While working today, I thought of a few cons I have seen affect brand images over the years, including the brand power of presentation. I made some personal mistakes when my business started some 11 years ago back in Lagos. I was a young, naive chemical engineering university graduate in love with colors and graphics. My love of graphics prompted me to start creating beautiful designs with Microsoft Publisher which was a free software in Microsoft Office. Had no prior experience in design except for the fact that I loved drawing and painting which is a story for another day, no formal training as most Nigerian computer schools were teaching the desktop word and probably Excel, (am not sure).
But my love of design and creativity made me start using CorelDraw and I just wanted to have my website so I did a training on website design which lasted for just three days because had to head back to Port Harcourt where I was observing my Youth Corp service program, (a lot of Nigerians are familiar with this). My training continued with practicing all by myself, getting a laptop, and creating my very first website in 2006 as a fashion publisher. I was so ready to conquer the world but I did make so many branding errors along the way.
THE POWER OF BRANDING: RULE 101
Why I delved into this is because, If I had the right branding strategy and knew more about the brand power of presentation, I probably would have been much more successful back then in my business but I did learn from my mistakes and I must tell you I am a better advocate for putting your best foot forward because you might never have that same opportunity again. This is why I am pointing out the presentation of business in this post.
The presentation is super important, it’s the key to brand positioning. I love InStyle magazine, vogue magazine, and other fashion magazines because they are always well laid out and they go for the win when it comes to presentation.
WHAT YOU NEED TO IMPROVE YOUR BRANDING
As an entrepreneur, you should have a media kit for your business to communicate with prospects, that’s the brand power of presentation. When a potential client asks you what you can offer them and why they need to sign up with you, you need not say you need time to get back you should be prepared with a printed or digital media kit/brochure to make a better impact and help close sale faster because the client will take you serious with the first awesome impression you have made.
It is just not about having a pretty or smart presentation but making the right impact on whoever is reading your kit or brochure while pushing your brand to be a memorable one to the prospect. It’s your resume for your brand where your business details are shared, your services, your business, your mission and vision, testimonials and so much more you need to show off that should be on this kit. It’s like your printed website.
I often advise my clients when they need to market their businesses, an important marketing toolkit is a brochure. It a well laid out, full of great clear visuals, clear wordings, straight-to-the-point bullet point notes that can never be missed by the reader, subheadings, and limit the style of fonts used to at least three to make it professional. Let your brochure or kit be lively, fun, educative, and portray your brand. When your contents are on several pages, it gives the reader more to look forward to, and then the intrigue sets in as to what more you can offer.
Make sure to include your logo, brand colors, your business, target market, service details and breakdown, pricing, what you offer, accomplishments, portfolio, FAQS, and testimonials as well.
If you need more details on how to get started on having your own media kit/ brochure, do contact me via email at [email protected] to get one for your brand today. It’s part of my brand package but I can create one separately for a cost too.
Thanks for reading.
xoxo
Deshola
