Each business should have a list of core values, your core values are what makes your business run. What type of people you want to hire, or work with. This is the foundation of your business.
We will learn in 5 simples steps how to figure out what your core values are.
Download your FREE Core Values Checklist Here
You’ve heard you need to have identified core values for your brand and business, but what does this actually need?
We recently posted a video about how your core values are a set of standards for your business and how values drive how people perceive your business. Now it is time to take a look at translating this into the content you create. Here, we are going to be taking a look at a few different facets of your marketing:
Your brand and your mission need to flow through every aspect of your business and online, content is one of the main ways prospects can get a sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you (or purchase your products). Do your personalities align or do they clash? Do you focus your attention on the same details your clients care about? How can you put your best foot forward online?
I’m sure you’ve been told that we work with people that we know, like, and trust. I must tell people this every single day. When your core values flow through your business, people with those same values will tend to be more attracted to working with you. They can help you really connect with those individuals who can then turn into raving fans.
A process to identify your target market that starts with your values.
Unlike most exercises that drive you towards creating a description of your target market, I invite you to think first about your values. More and more business experts are discussing how your employees should encompass your brand values, especially if they want to be more fulfilled, so why not bring this same notion to your consumers? Rather than focusing most heavily on the demographics of your target market, take a look at the psychographics. This includes the more personal characteristics of a person, including:
Think about how your product or service actually fits into your target consumer’s lifestyle, how will the product be used?
By going through this exercise, you open yourself up to thinking beyond just age, income, and location. You allow yourself to better understand what actually drives your consumers and what matters to them. Where do your business values come in? Well, ideally, your consumer’s values align with those of your business.
The next piece of your brand values is to use them to create content that moves your brand forward.
There are many different ways to come up with topics to discuss in your blog, so, just as a disclaimer, here I’m really only discussing one element of creating your content strategy. Your content strategy should be diverse, but there are ways to make sure within your strategy, your brand messaging and values come across loud and clear.
We recommend sitting down once a quarter, or at least once per year, and actually write a blog about your values. This may seem strange the first few times, but provide examples about how your values have dictated what products and services you offer. Or create a blog emphasizing your attention to detail and customer relationships that also highlights testimonials from your clients. There are a lot of different ways to highlight your values in a blog post, but one thing I do want to emphasize is how important it is to try and relate these articles back to the benefit for your clients.
Nobody wants to read something only about you, but how interesting would a story be of how you found your supplier because of their fair trade employee salaries or how you came to be a life coach because of the struggles you had before you started living aligned with your values. These are things people can relate to, and topics that can help you form a real connection with your market.
Okay, so this really ties into the first part of the blog where we look at psychographics to identify your target market. By understanding the values of your market, you can use language that they will relate to more clearly. Let’s say you are a winter sports company who is marketing ski helmets to parents. The language you should use should highlight the safety and comfort of their children. However, let’s say the company is edgy and markets to the park-rat. Do you think they should focus on comfort and safety?
No! Their target market wants to look cool and may care about being connected to their devices. They want a way to easily show off the sick tricks they are throwing in the half pipe while jamming out. Everything from the imagery the company would use to the verbiage would have to shift.
The same is true for your business. Who are those different consumers you are trying to work with? Do you find that you are intuitive when you work with clients or are you very process driven? Work to find what words you can use in your marketing that conveys your brand values.
Lastly, we are going to take a look at how to use your values to understand ways you can react to both positive and negative reviews online.
Far too frequently, businesses with high integrity receive negative reviews online. Often times we actually see this for our clients’ when they work with individuals with conflicting values to the business, but here we really should focus on what you do after you receive a review.
First, visualize that you have just received a notification of a 1 star review. What is your gut reaction? You’ve worked years to build a reputable business and now everyone will see this negative review, who wouldn’t be upset?!
Before you do anything, STOP. Think about your values – how do you want to be perceived?
Most business values include some sort of idea around integrity or relationships, so you want to make sure that how you respond also projects this. Unless you are a business like Shinesty or Cards Against Humanity, where you embrace an ‘in the face’ brand presence, we recommend the following:
Following these steps will make sure you aren’t jumping in with your gut reaction, but rather that you are allowing your values to dictate how you will treat others online.
