The 5 questions you need to answer for strong business foundations

November 14, 2022

Define your brand strategy in 5 questions.

Before starting on your brand design creation, before ever considering how your logo should look like, which colors would represent your business, which fonts you could use … it is imperative you work on your brand strategy and answer the 5 questions below. Make sure to share them with your brand designer when you tackle your visual identity!
A brand design will only bring results to your business if it is aligned with your strategy..
The shapes, the style of the fonts and their attributes, the meaning behind each color … all of this deeply matters.
This is why your business foundations need to be perfectly clear and set on stone..

Ready? Let’s go together through these five questions!

1. What is your business mission?

The reason I am so in love with what I do with Febulous Studio is that I get to support day in day out people that are guided by a burning need to help others. And this is truly gratifying.
As coaches and wellness entrepreneurs, your goal is to assist people achieve something specific.
This core business mission needs to be very well articulated so that you can recite it as soon as someone is asking what you do.
Rather than saying “I am a live coach”, say “I help mothers face family life and challenges with grace and peace.”
Once you are crystal clear on what your business mission is, you need to communicate this openly with your prospects as well as your brand designer! This will be crucial when designing your brand design.

2. What are your unique strengths?

What are you doing differently, what is your business trademark? .You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but make sure you don’t do the same as the others.
It can be a mix of your certifications, like for example mixing breathing with NLP techniques, or some experience you went through in your life.
Identify the characteristics that makes you who you are, articulate them, and include them to your value proposition! In other words, use your very own business strengths when selling your services … and share them with your graphic designer!.

3. Who is your ideal customer?

In other words, what is your coaching niche. Is it much harder to convince someone to work with you when you are too general.
Placing yourself as an expert on some field will make your communication clearer, participate in your authority-building so you will become the go-to person in one domain.
So, what is your niche? Are you solving problems for businesses or private clients? Are you working with men suffering midlife crisis, women that are overwhelmed and struggling to juggle their professional and personal lives? Teenagers that are lacking confidence?
Niching down will allow you to perfectly answer the problematic of a smaller group of people but with a much more adjusted offer than a generalist coach.
Make sure you share this with your brand designer before working on your visual identity or website.

4. Which problem do they have that you are trying to solve?

You need to recognize and identify the main few problems your ideal client is facing in his life that you were meant to help solving. Place yourself as a problem-solver. Once you have identified this part, you will be able to create perfect solutions for them.
Whether in some direct or indirect way, this needs to transpire somehow in your visual identity, so share this with your graphic designer.

5. What are the top 5 values/personality traits that represent your business?

Your business values and your personal values are two different things but you need to define both of them early in your business story.
What are the things that are important to you, that you want to transmit and that you are not willing to settle for?
Identify the 5 stronger values of your business. These business personality traits will guide you to find perfect clients that are aligned with your philosophy.
The ones that don’t share these values were never meant to be working with you anyway and it would only create problems in the collaboration!
Always be faithful to your values. They are what’s holding your business together and what will help you grow the business you were always dreaming about.
Again, this is something your brand designer needs to know about to create a visual identity aligned with these values.

6. How to provide this info to your graphic designer?

When we work together on your visual identity, we will start with the “visual identity questionnaire” that is gathering these questions and more. This is a very important part of the whole process as no one knows your business better than you. You need to take time to answer these questions in the best possible way, being completely open and honest, reflecting on all these things.
Once you validate the questionnaire, we’ll do a strategy call together. This will allow me to dive deeper in some areas I need to fully understand and define with you which directions to take for your brand design.

7. What if I don’t know how to answer these questions?

This is actually very common. If you don’t have a business background or much help on this matter when you started your business, chances are these questions are a mystery for you. But strong foundations, like for a house, are an absolute must to any business. The solution? Dive into this with a brand strategist. In a few sessions, you will gain full clarity and have a strong business strategy to move forward! Don’t worry, you are not on your own, I work with an amazing brand strategist that will guide through it all, so I can work on your brand design with all the cards in hand!