Branding For Beginners: Defining Your Ideal Audience

Sometimes when you’re starting out, it can be tempting to declare that your business is for everyone!

When I started my freelance design studio, technically I could design for any type of business, from a corporate giant to a solo entrepreneur. It was just a matter of applying the same principles to a different set of problems and scenarios.

BUT, as I quickly found out, those two types of audiences have very different challenges, pain points, budgets, etc. Trying to go after both of them at the same time would mean that my branding and messaging might seem unclear or -- what’s even worse -- conflicting. Not to mention, I prefer working with one of those audiences over the other (I won't say which one... 😉)

That’s exactly why choosing a type of person or business to target is so important. It’s about giving yourself the best possible chance for resonance. And resonance, remember, means true fans, lasting customers, repeat clients.

Now, let’s talk about why that is.
 

Speaking To Their Struggles

First, getting specific about your audience helps you figure out the pain points and challenges of one single like-minded group. If you’re trying to reach everyone, it’s going to be hard to pin-point what exactly they struggle with and how they interact with your products or services.

However, if you narrow your focus to a smaller, more concentrated segment of people, some of their challenges and struggles will start to get more similar. This will allow you to get highly specific with your messaging, making it appear that you’re speaking straight to that group of people.
 

tailor-creating for their needs

Narrowing your audience also helps you tailor your offerings to a well-defined need. Take the Better Branding Course, for example. Made Vibrant's target audience is a group that I've dubbed "soulful creatives." These are highly creative people with an interest in personal growth, continuous learning and self-made success. Over the years, I’ve been able to hone in on the unique desires, goals and needs of this audience -- one of those needs being an affordable and encouraging option for branding. Because I was able to connect with that audience, I could tailor my course specifically to the needs of those people. 

attract your tribe, repel the rest

Lastly, by getting specific when it comes to your audience, it will allow you to attract valuable members of your tribe and repel more transient members of your tribe. 

Years ago, before I even had an online business, I attended the Alt Summit conference in Salt Lake City. While there, I signed up for a session on personal branding with photographer, Jasmine Star, and something she said in her talk still echoes in my ear. She said, when it comes to her brand: 

"I want to attract you or I want to repel you." 

Okay, the attract part made sense to me. Of course you want to attract new blog readers, new clients, new people in your community. But REPEL? That's such a strong word! It seemed so counterintuitive at the time. Until she pointed out to me that repelling the wrong people (people who won't appreciate your business or people whose values don't line up with the values of your business) actually saves you valuable time and energy down the road. It's not just a matter of authenticity -- it's a matter of efficiency!

Turning away customers or clients that aren’t a good fit for your business is almost as important as attracting the right ones because you don’t want to be wasting your resources on people who won’t positively impact the health and growth of your company. By drawing a line in the sand on who “your people” are, you’re effectively keeping your tribe as high-quality and engaged as possible.

So, remember...

“Defining a specific audience makes it easier to connect with the hearts and minds of your potential customers.”

Now that you're clear on WHY it's important to get specific about the people you're trying to attract with your brand, let's talk about how to actually do that...

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How To Define Your Ideal Audience

Depending on where you are with your business, you may already have a pretty clear sense of who you think this person is.

If not, I have a free worksheet at the end of this post that will help lead you to the exact type of person you'd ideally like to serve. 

Once you have a better idea of who that is, these are the three vital questions you want to ask yourself:

1. Is this an audience that I want to be working with?

There’s a reason why I refer to it as an "ideal audience." You have a chance to choose the people you want to serve, and if you choose a person you don’t want to be working with, you’re setting yourself up to not be very happy with your business. Think hard about who it is that you actually want to help. If you get stuck, sometimes it helps to start by who you definitely do NOT want to be working with.  

2. Is this a group of people that want (or better yet, need) what I'm offering?

If you’re trying to sell jetpack rollerblades to grandparents, you might run into a few issues. It’s important to identify whether the audience you want to help is actually in need of your services/offerings. This will make sure that the business you’re creating a brand for actually has the ability to be profitable and sustainable long-term.