Positive reviews are easier to respond to, but many businesses fail to actually write back each and every time they receive a review. Again, think about your values. Let’s say Community is a brand value, what better way to showcase this by taking the time to thank each reviewer and reestablish your invitation to them into the community that you are building.
In this post we’ve taken a look at how to use your values to find your target market, how to write content that exemplifies your brand values, and how to respond to reviews in a value-driven way. Just remember in every aspect of your marketing and service to clients, your values can and should act as your compass.
Core values are a set of standards for your business that everyone involved in your business must use in order to deliver the best possible product or service.
Core values force you to raise the bar and set the standard, the tone, and the cadence of your business. Make sure you are doing what you can to set the right standards for your business to get the outcome you are looking for.
This video will help you establish core values for your business.
A personal brand is a feeling, an emotion and an expectation about who you are as a person and and a professional. Your personal brand tells people what your character is and what they can expect to experience when working with you.
Our 3-Step process will help you identify what your personal brand looks like. Once you identify what your personal brand is, it will be your job to nurture, grow and tweak it along the way.
STEP 1: WHO YOU ARE
Identify 3-6 core values that describe you. Core values are those things that drive you and make you who your are. They can be anything from trustworthy, respectful, innovative, leader, etc.
Power Tip:
Need help? Use Google to do some research! Type “List of core values” into the Google search engine and see what comes up. Select core values that really describe who you are and how you want people to perceive you.
Write out a descriptive statement of what problem you are able to provide a solution to.
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The point of this descriptive is to illustrate how you think and want people to perceive you.
Strong personal brands deliver value ALL THE TIME! With everything they do, there is always a piece of value available. Two value-focused brands that quickly come to mind are:
Facebook: Provides people the opportunity to connect with friends, family, and businesses everyday!
Google: Delivers information instantaneously! It costs you nothing to do research from the comfort of your own home!
Make a list of all of the pieces of value you offer to your target market:
Now that you have a clear picture of:
You begin to see what your brand looks like. From here, you can go anywhere! With every piece of marketing you do, the product you deliver or conversation you have, you can design it all to reflect how you want people to perceive you, your business, and the product or service you deliver.
Put your brand to the test. Work with a trusted colleague, mentor, or friend, someone who will give feedback, and tell you what you NEED to hear, not what you WANT to hear. Ask them how they honestly see your brand and the product you deliver. If they are unable to identify the problem you solve, how valuable your product or service is or if they are unable to identify any of the 6 core values you listed above to describe you and your business, you have some work to do. You must either change one or all of the steps above or you must change yourself.
Personal branding is a marathon, not a sprint, and, it is definitely a journey. You will need to constantly work at it and improve it each and every day.
Many times people use the terms personal brand and personal image interchangeably but, they shouldn’t. There is a BIG difference between the two! Once you understand the difference between them, it will make a difference in your business.
Everyone has one! It what helps people form a mental picture of you. Here are some characteristics of a Personal Image:
A personal brand is how people perceive you and it sets the expectation of how you will conduct business with another professional. Your personal brand:
Think of your personal brand as your professional reputation on steroids. Your personal brand is the emotion, thought and an idea that is conjured up each and every time your name and business name are mentioned in your target market. What do you want that thought or idea to be for you and your business?
Now that you know how important your personal brand is, you must protect it at all costs by delivering a consistent message each and every time you interact with your target market whether it be on social media, through a marketing program, during a meeting, consultation or a deliverable product.
Do colors really mean anything for your brand? I mean it’s just colors, right?
WRONG! There is a whole lot of research done behind the meaning of colors!
When you think of your ‘Brand Identity’ what does that mean to you?
Personality is the emotional, and human, association to a brand. Identity is the image created and used by a company to relate to consumers. An identity can include all forms of communication and visuals such as logos, colors or fonts. But the two are symbiotic. A brand’s identity should be part of its personality.
