Small Business & Freelancing Archives

A personal or business brand isn’t just a clever business name or stunning logo; it’s every element of your visual branding, marketing content and how you engage with your customers or clients at each point of contact – the whole package!

And, guess what? Even if you haven’t consciously set out to design your brand, you already have one. Chances are, it might not be as effective as it could be though.

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Pause, and ask yourself these questions before reading further:

What is your current brand or ‘personality’?
Have you thought consciously about developing your brand or has it just evolved, accidentally?
Is it consistent and recognisable?
Are you attracting the right audience?

Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash

Now that you have a clear idea of what your current ‘brand’ is (or isn’t) let’s dig a little deeper.

What exactly is a ‘brand’?

Simply, a brand is an ‘identity’ which is defined by businessdictionary.com as a “Unique design, sign, symbol, words, or a combination of these, employed in creating an image that identifies a product and differentiates it from its competitors.”

A good brand is instantly recognisable, has a clearly defined product offering and is above all else, consistent. So, where do you start if you want to create a strong brand that attracts your target customer or audience? One of the best ways is to look at successful brands in your niche and learn from them.

Below, I look at the key ingredients for building a successful brand as demonstrated by Who Gives a Crap, who have managed to make the sale of environmentally friendly toilet paper (with a social conscience) into a unique, engaging and successful brand.

From the time they first launched their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, Who Gives a Crap have had a clearly defined, engaging and well-targeted brand that just keeps on delivering! Before you keep reading, watch this video to see some of their clever branding in action…

Who Gives a Crap toilet paper – First Edition Video

So, what can we learn from the masterful branding of Who Gives a Crap?

Firstly, before you even start thinking about designing your brand and story, you must define your product and target customer.

Define your Product

If you are a service-based business, this step is just as important as for those running a product-based business. You need to spend time defining exactly what it is you do, what you sell and, most importantly, what makes your product or service unique compared to others in the marketplace. If you don’t have a well-defined product offering, potential customers will have no idea what you do, or sell!

Who Gives a Crap sell recycled toilet paper, and they’re not the only company who does so. The brand was launched on the back of a successful crowdfunding campaign in July 2012 after the three co-founders, Danny, Simon and Jehan, learnt that “2.3 billion people across the world don’t have access to a toilet… which means that around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation.” The company sells 100% recycled toilet paper (via a mail subscription service) and donates 50% of their profits to “help build toilets and improve sanitation in the developing world.”

One important thing to note here is that Who Gives a Crap has other products lines but toilet paper is their main product and marketing ‘hero’. Also, the fact that they are both socially and environmentally conscious is unique, and forms a very important part of their ‘brand story’ (more about that later).

When you think about your own business, what do you want customers to remember when they think of your brand? What is the main thing you do or sell? If you have a range of products, what is your ‘hero’ product? Or, what is it that you do best?

Define your Customer

You could say that everyone is a potential customer when you’re selling toilet paper and I’ve heard many small business owners say a similar thing about their product or service. But designing a brand that appeals to ‘all’ is virtually impossible. Some small business owners get stumped at this point and if that’s you, the first thing to ask yourself is who is most likely to buy your product? Often, it is a customer of similar profile to the business owner themselves, because many enterprises are born out of a passion or inspiration very close to the heart of the founder. So, there’s your starting point!

In the case of Who Gives a Crap, their visual branding and content is clearly targeted at 25-40 year-old professionals and/or parents with a social and environmental conscience. Yes, any brand will pick up customers outside their target demographic, but you should always have an idea of the age range, gender/s, interests and vocations of your ‘ideal’ customer when designing and marketing your brand. If you’re a visual thinker, it can help to create a character with all the attributes of your target customer, and even give them a name!

Photo by Jo shua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

Once you have defined your customer, the real fun can begin…

Develop your Visual Branding

As the name suggests, visual branding consists of your logo, font/s, colour/s and how those elements are applied across your brand, from business cards, website design and social media content, to email signatures, stationery, packaging, and more.

Who Gives a Crap execute their visual branding with absolute precision. From online content, to the cardboard box that the product arrives in, a consistent brand image is present at every single interaction with their customer (or potential customer).

When you set out to create your logo, and choose your colours and fonts, a professional designer can be invaluable. The more information you can give them about your product and customer, the better the result is likely to be. If you’re not in a position to sub-contract a designer right now, a cheaper alternative is to crowd-source design services, using a platform such as DesignCrowd, or 99Designs. I won’t delve into detailed design tips here, but there’s more to come on this topic soon. For now, if you’re interested in doing your own research on visual branding, you could start with the 99Designs blog on Visual Identity.