3. Is this an audience I’m uniquely equipped to help?

It helps if you are especially well-qualified for one reason or another to connect with the audience you choose. In my case, I believe I’m uniquely equipped to teach soulful creatives because I myself am self-taught. That gives me insight into what someone might be thinking who is always trying to learn new things and get better through continuous learning.

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I can't tell you how much I recommend spending time solely focused on this one aspect of your business because your audience is the lifeblood of your company. They are the ones that will buy your products or services, and they are the ones you want to keep happy and deliver value to! 

Need some help defining your audience? This is a topic we cover extensively in the Better Branding Course! 

Hope you found this post helpful, and good luck as you define and refine your brand!

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Branding For Beginners: How To Blend Your Personal Story Into Your Professional Brand Story

As we talked about last week, the most powerful kind of branding is the kind that creates true emotional resonance with your ideal audience. 

But, in order to create that lasting, meaningful connection, you have to give your audience something to connect TO. One way to do this is to find a way to add your personal, more human story to your brand story. 

But first, what exactly do I mean when I say brand story?

I actually don’t mean your “elevator pitch” or the actual story you launch into at a cocktail party when someone asks you that dreaded question: “So what do you do?”

It’s not necessarily the kind of story that you literally tell someone. Instead, your brand story is the unique narrative that conveys the heart and soul of your business.

It’s rooted in your distinct background and it blends many different experiences, motivations and emotions together to form the DNA of your brand. Think of a brand story as the melting pot of answers to all those important, juicy, deeply-rooted questions about your business and what it stands for.

Questions like:

• What do you believe in?
• Why did you get started?
• Who are you passionate about serving?
• Why do you get up every morning excited about your business?
• What led you to this point in your life?

The goal of any story is to tap into your emotions and to take you on a journey, to give you something to relate to. So your brand story is the foundation to providing your audience with a way to connect to your business. It is what brings an underlying truth and authenticity to your final brand identity.  

How do you uncover your Brand Story?

First, it's helpful to start by finding the pivotal and important moments that led you to this point in time in the first place and where your brand stems from in your past.

For those of you out there that are more analytical, think of these pivotal moments like data points. Don’t worry about trying to connect the data points just yet, just focus on finding the pieces of information that seem important. Once you find those important data points in both your personal and your professional life, then you can work on connecting the relevant pieces into a strong creative concept.

The first thing you have to realize is that something prompted you to start your business. It didn’t just materialize into thin air. YOU made it. And because of that fact, YOU are an indelible part of the heart of your business (and brand.) So, predictably, the process of developing an authentic brand begins with you. 

I like to refer to this process of understanding how your business came to be as uncovering your "origin story."

What’s an origin story?

In comic book terminology, an origin story is a back-story that reveals how a character gained their superpowers and the circumstances under which they became superheroes.

That’s right, for the purpose of this lesson, we’re going to imagine that your business is a superhero!

Sure, superheroes have all of their powers and the ways that they fight crime, but watch any superhero show, read any comic book, and what makes the characters reallllly interesting? It’s their origin story. It’s finding out what major events had to happen in order to lead them to their heroic path.

The same is true for your business. A superhero’s list of powers is like your list of services or your list of products. They might be cool and all, but the bits and pieces of the backstory that led to all of that? Now that’s the interesting part.

For example, recently I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called Daredevil (no, not the mediocre action movie with Ben Affleck from back in the 2000’s - it’s much better, I promise.) Daredevil has heightened senses, a high threshold for pain and a thirst for justice. And I admit, all of that is certainly pretty cool.

But you know what makes the show interesting... what keeps me watching?

Understanding how Matt Murdoch: The Man, became Daredevil: The Superhero. He lost his sight in a chemical spill when he was just a boy which gave him his heightened senses. His father, a boxer, raised him alone and always forced him to study because he wanted him to be better than he was. He became a lawyer so he could enact justice and right wrongs, but even that left him feeling powerless to help those in harm’s way. All of that is what forms his origin story, and all of that is what makes me feel connected to him as a character.

So… that begs the same question for your business: Who was the superhero before he (or she) was the superhero? Or, rather: Who was the person behind the business (aka YOU), before he/she came to create the business?

That’s what you need to unearth. You want to seek out all those important, pivotal moments that led you to where you are today. What are those events that made everything shift?