This is one of our favorite color meaning charts: Attribution http://blog.visme.co/color-psychology-in-marketing-and-brand-identity-part-2/
When you talk about creating a brand it all starts with the colors, fonts, and styles.
Here are a few steps to get you started
Is your brand identity unique?
Does it have passion behind it?
Is it consistent?
WRONG! There’s a whole lot of research done behind the meaning of colors!
When you think of your ‘Brand Identity’ what does that mean to you?
Personality is the emotional, and human, association to a brand. Identity is the image created and used by a company to relate to consumers. An identity can include all forms of communication and visuals such as logos, colors or fonts. But the two are symbiotic. A brand’s identity should be part of its personality.
This is one of our favorite color meaning charts: Attribution http://blog.visme.co/color-psychology-in-marketing-and-brand-identity-part-2/
When you talk about creating a brand it all starts with the colors, fonts, and styles.
Here are a few steps to get you started:
What’s a mood board?
It’s a collection of different items that can help you get a feel of what your brand is all about. It can contain images, textures, patterns, typefaces, and other design elements. You may even put together a mood board with logos, website, images that you like the feel of to maybe replicate.
How to make an effective mood board:
Don’t set limits.
The moment you start making a mood board, understand that this is not a place for you to hold back. Put as many elements into it as possible. Remember that it’s always easier for you to take out elements that do not work out in the end. But if you hold back, you might miss out on things that you could have added, but thought twice about
Be detailed and specific.
Your brand identity is not just a logo of your business, but a reflection of your personality. When it comes to creating your brand, color plays a vital role in the process. People choose brands, make buying decisions, change their actions, choose what stores to go into, all because of COLOR, and they may not know they even do it!
Think of a stop light, you always know Red means stop, Green means Go and Yellow means caution or slow down, right? This changes the way we think about colors and what they mean to us as individuals. At the end of the day, Color is EVERYTHING! These colors will be in your logo, website, social media, print materials, publications, promotional items and so much more, it’s important you take your time and really think about this.
– What color makes you happy? What’s your favorite color?
– Which colors and fonts are you naturally drawn towards?
– Are there certain colors that can represent your design niche the best?– Which colors would you prefer to avoid?
-Are there certain colors that can represent your design niche the best?
-What do I want the identity of your business to say to my clients?
Do you have one? Do you have a stacked logo for social media?
When you are creating all these graphics, it’s so important to make sure you have the right size for each social media platform, cheat sheet here http://www.visualistan.com/2016/12/the-2017-social-media-image-sizes-cheat.html
What social media platforms do you have, that you need to make sure your graphics are correct?
When communicating as the brand offline or via your website, social media profiles, or other online channels, it’s important to keep a consistent tone and personality. If your brand is fun and friendly on Twitter, it should have a similar flavor on Facebook and LinkedIn. Your messaging on LinkedIn may be less casual or more professional, but it shouldn’t sound like it’s coming from a different brand altogether. Think about it this way: there is the “at work” you and the “at home or with friends” you. Your personality is the same, but your mannerisms adjust to the context. The same goes for your brand personality and selected communication channels.
Is your brand identity unique?
Does it have passion behind it?
Is it consistent?
Picture this, you walk into a room of other business owners who immediately turn to you and ask, “So, what do you do?” As a freelancer, do you know how to respond? Do you always say the same answer or do you try and switch it up depending upon with whom you are speaking?
More often then not, business owners and freelancers who aren’t purposeful about how they approach the answer to “what do you do” try and encompass every aspect of their expertise within one answer. They are so interested in making sure the listener sees the breadth of their experience and offerings that the messaging becomes convoluted and lost.
I did this for months as I kicked off my marketing agency and it wasn’t until I attended a workshop on networking skills that I realized my short comings. In fact, it was so bad that I even switched my service offerings from PPC management to social media management for small businesses because I confused other networkers so much that all they got out of our conversations was marketing businesses online > social media is a type of digital marketing > Oh, she must manage social media accounts. Recognizing that this appeared to be low hanging fruit, I shifted to social media and blogging, but that’s another story for another day.
