Sales is about your customer making a choice for your business, from all the available options. For your customers to make a sales choice for your business, they must have a clear sense of why you are different, better, more fun, easier to deal with, etc. Your branding helps you to stand out in a sea of options – just like the little gummi bear rising above the others in the picture above. Branding magnifies your sales message to your audience, even when you’re not there. A good brand speaks when you can’t, communicates when you don’t get the opportunity, helps your business shine when you might otherwise get lose in the crowd.
Branding is even more important, as more and more of your customers start their buying journey online. They are researching, checking out you and your competition, before they reach out to you via email, social media or perhaps a phone call. The right branding on your right website convinces them that they have come to the right place, that you can solve their problems. This motivates them to contact you.
Here at Magnify, we’ve been learning a whole lot about branding over the last few months, having gone through a re-branding exercise ourselves.
The place we really started was when we explored our values with Lyncia from YOU Coaching. Our five values are Courageous, Abundance, Freedom, Real and Strategic. Interestingly, these five values have always resonated with me – but had not been fully articulated on our website. You can learn more about our values here on our website.
Why did Magnify re-brand? Personally, I loved the green that we had. So why did we need to re-brand? Probably for the same reason that a lot of other businesses re-brand. Our messaging had changed, and the old website (and branding colours) didn’t tell the full story of the difference that we’ve been making with our clients’ sales.
Here at Magnify, we take our clients on an epic journey to their sales success. To embark on an epic journey, you need to be brave, adventurous, courageous, positive, excited about the future, visionary and undaunted by challenges. Our old brand didn’t really tell this story, so we needed to change.
Our web designer Iona from Build A Website for Me stayed very patient while we gradually got the copy updated for the new website, providing helpful advice and a great sounding board. Build A Website for Me focus on the SME market, building affordable, strategic websites that focus on converting visitors to customers.
Our re-branding was a happy accident. I came across some of Repeatable’s photography and branding work, which just drew me in, so I contacted Shay and the team. The original request was ‘Can you help us to pick some colours for our website?’ – and it just grew from there.
What we’ve come up with is not something I originally envisaged. Magenta and Aqua and Deep Purple are the new heroes. I was a little worried that this might be a bit too much. Talking to our designer Shay at Repeatable and to Chris here at Magnify convinced me that not only would it be okay – it would be just what we needed! As they say at Repeatable – ‘What you do is your business. Making you look good online is ours.’
So – Yes – we did it! We threw off the old and embraced the new, taking a stand for the sales breakthrough we help deliver to our clients.
The new brand is working well and the the reaction has been great, with lots of positive comments. And the process was a whole lot of fun too!
So – while you’re planning your business strategy for the 2019 year ahead, remember to consider your branding, the salesperson we often forget about. With your branding salesperson sorted, your inbound and outbound sales have a strong foundation for your sales success.