I call these “plot points.” A plot point refers to any event or occurrence that moves the story forward. They’re the forks in the road. The points of impact. Those plot points are what we’re looking for in your personal story.

Finding your plot points

I think we can all agree that we undergo a number of metamorphoses throughout our lives. Sometimes those transitions can be caused by where we are geographically, what we’re studying, who we’re dating, what job we have, or a major event that shifts our mental or physical lives in a big way.

As an exercise, I really want you to dig into the memory vault and think about the steps that led you to where you are today. Close your eyes and I want you to imagine your life is a book. (For now, try to focus less on the business necessarily and just think about your own life story, your personal journey.)

If you had to divide up your life into chunks, what do you think would be the major chapters? What would be the plot points - those important moments that pushed your story forward? What events ended one chapter and opened up another?

Start when you were a kid and move forward on your life’s timeline until you hit what feels like a natural break point - an event or moment where things shifted directions. When you stumble upon that moment or event, consider the possibility that it could be one of your plot points.

As you do that and move toward the present, here are some guiding questions to ask yourself when considering your plot points:

• Is this relevant to WHY I decided to start my business?
• Did this change my perspective about myself or the world?
• Did a major part of my life suddenly look and feel different?
• Did my goals or future ambitions change?
• id this contribute in some way to how I run my business?
•  

Example: Made Vibrant

To show you how this "plot point" exercise can help inform your branding and how one person’s individual story can feed into their brand story, I’ll use myself as an example:

Chapter 1: Overachieving kid goes to college

Much of my childhood and adolescence was defined by my need to excel. I was a straight-A over-achiever kid, and just about every ounce of work I put into school was to achieve the external definition of success that I had been taught from an early age.

Plot Point: Switched majors from pre-med to advertising

Something happened though when I got to college. Even though I chose to be pre-med as a major (probably for how it would look to the outside world), as I sat in an Advertising 101 class, I fell in love with the idea of creativity and business.

Chapter 2: Advertising obsessed

Old habits die hard. I pretty much applied my obsession with succeeding to this new creative field, and I became consumed with trying to rise to the highest level of achievement within the advertising world. Not exactly a recipe for happiness and fulfillment.

Plot Point: I discovered my fancy NYC ad internship wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I landed a highly-coveted internship at one of the world’s leading agencies in New York, and every day I hated going to work. Something about it just felt empty to me. Everyone was stressed out and jaded. Despite how it would look to other people, I made the decision to turn down the NYC ad exec dream life for something that felt happier and more me.

Chapter 3: Disillusionment with agency life

Instead of the fancy NYC agency, I took a job at an advertising agency in North Carolina, thinking it would be slower-paced, less cutthroat and more creative. Unfortunately I was in a media planner position - not very creative - and I could feel myself anxious to do something that used my creative talents more.

Plot Point: Quit my first advertising job just six months in

Suddenly acutely aware that it wasn’t right for me, I quit. Yet again I was learning a lesson to choose my own happiness over the expectations of other people, and it felt really good.

Chapter 4: Finding my creative voice

During this time, I started my own personal blog and began teaching myself design programs at night. I was starting to feel free.

Plot Point: Went to work for Jason’s startup company

My boyfriend, Jason, had a marketing startup company and needed someone to run operations. I convinced him to hire me (who else would be more invested than me?) and I got a taste for what it was like to feel actually valued at a job.

Chapter 5: A new world of work opens up

Working for his startup, I got to wear a different hat every hour it seemed, and I also realized that having the flexibility to design my schedule and motivate myself gave me a new energy I hadn’t experienced before. Meanwhile, I was still teaching myself design and starting to take on side projects.

Plot Point: Startup company closes shop, I decide to start my own business

When it became clear that the company could no longer stay afloat, I had a choice: go try to get another advertising job or try to make a go of it by myself. I chose the latter.

Chapter 6: Made Vibrant is born!

After a few months of freelancing, I decided to take my talents and create a larger brand around them: Made Vibrant.

...And, the rest is history, right?

All of those lessons I learned along the way: the power of choosing your own happiness over the expectations of others; letting go of perfection and the need to excel; searching for a way to express my creativity; teaching myself design; my hunger for flexibility… each one of those shows up in my brand story and contributes to how I connect with my audience.