So, to give yourself the best possible chance of actually providing the freelance services you set out to, there are a few techniques that can completely transform your messaging and ability to concisely explain what you do to your tribe. In this blog post, I will be providing the actual steps you can take to answer the question “What do you do?” as a freelancer.
Is there anything that sets you apart from your competitors? This can include your skills, your experience, or even your personality and values. Especially as I was growing my business, I found so many clients who had been screwed over by other freelancers. They were hesitant to even have a conversation about their marketing needs because of previous experiences. To overcome this objection, I used my values and the fact that every new account that I managed was set up in the client’s name rather than linked to my personal/business accounts, so my client retained complete ownership of their marketing and business materials. This unique proposition isn’t as unique now, but it absolutely helped prospects feel at ease when we talked specifics about projects.
Here, I mean to think about short vs long-term projects. It is alright to have a combination of the two, but very clear about what services constitute as a short term vs long term project.
Example 1: Web designer. A front-end designer may really emphasize their website build-outs, which are short term projects. For more robust offerings and to provide more passive income, the same web designer could also offer maintenance plans through the web hosting company.
Example 2: Copy writer: In copy writing there are always both short and long term projects. Creating blogging packages, for example, can create monthly recurring revenue for your business, but a full website rewrite or manual creation could command a higher hourly or per word rate, though it is a short term project. You may prefer to get in and get out, but be available for future short term writing needs for your clients, or you may find you excel more at really getting to know your clients through writing multiple blogs and newsletters for them each month.
Have you ever heard yourself say that you work with anyone and everyone? Do you really want to? When you think about your ideal client, it can be broken down in terms of business size (large corporations, small startups, or family owned businesses). One tactic I’ve found to work well is if you think of what specific service applies to which ideal client. So when you are talking to a soloprenuer, for example, you are only focusing on the one or two freelance services that really speak to their needs and budget.
In addition to considering the size of the business, it is also important to consider the types of industries you want to focus on. Are you passionate about health and wellness, SaaS providers, consultants, etc? When you focus on one niche, you can start to optimize your efforts more effectively. You may find some processes work well for one industry in particular, which aides in building your expertise and loops back around to allowing you to articulate what makes you unique.
Once you have taken the time to work through what makes you different and which services are most appropriate for your niche target markets, you can start constructing your answer to the question “what do you do?”
WHO you are: By answering Who you are, you are providing your job title. Many answers to the question of what you do fizzle down after this is answered, but I urge you to keep going.
WHAT you do: This is where you can add context to your job title. What does it actually mean?
WHY you do it: Have you ever told someone why you are freelancer? It is okay to incorporate this into your answer for what do you do. You can focus on flexibility, challenges, making personal relationships with your clients, really whatever your story is for why you are on this path. You’ll find that your story can open the doors to more in depth conversations.
HOW you do it differently: This is where you can explain your unique value proposition. How do you run your business different than the next guy or gal? Are there any case studies you can highlight?
Bringing the Who, What, Why, How framework together.
Now that you have your who, what, why, and hows thought through, try explaining what you do. For me, this comes down to:
I own a digital marketing agency that focuses on social media management for soloprenuers and small businesses. We help our clients create consistent content so they can better connect with their target audience online while freeing up their time to focus on their business.
It’s all good and well that you have your answer outlined to what do you do as a freelancer, but what if you are spending time talking to very different tips of people. The questions below are prompts to get you started down the path of accurately positioning yourself as a freelancer.
Having a list of three pain points allows you to mention just one for each niche market or type of project. Through highlighting a pain you can draw people in, and then you can explain your solution to the issue. Rather than focusing on the ‘features’ of your services, try to emphasize how working with you made your clients feel.
This example project that made a difference can make a mini case study that you can use to highlight what you do, how you are different, and why someone should hire you. Telling stories is a way to help your prospects understand what it would be like to work with you.
Ask a question back to the individual as a way to describe what you do. An example could be, “have you ever started to write a enewsletter only to get frustrated with the program you were using? I help my clients optimize their ability to communicate directly with their tribe through Mailchimp email campaigns.
