some examples on what this can look like. You really want to start to get clear on what your brand embodies. If you're in the very beginning stages of your business, yes, we want to think about it, but it doesn't necessarily need to be set in stone right away. I didn't have my colors or my logo until I was about 12 months in because you are growing so much as an entrepreneur as you get started. However, these are things I want you to start to think about so that as you get closer to that six month mark or 12-month mark you have an idea of what that's going to look like. Again, we have a full exercise that we take our clients through and I'll give you a few examples of what is included in that.

What Brand Awareness Looks Like

Now let’s get into what brand awareness can look like. We know why it's important now, but what can this actually look like for you and your business? There are a few pretty easy ones you can outsource and have others support you with as well. For example, any kind of press piece can really help you create awareness for your business and for yourself as well. We've been in multiple press pieces, so we always have people coming to me nice and sharing about an article they saw me in and how that's what brought them to me. I think it's so cool to see that. I had somebody reach out to me last week saying that they saw my article about being a top 10 business coach/ female coach in Yahoo Finance. We have many other articles that bring people to us all of the time. Press is so cool because it's something that's always out there. It’s the same with collaborations, whether it’s on a podcast, a blog, or on social media. These types of things are to help get you in front of our people. Again, that's creating brand awareness because you're getting in front of more people. More people get to see you and start to create that like, know, and trust factor with you.

I want to get into a few examples around what your brand awareness can look like and some of the actual assets that you can create for your business. A few of these things are things that I have my clients do as they start to create their brand awareness in their business. One thing I want you to start to think about is what are some of the colors that really speak to you and your business and what you want it to embody? Different colors share different meanings, so what does that look like for you? Colors are a big piece of it, so are different photos and graphics that you use. As you start to create those, be very consistent with them. For example, any press piece that we do, we always stick to the same three to five photos with my brand colors that are on them so that those are the ones always circulating online. Again, getting some of the same photos in front of people over and over helps create that brand awareness.

We also have tons of branded and themed graphics that we reuse over and over so people know it’s a Melissa Lin graphic. Anytime I do a questions box, I typically will respond with some type of response on a backdrop or a Melissa Lin graphic with my logo on it. This helps to create that recognition of my logo itself. Again, I didn't have this logo when I first started and I’ve also rebranded a few different times. Typically it’ll be a small tweak or pivot, not a huge complete makeover rebrand. We do rebrands every two or three years, sometimes we'll add a different tone or pop of color for a new program or a new font. Again, colors, fonts, all of these things say so much about your business, so it definitely gets to be something that you spend time on. For my recent rebrand that I did with my graphic designer, we spent a few weeks creating it. We did a rebrand of colors, fonts, logos, my signatures, and things like that. It definitely can take some time. Something else you can use over and over to help create that brand awareness is phrases. You can also make your pets part of your brand. Pearl is such a big piece of my brand. It has brought so many people to me and it's such a huge connection point, all of the cat moms out there love chatting about Pearl. Again, start to think about some of those assets in your business.

There's also creating brand awareness in the things in your business, like the different programs that you have. If you are about to create and launch a brand new program, we get to start to create awareness about it right away. It takes people so many times to see something before they are ready to take action or even recognize that this is a program they may need and can purchase from you. If you're about to create something brand new, start sharing about now, weeks to months in advance. Start to prep your audience. The majority of work for your launch isn't during the launch, it’s typically the prep prior to the launch and creating that awareness. Share those behind the scenes and start to create that awareness of the name of the program or what's going to be included. If you're revamping your program, show you uploading new things into your coursehub. Something that we do for our clients is we give them lifetime access and future updates to programs. Anytime we make an update we’re always sharing about that on social media, which does two things for us. Number one, it lets anyone who is in that course or has been a client in the past know there's an update, and of course we'll send an email as well. Number two, it's creating awareness around our program again, which is so awesome.

You can also show behind the scenes of you working with clients. We do this a few times per month. I like to share behind the scenes on what I support my clients with and how we supported them so that my audience can also see that these may be things that they need help with. It's helping create recognition that I can help them solve their problems and get closer to where they want to be as well. There are so many different things you can do to create brand awareness. Another way is by sharing social testimonials. This creates that authority and that expertise. People will also start to see that you’re the person to go to if they're looking for that type of result.

I believe I mentioned this already, but just sharing the name of your program over and over is also important. People know about my Fierce Business product suite. If you're starting your business, The Fierce Business Academy is for you to help you start and scale your business to $5K months. We have a Six Figure Fierce Business Mastermind to help you scale to $10K months. We have a program called Fiercely Scale where we help you go from six figures to multiple six figures. We have this “fierce” factor that brings everything together and creates huge brand awareness. We also have a new program in the works and lots of exciting things going on with so much brand awareness around it. If you go through my social media this week, you will see that I will share the names of my programs all throughout the week. You will see them more than once because people get to hear about them. People cannot buy from you if they don't know about your offers and how you can help them.

Creating brand awareness is so important and it can happen in so many different ways. Don't feel like it's a one-size-fits-all, there's not one right or one wrong way to do it. It can be done in so many different ways. You can create brand awareness through Reels, Instagram stories, Instagram captions, emails, podcasts. You can create brand awareness anywhere that you show up online.

Boosting Your Brand Awareness

Let’s get into a few actionable steps for you to boost your own brand awareness in your business. Let's start with three things you can do this week to boost your brand awareness. The first is to start to think about those brand colors and brand words or phrases that you want to be recognized by. This does not need to happen right away, however, if you have your foundations in your business you can start to work on this. My clients always know the different types of emojis that I love to use. I use them most often in our Sack channel and on social media. Ask yourself what some of yours are. What are the phrases? What are the emojis? What are the types of memes that you're always sharing in your emails? So that's number one, start to think about those things.

Number two, create consistency in talking about your business. Create consistency around talking about your offers and who you help. Something that you can do is actually add it into your content calendar once a week. For example, earlier this week I shared the names of the three programs that are currently open for enrollment this month, Fierce Business Academy, Six figure Mastermind, and Fiercely Scale, on my Instagram stories. I shared the programs with a quick tagline and how many spots are open this month for enrollment. Again, create consistency around it. Talk about your offers, talk about your business, talk about your client wins. There's so much there for you and your audience wants to see it.

The third thing I want to challenge you with this week to help you boost your brand awareness in your business is asking your audience to engage with you. This can be through a question box, a poll, asking them to send you a DM with a question. Ask your audience to do that and then respond back. People are more likely to remember you and your business if there's a relationship or a connection there. Don’t be afraid to really put yourself out there and start to talk to people. I have so much fun chatting with people in the DMs and really getting to know people in my audience and creating that like, know, trust factor. Regardless of if somebody's going to work with me or not, I still want to get to know them because the more people I can get in front of, the more people I can impact. Regardless if they buy or not, I'm still creating that impact and it feels so good to me.

Those are a few things you can get going on today to help boost your brand awareness. We have touched on the importance of brand awareness in your business, different examples of what brand awareness can look like, actual steps for you to boost yours today, and so much more. We are already getting ready for next week's episode and cannot wait to share with you. We will see you in another brand new episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early next Monday morning.

Topics we cover include:

Improving your conversion rate
Sharing your values
Consistency in your brand

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(07:54) Is brand awareness really important?

(11:00) Finding qualities that embody your brand

(14:10) What brand awareness looks like

(23:53) Steps to boost your brand awareness

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