My hope is that by going through the plot point exercise, you’re able to discover new layers and interesting insights about what led you to form your business that you haven’t yet thought about.

On Owning it

As one last point on your personal origin story, remember this: People can feel sincerity.

The more truthful you are about where you come from and who you are, the more sincerely your brand will come across.

It’s not enough to just identify these important moments in your life. You have to also recognize that those are the things that help you stand out. Those are the things that give you power. You have to acknowledge that these elements are crucial to your brand DNA, and you have to see them as strengths.

When I started my design business, I used to be afraid that because I didn’t go to art school, that it was somehow a disadvantage. Then I realized that instead I could OWN the self-taught, self-made part of my story. The fact that I learned everything myself not only showed that I was dedicated and resourceful (which people like when they hire you), but I also expressed that my method and process was different. I wasn’t weighed down by the “right” or “wrong” way to do things, and that made me more creative. Also, the fact that I had a background in advertising and startup culture showed that I had a working knowledge of how businesses run. This point was especially critical in getting some of my higher paying projects for larger companies right out of the gate.

Never forget: Your differences are your strengths. Take ownership of your personal origin story and it will help you stand out in a vast sea of online businesses.

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How To Set Up A Slack Community (+ Why It's More Effective Than A Facebook Group)

When I created the Better Branding Course, I knew that I wanted to include some element of community so that the students could get to know each other and I could help them through the course on a regular basis.

The way I see this "product community" typically accomplished in the e-course world is through a closed Facebook group.

However, as I contemplated that option, what I disliked about going that route were these two things: 1) I think Facebook is far too distracting an environment to allow for focused communication around learning. (Even if I’m in a closed Facebook group, let's be honest, I’m one click away from Buzzfeed links and baby photos in my News Feed.) And  2) I wanted this course to be an enjoyable experience for me, the teacher, as well, and I knew if I was spending hours every day on Facebook talking to students that it would NOT be enjoyable. I check Facebook probably twice a day now and it makes for a much more productive, much less comparison-minded Caroline. :)

So if Facebook groups were out, how would I get my students to communicate in a private yet easy-to-navigate environment?

Enter: the magic of Slack.

Jason first told me about Slack months ago. It was originally created as a chat app for teams to communicate with one another. Think... AIM or Gchat meets Basecamp. 

Jason and I had been using Slack as a way to communicate easily with our roommates, Clay and Julia, when they were still living in NYC and we were still living in Jacksonville. It was a great way to keep track of house listings we found out here in California. It was more organized than email threads and more convenient than a group text chain.

I had never considered Slack as a community option for a course until I saw my friend, Paul Jarvis, using it to connect his students in his freelancing course, Creative Class. Paul is a pretty smart cookie so I figured if it was working for him, it could definitely work for me.

My only hesitation: would my students feel intimidated using an app that they likely had never seen before? Slack feels a lot like it’s still on that cusp of early adoption. It’s popular in the tech/design/startup world, but would the creative entrepreneurs my course was focused on be confused by it?

The answer was a resounding NO! They love it!

Thanks to a proper on-boarding process (outlined below), a whopping 70% of my course students make the transition from signing up for the course to signing up for Slack.

Much to my surprise, the activity is extremely high in the community AND incredibly motivating. Students share their course work, get feedback from each other, and I’m able to answer questions directly. I get to see them cheer each other on, I get to witness first-hand where they get stuck, and I love the feeling of getting to know all the students on a personal level that goes beyond email.

One student even asked me how she could use Slack as an online forum for a local meetup group she’s a part of, which is what finally led me to put together this post on how you too can set up your own Slack community.

But before we get to that, let's get the basics out of the way...
 

What exactly is Slack?

Slack is a free messaging app for teams or groups. All the conversations inside the app are searchable and the app syncs seamlessly from your desktop to your mobile device.

Benefits of Slack over Facebook Groups

Before I get into how to create a Slack team, I just want to reiterate why I think Slack is more effective than a closed Facebook group.