Developing your Brand’s Personality through Engaging Content

Many business publications would call this section ‘marketing strategy’ or something similar, but I wanted to draw particular attention to the ‘tone’ of your written content because it’s absolutely crucial to developing a ‘personality’ for your brand.

Customers who feel they know a brand are much more likely to develop a trusting (and loyal) relationship with it.

Who Gives a Crap offers a perfect example of using an informal, friendly and engaging tone with a strong dose of humour in all of their written content. You can see it on their website, product packaging and shipping boxes! Not only is the content light-hearted, clever and funny, it delivers the right key messages to their customers time and again. This creates loyal customers who are so happy that they recommend Who Gives a Crap to their friends and family too! No-brainer, right? Well, almost. The truth is that most small businesses try to create engaging content, and many achieve this to some degree, but the greatest challenge is being able to engage your customer consistently. That is, through a consistent tone, consistent messaging and consistent placement.

If writing isn’t your strong point, a freelance writing professional with business experience can craft a solid communications strategy (and content) for you. If your budget doesn’t allow for that right now, immerse yourself in reading the content of brands you admire, and practice your own writing. Then, ask for feedback from trusted friends or family (who will be honest with you) and keep working at it.

When you start to develop a tone for your brand, focus more on writing as if you were having a friendly conversation with your customers in-person, rather than trying to impress them with your technical knowledge or extensive vocabulary. In most cases, writing in an overly formal or academic tone when you’re trying to market your business will serve to drive potential customers away or at the very least, bore them to tears!

What is your Story?

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

Your brand’s story should start with your passion; whatever it was that inspired you to start a business in the first place. What was the gap in the market, or opportunity, that you saw? What makes you unique? Starting with a clearly identified need for your product or service offering will be key to the success of your marketing strategy, and your business. We’ve seen Facebook and Instagram follow Snapchat’s lead by highlighting their story features in recent times, because this is what users are craving from brands. Essentially, your brand’s story is everything that goes into running your business, both front-of-house, and behind-the-scenes. The more you can invite your potential (or existing) customers into a space where you share your process, from ideas-generation through to design, production and distribution, the more likely they are to trust you. Consumers are becoming more savvy and take online research seriously, often demanding this sort of intimate detail before making a buying decision.

Once you have defined your target market, and developed your story, creating a mission statement or tagline to clearly communicate your key offering should be easy. If not easy, it should at least narrow your options. The challenge in developing your tagline will be to keep it both descriptive, and concise. You will need to prioritise which information is most important to include here. Shopify has a Free Slogan Maker that might not give you the perfect tagline, but it could kick-start your brainstorming process!

The Importance of Consistency

I couldn’t resist giving this word a paragraph of its own, because it is just so important. Creating a cohesive, consistent and engaging brand ensures that customers will recall your key product offerings when they come to make buying decisions. Even more importantly, a memorable brand lends itself to word-of-mouth recommendations from existing customers, which is one of the most powerful forms of marketing there is.

Wait, that was too many words! What should I do again??

In a nutshell…

Infographic Created using Canva

Extra Resources

The complete story and website of Who Gives A Crap

There are some fantastic tips for developing your brand’s story at HubSpot.

Trevor Young (Digital Citizen/PR Warrior) and Neil Patel each have a wealth of knowledge and resources on branding and digital marketing that you can explore.

For information on branding and developing content, most social media scheduling tools have their own blog with useful tips and tricks, such as Hootsuite, Later, Sprout Social, and Planoly.

I joined Instagram to promote my freelance photography business in 2015. Initially, my use was quite sporadic, but from the 1^st of January, 2017 I started posting to Instagram every single day. I was committed to growing my following organically, with a focus on engagement rather than follower count. But, the constant barrage of marketing spam thrown at me promoting follower gains and increased profits started to wear me down. The ‘noise‘ was incredible. Would a large follower count really increase my profit potential and lead to increased job bookings? Was there a legitimate and easy way to gain more followers quickly?

