5 Brand Assets You Need for People to Take You Seriously

Branding is an often overlooked aspect amongst businesses, entrepreneurs and freelancers. For a lot of them, it is usually an afterthought, something left for later.

This can only be done to your brands detriment because, if you really thing about it, we make our purchases based on brand perception.

For example, some of us would not leave the house for an event if we have what we consider to be “cheap” and unattractive branded clothing, however, if you had a Gucci shoe in your wardrobe, you’d probably wear it to every place you feel that would get you recognition. The same applies to your phone choice. You wouldn’t buy (or at least use confidently in public) a phone with the name “Xionbani”, but you’d probably flash around your iPhone.

The thing is, brands carry value. The higher the esteem of the brand, the higher its value. I wouldn’t say there is anything about Burberry that justifies their prices, but I love the brand and the perception around it so much so that I want to own as many items as I can.

But what makes up perception? Well, a couple of things but some of those things are:

• how the branding elements are designed (logo, clothing, product design, packaging etc)
• pricing
• professionalism
• scarcity
• uniqueness

and more.

A well designed logo. Packaging that screams quality. A professional and well built digital presence. All these things give a brand its street cred.

Look at a brand like Apple. Its products are highly priced, but the way they brand and design their products and the way they try to separate their products by making them unique and scarce makes even a poor man think about selling his kidney to buy the latest iThingy.

In this article I will list five key things you will need to put in place so you can set your brand up for success. Note, this article is a follow up on an earlier article I wrote that gave an overview of how to get started with you personal brand. You might want to check that one out first. In this specific article, we will focus on the “what” instead of the “why”.

1: Get Your Brand Assets Together

What are brand assets? These are the physical or digital items that make up your brand.

Think business cards, letter-heads, logos, video and audio media assets, banners and the like. These can be both digital and physical. I recommend you have both of some of these things.

This is perhaps the most important step and why I put it at number one.

If you flunk out on this step, it will show in everything else you do.

Don’t be cheap! Hire a very good designer within your budget and have them design the main assets you need (logo, business cards, website etc). Whatever is key to you. If possible, have them design a brand guide for you that will define what your colours and fonts are. The brand guide will also have other important information about your brand like logo’s etc.

Once you’ve gotten this out the way, you can then proceed to the next steps because the stuff you produce here is what you will use later.

Some things to note:

• pick a name you can stick with.
• have an idea of what you want your brand to look like.
• trust a very good designer as they probably know more about design stuff than you do.
• keep these assets in a safe place and use them everywhere you can, even on cups!

If you don’t have the budget for a very good designer, maybe reach out to one who is willing to work for free. Good luck with that though, because any good designer values their time and work. Alternatively you can go onto Fiverr. If you do enough research, you can get a good designer who will do something nice for you for a decent cost. Otherwise Canva is your friend. You will be all alone here, and if you are not a designer the end result will probably show but eiy, what can you do?

2: Have an Online Presence

I probably mentioned this in an earlier article as well as on my YouTube channel but I will re-emphasize this again! GET YOUR BRAND ONLINE.

Remember, your brand can represent a product, a business, a service or just you. Whatever you define your brand as, you should be online.

Times are a changing and everything is online now. The usage statistics of devices and technologies like smartphones, laptops and the internet continues to rise and if you do not show up where people are, you’ll be left behind, wanting.

But, I trust that those who’ve taken the time to read from my blog are people who want to learn so if you aren’t already, get online.

How you may ask? Well, social media and the internet.

Identify where your audience is and build an online presence there. Don’t worry about the rest. If you’re like me then you’re looking to build audiences on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube and maybe even find a way into the meta-verse.

If you’re a writer, then you might want to be on Twitter or Medium.

Wherever your audience is, there you must be.

Another part of this online presence thing is having a website. Look, you might have gotten away with this for long enough, but you won’t anymore. You need to at least have a one-pager that serves as a hub for your whole brand. A platform that you control. Social media rules are always changing and if the platform owners decide not to like you one day, then you will need a backup plan.

Having a website, a good website at that, not only makes you look professional but it will definitely make you one of the unique ones who goes the extra mile for their brand. It also adds an element of uniqueness to your brand because often-times the information on your website is of a higher quality, offering contact options, blogs, shops and more. You drive the traffic you want there. You make the rules.

Building a website will be another article on its own but some places you can host your website are hosts like my current favourite Hostinger.

3: Be Serious About Your Email

Its super weird to be this so called “serious brand” and still have a .gmail, .live, .outlook or .yahoo as your email extension. No! Stop it. It just isn’t professional. It screams “FREE” so why should anyone pay you good money for your product, work or services?

FREE ATTRACTS CHEAP.

It really isn’t that expensive to get a personalized email. Once you get web hosting, you usually automatically get free email hosting. If you aren’t ready for a website you can get email hosting for cheap. You just need to budget a small amount every month.

If you Google “where to get cheap email hosting”, Google or Brave Search should point you in the right direction. You can also use the business features that Gmail provides. They offer a good service but I would recommend Hostinger. Am I biased? Probably! But I have been using them for a long time after using so many other hosts and they come out on top for a number of reasons. I am also an affiliate with them and they pay me some money every time I send people their way, and I do, BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD.

The fact that they can support me for simply directing people to a good service is awesome. You should try their affiliate program too. Will probably do an article about something like that soon.

4: Have a Marketing Strategy

So, the online world is a rough place. You can have good branding and stuff, but if no-one knows you exist, it’s as good as not having branding.

You want to talk about your brand to everyone and everything like its the hottest thing since sliced bread.

Online, you want to post about your brand, tag and mention it in comments, share it on other platforms, create content around it, work with influencers like friends and the like and all the other things.

Where organic efforts don’t work, switch to paid media. Boost a post for a little money, target your ideal audience and let your brand fly.

Remember, in all of this, you are using those brand elements in point one to reinforce your brand.

This step is easier said than done but you honestly need to be your brands biggest fan first, before anyone else, in order for you to get the success you want.

5: Continue to Invest and Improve

Hah! So you thought all you had to do was implement all these things once and that is it right? WRONG!

Think of your brand as your baby. You’re in it for the long run. Sometimes way after they move out of the house.

Keep investing in your brand. Refine it. Add to it. Recalibrate and redefine.

You need to keep evolving especially as the world revolves around you. Don’t be like Blockbuster. Anticipate change and be like Netflix instead.

Well, I hope the little knowledge I had to share here gives you some things to think about. Use it how you see fit. Ideally, all this is supposed to help you grow your brand.

We will continue to expand on the topic of branding in future articles. Until then, get that street cred!

If you want to watch the video I did on this topic, then there you go 😁