1. It’s a distraction-free environment. Slack is a stand-alone app used only for messaging and communication. No ads popping up. No photo albums of vacations being dropped. No twelve million things to click on. When you're in Slack, you're focused on the conversations at hand. 
2. It makes sharing files incredibly easy. You can drag and drop files right into Slack. Images, PDFs -- whatever you want. You can also comment on files or star them for later. 
3. The entire chat is indexed and searchable! This is by far one of my favorite features. No more scrolling down a Facebook group trying to find that ONE link that was shared. Search by keyword and find what you're looking for immediately.
4. You can communicate one-on-one via direct message with members. In Facebook, if you want to message people one-on-one, you have to do it through your Facebook Messages, which pulls you out of the group causing yet another distraction. In Slack, your DM's are just a click away from the main chat which is especially helpful in an online course where students may want to ask you questions without the pressure of the rest of the students watching on. 
    

Basic Slack Functionality

Channels

Channels are for the main conversations that take place in your Slack community. Think of these like open chat rooms where anyone can discuss topics. You can name a channel based on a topic which helps keep conversations on that channel focused. For example, in the Better Branding Course, I have channels that correspond to each major section of the course so that I can keep up with messages/files that are sent through and I know exactly what part of the course students’ questions/comments pertain to.

Direct Messages

Direct messages allow you to have one-on-one conversations just like DM’s on Twitter. The conversations that happen via DM are searchable only to you and the person you’re communicating with.

Private Groups

Private groups can be used to talk about topics that only pertain to (and that should only be visible to) a certain number of members in the community/team.
 

How To Use Slack

Slack has a variety of ways that you can use the app, and all of them are equally beautiful and intuitive. Plus, they sync automatically with one another so I can start a conversation on my desktop app, hop in the car with a friend to go somewhere and continue the conversation without missing a beat.

On your desktop, you can access Slack via the web (in your browser) or you can download their web app straight to your laptop (for Mac and Windows.) 

On your phone, you can access Slack via their mobile app on iOS and Android. 

Now that you have a basic understanding of what Slack is, let's talk about how to set up your own Slack community (for your product, your team or your blog audience!)

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How To Set Up Your Own Slack Community

start by creating A Slack Team

• Step 1: Visit Slack.com and click “Try It Now.”
• Step 2: Sign up using your email address.
• Step 3: Create a Team Name. (For this example, let's pretend I'm creating a Slack Team for my email community, Self-Made Society.)
• Step 4: Create a custom URL for your team. (This is where you can sign-in to your Slack team when you're using the web app. For example: selfmadesociety.slack.com.)
• Step 5: Pick a personal username for yourself and click "Finish."

That’s it! You just created your Slack account AND a brand new team for your community! Slack will then email you an account confirmation with a link to set your account password.

Once you’ve created your Slack team, I recommend taking the tutorial within the app which will walk you through the main functionality, including channels, direct messages and private groups that I mentioned above.

now, let's Add Members To Your Team

Once you've created a team, you probably want some people to join you, huh? I don't blame you. Good news is, there are a number of ways to accomplish this and invite members to join your team. I take you through a couple below.

If you're a beginner when it comes to technical know-how and you want to add people as simply as possible, I recommend inviting people manually (see below.) 

However, if you don't mind a little extra effort on the set up and you're using your Slack team as a community feature to your e-product, I recommend trying something a bit more automated. By using an intermediary service called Heroku, I can show you how to create a private portal link to your Slack team which will allow only your customers to join your team once they've purchased your course or signed up for your email list. No manual invites required!

First, let me start by walking you through how I add members to the Better Branding Course Slack team.

My Workflow For Adding Members To The Better Branding Course

Let me walk you through the on-boarding process for my BBC students, in case you too want to use Slack as a community feature for an e-course or membership site.

When someone signs up for the Better Branding Course via the course platform I use called Teachery, they enter their email address to create an account and it automatically sends them a Welcome email that I can customize in my Teachery course dashboard. The email looks like this:

In that email, I ask them to download and read a Getting Started Guide PDF that I put together. This is a friendly way to welcome them to the course and make sure they know all the pertinent details before they dive into the course dashboard. (I’ve found that this step gets them excited to dive in and it gives them a file to hold on to with all the important details they can always easily navigate back to.)