Free consultations are one way to get people in the door. An example of how you could use this is: I work with small businesses to make sure they can be found on Google. If you would like, I offer a 30 minute free consultation where we can actually walk through your website and see if there are any areas for improvement to make sure you can be found online.
It can be daunting to answer the question of what do you do, especially as you are just getting started, but being able to do this can transform your messaging and ability to open the doors to new introductions and conversations. As you create your elevator pitch, recognize that you don’t need one pitch or commercial for every situation.
Each conversation can fully depend on the individual with whom you are discussing your business. If you sense yourself trying to explain every detail of what you do, take a step back. Did the other person’s eyes just glaze over?
Take a deep breath.
You’ll have another chance to explain what you do in the next conversation!
We are so excited to have had Russ Barnes on our radio show August 12th, 2017. He is such a remarkable person! Here are just a few topics we covered:
1) Customer, customer, customer – without the customer you are out of business. Listening to the customer will help you improve your product or service.
2) Message, message, message – in order for customers to find you, they must believe that you can solve their problem in such a way that they are willing to pay for the solution.
3) Value, value, value – the more value you can deliver, the less resistance you will experience when acquiring customers.
4) Target market – be a big fish in a small pond. The idea that EVERYONE can use your product or service positions you as a tiny fish in a huge ocean. When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
5) Decision making – successful business is certainly what you do, but it is more effectively achieved by how you think about what you do. Resource management is critical.
6) Progression – understand what it takes to get from where you are to where you want to be. This is your growth strategy.
7) Advisors – build your team of advisors carefully. No one develops a successful business alone. Cooperate and collaborate, but compensate. No one wants to work for free.
8) Earn money to hire experts. Focus on what you do to make money and then pay experts to do what they do best to help you maximize your time and rapidly achieve outcomes. Know the calculation that will tell you whether you can hire an expert and when you can hire the expert.
9) Don’t get complacent. Never stop learning. Perhaps we can talk about books, magazines, webinars, libraries, incubators, or other educational resources that business owners can access for little to no money.
10) Love, love, love what you do or find a way to transition into something that you do love.
Here is a little bit more about who Russ Barnes is:
Russ Barnes, USAF Colonel (retired), MBA, MS
Colonel Russ Barnes is the CEO and Senior Business Advisor to Entrepreneurs and Executives at Systro Consulting, an organization design firm specializing in small business development. He has more than 30 years of experience in organization development drawn from military service, franchise ownership, academic programs, and strategy consulting, specifically with small businesses.
As an aviator, Russ flew combat missions during Desert Storm and later held senior leadership positions in several higher headquarters staff organizations which include Air Combat Command Headquarters, the Pentagon, Strategic Command Headquarters, European Command Headquarters, and Central Command Headquarters. He has received the Legion of Merit, Air Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal and more than 20 other peacetime and wartime decorations.
After retirement from the military, Russ grew his franchise territory from zero to profitability in less than three years. His growth was based on a clear vision, building an effective network, consistently delivering a quality product and maintaining a relentless focus on customer service.
Russ is a graduate of the Referral Institute Certified Networker program where he received extensive training in referral marketing. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Manhattan College (NY), his MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and his Master of Science degree in Strategic Studies from Air University. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Organization Development at Benedictine University.
Contact Info:
Email: Russ@systro.org
Website: www.systro.org
Social media: www.linkedin.com/in/rcbarnes
Phone number: 813 520-5770
Here are the 3 social media trends we covered on our radio show this past Saturday. Each week we will bring you new social media trends to help grow your business and your social media strategy!
Celebrate your fans and followers and build loyal brand followers on Facebook. Post special % off discounts only available on Facebook. Also use Facebook ads to help grow your brand awareness and brand loyalty. Grow your following and your brand by offering unique content on a regular basis. Stand out and be leader in your niche.
Check online reviews constantly and respond to the good and the bad. A bad review is the opportunity to start a conversation and turn it into a positive. When responding to a bad review, handle it off line and in a private forum. Where to check your reviews?? Google, Facebook, Yelp
There are a couple of reasons why this is not a good idea.
