You’ve just hired a professional brand strategist to create a brand guide that reflects what you do, why you do it, for whom you do it, and how you do it differently than anyone else.
What do you do with all that expensive material?
For too many solopreneurs and small business owners, the answer to that question is, “Shove it in a drawer and never look at it again.”
That answer is wrong, not just because your brand guide is a valuable asset you paid good money to have someone create for you, but because a brand guide doesn’t do anyone any good if you don’t use it.
At the same time, the inclination to throw it in a drawer (or a folder on your hard drive) and never look at it again is understandable for two main reasons.
- You treated your brand guide as something to check off your to-do list rather than an asset to be used to grow your business. Once it’s done, you don’t think anything else is required of you.
- You were overwhelmed by the amount of information provided in your brand guide, and our standard response when overwhelmed is to ignore the thing we find overwhelming.
To address the first response: your brand guide is just that: a guide. It should steer you in the direction of:
- your ideal clients
- the messaging to use in all your marketing materials
- what kinds of marketing materials you should create
- the topics you should cover in your marketing materials
- the language you should use in your marketing materials
Far from being something you check off your to-do list, your brand guide should be the checklist you use before publishing any marketing content to make sure that content has everything it needs to be as effective as possible.
It should also be the checklist against which you check every new marketing venture you undertake before you get started.
Every time a shiny new object comes along and you think you need to hop on that bandwagon, you should take a moment to check it against your brand guide:
- Does it align with your brand?
- Does it align with your ideal clients?
If the answer to both of those questions is, “yes,” you are free to follow that shiny object.
But if the answer to either of those things is “no,” then you know you need to let that shiny object fly by while you focus on tools and activities that grow your business.
If you’re overwhelmed by the amount of information provided in your brand guide, that’s OK, too. Your brand strategist should be willing to offer at least one session in which they review your brand guide with you so you understand every nook and cranny of that document, and how to use it to grow your business.
If that didn’t happen, you either need to ask for that session or get a better brand strategist.
If you have your brand guide shoved in a drawer and you’re not sure what to do next, this article is here to help you.
Or, if you’re thinking of investing in a brand guide, but you’re not sure what value it will provide, this article is also here to help you.
Table of Contents
- Use Your Brand Guide to Create/Adjust Your Marketing Strategy
- Using Your Brand Guide as a Checklist
- Who Uses Your Brand Guide?
- Updating and Refreshing Your Brand Guide
Use Your Brand Guide to Create/Adjust Your Marketing Strategy
When I’m creating a brand guide for my clients, I always include a preliminary content marketing strategy in the brand guide. Things like:
- their ideal client profiles (ICPs)
- what types of content they should create
- what topics they should cover in their marketing content
- where to publish/distribute their marketing content
- what language to use (and what language to avoid) in their marketing content
It’s a far cry from an editorial calendar, but it’s a start.
It also gives them something against which to check all their marketing efforts going forward. If they find themselves creating a piece of content that isn’t geared toward one of their ICPs, they can either adjust it to fix the issue or scrap it and move onto something more impactful.
Using Your Brand Guide As A Checklist
As mentioned above, once you have your brand guide, you should check all your marketing efforts against that document.
- are you using the logo correctly?
- are you using the right colors and fonts?
- are you using the right language?
- does the content align with your overall brand goals?
- does the content align with your ICP?
Every piece of content needs to check all the above boxes. If anything is missed, the content either needs to be adjusted, or tossed in favor of something more in line with your goals.
Again, I must stress the importance of checking every, single piece of content against this document. Every:
- page on your website
- image on your website
- blog post
- newsletter
- social media post
Even client communications should be measured against your brand guide to ensure consistency with every experience someone has with your brand — from social media, to your website, to working with you.
Who Uses Your Brand Guide?
Anyone who is creating/publishing/distributing content for your brand needs access to your brand guide.
If you’ve hired a professional marketer to help get the word out about your business, they need access to your brand guide.
If you have an assistant helping you with your marketing content, they need access to your brand guide (and they need to know how to use it, so, at the very least, share this blog post with them if they’re not already familiar with brand guides.)
If you’re still going the DIY route with your marketing, then you need to make sure, not only that you have easy access to your brand guide, but that you know how to use it as a reference every time you create content for your business.
Updating and Refreshing Your Brand Guide
I was on a panel with a fellow branding strategist, the fabulous Lola VonRoda of Iconic Details. Like me, she’s a solopreneur, which means she is her brand.
She said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m a different woman every 90 days.”
While investing in a whole, new brand guide every quarter is a bit much, I do recommend that every 6-12 months you at least review it and change anything that feels like it’s no longer relevant.
You probably don’t need a whole, new rebrand every year. But it’s always a good idea to check every few months and make sure it still feels relevant.
If you find yourself checking your brand guide and something doesn’t feel right, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the problem. It might just mean you’ve outgrown your existing brand guide, and it’s the guide that needs to be updated.
If you recently had an experience with a client that lit a few lightbulbs in your brain and made you think you need to update your brand guide to take that into account, do so. It could be a positive experience that makes you want to add a qualifier to your ICP, or it could be a negative experience that makes you want to add some red flags your team needs to look out for.
Either way, there’s always value in updating your brand guide so it can continue to fulfill its purpose: guiding you to the right messaging on the right platforms with the right topics and language to attract, engage, and convert your ideal clients.
Now that you know the importance of having a strong brand guide, and how to use it once it’s in place, if you need help creating your brand guide, let’s talk.
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