In the guide, I explain a bit about the Slack community and give them a special link which sends them to a login portal for the Slack community. (I also include this link in the welcome email in case they want to cut to the chase. 😉)

This login portal is incredibly convenient for me because instead of having to bulk invite people every time a new class gets enrolled in the course, they essentially request their own invites. All they have to do is enter their email address and the app fires off an email that looks like this (except, of course, it's for the Better Branding Course team and not the Self-Made Society team I just created for this post.)

Boom, they click through, create a password and they're added automatically to the team and can start chatting.

Now, if you'd like to set up this method for your own community, skip down to the Advanced how-to below. If you'd prefer to begin by adding members manually, start here:

Beginner: Adding Slack members manually

• Step 1: Click the down arrow next to your team’s name in your app.
• Step 2: Click "Invite People."

• Step 3: Hit the arrow next to "Full Member." 

• Step 4: Enter the email address and details of the person you'd like to invite. If you want to send multiple invitations, you can click "Add another" or you can also send invites in bulk by clicking "Invite many people at once."
• Step 5: Click the "Invite" button to send.

a-da! Easy peasy. Your new members will get the invite email and they can set up their accounts.
 

Advanced: How To Create An Automated Slack Portal Using Heroku

Warning: This is going to seem a bit technical. If you start going through the steps and find it confusing, I recommend starting out by adding slack members manually. Don’t worry, I don’t understand stuff like GitHub and deploying web apps and such either, but if you try to ignore all that and just follow the steps as I've written them below, I promise you’ll be able to create your portal and never have to bother with the technical stuff again!

People will be able to add themselves to the community if they have the portal link and you won’t have to manually enter email addresses every time. This is especially helpful if you want to create some sort of Slack community around a topic and people will be wanting to join on a regular, ongoing basis. 

Also, truth be told, I have no idea what Heroku is other than it's a "cloud application platform" for developers. The only important part to know is that it basically gives you the ability to deploy your own "app" (this portal), which a kind developer has already built and published on GitHub for other people (like you and me) to use. Another shoutout to Paul Jarvis for helping me set this up initially.

Okay, let's get started. 

• Step 1: Visit this link -- https://github.com/rauchg/slackin -- and ignore everything else except under the “How To Use” heading where there's a purple button that says “Deploy To Heroku.” Click it!

• Step 2: You’ll be directed to Heroku's site where you want to quickly create a Heroku account (don't worry, it's free!) Enter your info and confirm your account via the email they send you. Set your password and complete account setup.

• Step 3: You'll be brought to this page where it will ask you to configure your settings for your new "slackin" portal app in Heroku. 

Step 3 (continued): To configure those settings:

• Name your app. Keep in mind whatever you choose will also be a part of your portal URL in this format: APPNAME.herokuapp.com. (So, for example, you can see below I've entered "selfmadesocietyslack" which would translate to my portal URL being: selfmadesocietyslack.herokuapp.com.)
• Select your region.
• Enter your Slack variable. Enter the variables that correspond to the Slack team you’ve already created.
  • Your Slack subdomain: Whatever you typed as your Slack subdomain when you created your Slack team above, enter that here.
  • Your API token: First, visit this link -- https://api.slack.com/web -- and scroll down to Authorization. Click “Create token.” Once you create your token, copy that long string of letters and numbers in red and paste it into your Heroku settings.

BOOM! You should be taken to your new portal that looks a little something like this: 

All you have to do is copy your private portal URL on this page and send the link to people for whom you want to grant access to the community (like I did in my welcome guide to the course.) That will allow them to invite themselves!

When they click “Get My Invite” on this page, they’re sent an email inviting them to join like I showed you above. (Side note: if you want that cool logo image on your portal page, be sure to update your team icon.)

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Phew! We made it! That was quite the doozy of a post!

I can’t even tell you how much this one app has upped the quality of the Better Branding Course community. The students get to know one each other and the interaction is unlike anything else I’ve seen.

As far as I’m concerned, Slack is the future of online communities.

Hope you found this post helpful! Let me know in the comments what you think!

Have you heard of Slack? Are you a part of any communities? How do you feel about going this route versus the traditional Facebook group route?

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