Picture this. I'm working for your company for a month, and you give me relative carte blanche to do what I think is needed for the branding of the company. You have no idea what that means beyond maybe I will improve your logo or make a few guidelines to follow. But what if it was more than that? What if the month ended and all of a sudden you were looking at a whole new world of possibilities for your business? Because of what having an explicit design strategy plus standardized design assets allowed you to do. If you're running a professional service firm and find yourself being more and more graphic design curious, this episode is for you. Welcome to Baseline Your Brand, a podcast for smaller professional service firms to learn about brand design and its role in their business strategy. I'm Michelle Johnson, the owner of Forta Design and a longtime graphic designer. I've helped over 50 companies brand their businesses, and I'm here to share my insights. Let's get into it. I enrolled at a business coaching program a while back, and the owner slash head coach was pretty adamant that design doesn't really matter for a small business, and what matters is the quality of your service, the consistency of your messaging, your social proof, your niching, and so forth. And on one hand, he isn't wrong. For most businesses, if they don't have some of the basic stuff figured out, a good brand alone isn't going to improve their outlook. But through the time I was in this coaching program, I saw the owner change his mind. He hired a graphic designer, then redid the website, then improved the visuals, then improved the UX and UI of the client hub, and on and on. And would you be surprised to hear that this shift towards an explicit visual strategy went hand in hand with the owner targeting a different niche of clients? Ones who were more discerning, had an expectation of business excellence, and who resonated with purposeful, bespoke businesses. Graphic designers always have the last laugh because humans are wired to take in information visually to help us make decisions. We can't help it. So every business owner must eventually concede that in fact design does matter for a business and does improve its outlook. So to demystify things, I'd like to walk through what I would do as a designer coming into your business for a month. Just like that designer who was hired by my coach's company did, I want to consider what needs to be tightened up and improved, what needs to be reimagined, and what needs to be created in order for the business to move forward more strategically. All right, first up, taking stock of things. Every company should do a brand audit every few years or so. So on day one at your company, I would start that process looking at last year's social media, marketing material, sales material, website, paper collateral like business cards, things like swag and uniforms, office signage and vehicle wraps. I would then meet with you and your staff to pull out the business's strategy. Who are your clients? Where do you position yourself in the market? How do you market yourself? What do client testimonials say? What do employee testimonials say? And so on. I then hold the two things up and honestly assess where your branding is today relative to your strategy. Is it supporting that strategy or is it getting in the way of it? Or worse, is it misrepresenting your strategy altogether? Branding isn't just about how you look, it's about how you land. And so the brand audit lets us assess both of those things, how you look and how you land, and see if they match up. Okay, so from there, probably by around day seven, I'd have a full list of where the brand and the business strategy don't align. And first on the list would be tackling the low-hanging fruit, things that just need to be tightened up. This is stuff like standardizing logo files, brand colors, and brand fonts. I'd probably ask you for a thousand bucks to do a photo shoot to create new non-generic marketing assets. I'd do a website refresh with those refined assets and ensure it's in line with best practices so you have a highly effective digital storefront bringing in leads. I can guarantee that most small businesses need this work done because typically no one is in charge of it. Small businesses don't have the luxury of hiring a head of marketing, let alone an in-house designer. So logos get screenshot and cropped, color values drift from the originals, and sales staff make their own customer material off the sides of their desks as they see fit. Doing a brand audit and then tightening up your foundational brand assets is such an easy win. I think the only reason more companies don't do it is they don't realize how easy it is. Somewhere around day 14, I'd be having some big talks with you and anyone involved with sales and the customer journey. This is where branding can really have an effect that goes beyond impressions and starts impacting things like sales conversions. For example, I worked with a moving company a number of years ago on a sales tool that they still use to this day. It was born out of the owner talking to his sales staff about how they approach meetings with leads, how they close sales, common concerns they need to address, and so on. What he realized is that the sales staff could really benefit from what became a 16-page professionally printed booklet that effectively acted as a sales presentation, a frequently asked questions reference, a marketing brochure, and a paperwork folder all in one. This document guided the visit and was then left behind with the prospective client. This was a reimagining of what streamlining sales looked like for this company. They didn't just give everyone a script to follow in the name of consistency. Instead, they gave them a printed tool that allowed the salespeople to add structure to their sales visits while still leaving room for them to dictate the order and pace of things. This reimagining stage would also look at the customer journey to see what touch points could be addressed and augmented so as to leave a better impression. And he would even look at the employee experience, how they may or may not be looking for a chance to feel more like a team, more united, or more like an authority of the brand itself. You would be surprised what can be overlooked here. Near the end of my month, I would have a list of things you could create going forward. This is that positive outlook I mentioned at the top of this episode. For example, if it's clear that your current brand isn't working at all and that a rebrand could really help, you'll want to budget that out. Done well, rebrands create new energy and new attention. Or if there's an opportunity for uniting your staff, your vehicles, and your office into a more cohesive experience, that would be on the create list. Client experience is often a differentiator for industries where the services are rather homogeneous, like with lawyers or accountants. So you always want to be considering what your clients see. And finally, the create list would have marketing campaign drafts, messaging language, digital tool concepts, all kinds of ideas that were picked up and honed from the time spent with you and the people that make your business work. This becomes fodder for future opportunities. So that's it. That's what I would do if I was your designer for a month. I'd tighten up your brand and brand assets, creating consistency and repeatability going forward. I'd reimagine moments where your company and your clients and employees interact so that your brand becomes a lubricant in these moments to foster attention and retention. And I would make a future-looking create list for you to reference going forward so that you continue to leverage your new visual strategy and strengthen your business. Making your strategy visual is best handled by our professional graphic designer who lives and breathes this stuff. But if you just want to dip your toe for now, you can get my Baseline Your Brand document that will help you audit your brand today. This is Baseline Your Brand, a podcast for smaller professional service firms to learn about brand design and its role in their business strategy. I'm Michelle Johnson, the owner of Forta Design and a longtime graphic designer. If you want to talk about how I can help your firm rebrand, head to fortadesign.com and let's talk. Bye for now.