I had researched Instagram growth-hacking techniques and came to the conclusion that for my purposes, having large numbers of followers would not increase my job bookings, given that most methods of quickly gaining followers would attract fake and/or non-genuine accounts. However, I did occasionally succumb to the psychological high when one of my images attracted a large number of likes and/or some nice, genuine comments. I was finding it really hard to resist the bright lights of celebrity-like fame on Instagram, which was quickly starting to feel like a popularity contest. I could easily argue away these desires using my logic and intelligence, but they would return intermittently… Eventually, curiosity got the better of me! I decided to run my own little experiment based on a theory (or group of similar theories) that claim an Instagram user can gain 100 followers in 24 hours. I figured that I had nothing to lose, and it was worth investigating, for entertainment and information purposes. After all, why miss out on an effective marketing strategy, if it is that easy to implement? And, if in fact, it does actually work!

The experiment details

I never intended to write a blog post when I first decided to test this theory, so the numbers quoted below are all approximate and designed to give an impression of what happened without getting bogged down in the technical details. Prior to carrying out this experiment, my Instagram follower count was at about 260, and I was following around 600 accounts. I had always carefully chosen the accounts that I followed based on the fact that I liked their content rather than just blindly ‘following-back’, but on this day I threw caution to the wind, so to speak. On the evening of February the 16^th, I started seeking out some accounts with large followings that had a similar target market to mine (my competitors) and started following their followers like crazy! I followed approximately 600 extra accounts throughout that evening and the next day. I took the total number of accounts that I was following to approximately 1200. Within an hour of my sudden increased activity and large number of new follows, there was a marked increase in the number of accounts liking my photos. If you scroll down my Instagram page (@macro_grace) to the dates February 16^th, 17^th and 18^th you will see that images I posted on those days got 154 likes, 167 likes and 193 likes respectively. Both before and after conducting this experiment, the average likes my images receive is about 52, ranging from 30 to 90 likes each. Along with this increased ‘liking’ activity, my follower count also increased over the next 24-48 hours until it reached 377 (at its’ highest count). This means that my follower count did increase by 90 and maintain that increase after an initial peak of 117 extra followers.

So, the experiment worked, right? It is possible to gain 100 followers in a very short space of time.

The short answer is yes. The more complicated answer is, no.

The clincher is that although my follower count did increase dramatically, it then dropped to about 350 and has remained stagnant at that count for about 6 weeks (with small daily fluctuations, but the base number remains roughly the same). Prior to the experiment, my organic follower increase was sitting at about 2-3 per day: a slow and steady rate. Since the experiment, I have continued to gain between 2 and 5 followers per day, but I have also been losing followers at approximately the same rate. A quick calculation, using average figures, means that if I had continued posting and engaging without carrying out this experiment, my follower count should be anywhere between 352 (if gaining 2/day) and 386 (if gaining 3/day) now. As I write this, my actual follower count is 357.

In short, if I had not carried out this experiment, my current follower count would be almost exactly the same as it is today (46 days later). The true gain for my Instagram account was nil. I am hoping that sometime in the very near future, my follower count will start to gradually and organically increase again. I will then be able to put this experiment well and truly behind me.

Some companies have developed apps to carry out this type of activity on an automated basis. My increased activity would have attracted some of these ‘bots’ and explains the spike in liking activity. It also partially explains that the new ‘followers’ I gained over that period of time were mostly non-genuine; either automated, fake or spam accounts. Many of these ‘followers’ un-followed my account again shortly after.

Where to from here?

The fact is that the long-term effects from this experiment for my account should be negligible, but engaging in some growth-hacking techniques (especially automated options) for gaining followers in the longer term can actually have a negative impact on your account and reduce your credibility. It should also be noted here that some third-party apps operate contrary to Instagram’s Terms of Use. See Instagram’s Platform Policy here.

There are many variables that have not been taken into account here, and this was not a scientific experiment by any stretch of the imagination, but in my humble opinion, the best way to gain quality followers is to continue posting quality content on a regular basis. You also need to integrate your Instagram activity with a comprehensive online and offline marketing strategy and keep the focus on producing quality work and making customers happy!

Author’s Update (September 2019):

I have now deleted this Instagram account. I don’t think it ever recovered from the experiment, and the pressure of posting ‘perfect’ images everyday became counter-productive to my work and overall business goals. I really enjoyed the ‘Insta-break’ and it certainly helped to put things in perspective for me; being active on social media can present so many valuable opportunities for marketing, collaboration and social connection but if it becomes a negative influence or overwhelming, there is no harm in taking a break!

Header Image: Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Small Business & Freelancing