Marketing a serviced based business can feel like a minefield, trust me I've been there. But once you've strategically branded your business it helps marketing authentically a whole lot easier.

1. What do you want to be known for?

Your business goals and values are a huge part of the branding process, not only do they guide the creative process for your overall logo, colour palette and aesthetics - they will tell you a lot about how you should market your business and set up a plan for the growth of your brand.

When you post marketing content, like it or not, you're going to create a brand for yourself/business so stay in control and make sure it's consistent with the messaging you want to portray to your audience.

If you're working with a branding designer, this should be part of the process, but if not - you'll need to write down and solidify what your values are and what you want to be known for, this will help to dictate the look, feel and tone of voice of your content - what is your brand personality? Envision the words below as a photography studio posting on Instagram and see how it could change the whole vibe of their business.

Premium, light-hearted, sleek, humorous, bubbly, aspirational, minimal, feminine, vibrant, professional...

2. What do you enjoy doing?

Now you've established your branding goals, values and personality keywords it's time to figure out how you're going to thread it into your marketing. I'm definitely not here to tell you you have be doing all of the things, showing up on video, using every social media platform and if you're not using Instagram reels, well you might as well kiss your business goodbye.

Of course if you have the time to do it all great! But let's be honest the majority of solopreneurs and small business don't have the luxury of endless hours to dedicate to marketing. Even if you did, it's pointless implementing marketing strategy you simply hate doing.

Your content should always be (at least) one of these three things: entertaining, educational or inspirational.

But if you hate the whole process of planning, filming and editing video content, but love writing - make a blog instead of a youtube channel. If you love creating visual content, but can't stand Instagram then get on Pinterest. Just make sure to find a marketing strategy that you'll actually enjoy and therefore you'll be able to stay consistent.

A good starting point is to have 2-3 platforms you concentrate on.

3. Do you have visual brand guidelines?

How the look and feel of your brand threads across your business is really important for brand consistency, which in turn creates familiarity and trust with your audience. Things to consider are:

• Design considerations: Does your brand use certain patterns, shapes, icons etc?
• Font: What are your brand fonts for headers, sub-headers and normal text?
• Colour palette: How will you use your brand colours throughout your content? Is it busy and vibrant or minimal and monochromatic?
• Imagery: It's worth considering where your imagery will be sourced from. Whether it's from a brand photoshoot, your own photos or stock imagery, it's important it's good quality, consistent and in-line with the rest of your brand.

4. What's the end goal?

What's the point of it all? Of course you should create free value-adding content, but after you've put in all the work of defining your ideal customers, branding your business perfectly and authentically engaging with your audience - make sure there's a way they can carry on being a part of your brand if they want to.

This might look like:

• A website where people can view your services and get in touch to work with you
• A way to sign-up to your email list to receive information on your latest article or exclusive content
• A private Facebook group to build a community of like-minded individuals/businesses
• A digital course showing them how to do what you do best

Feel free to DM me on Instagram or get in touch with any questions you might have about this process, I'd be more than happy to help!