We know when business owners get busy, one of the first areas of their business to fall off the wagon is, unfortunately, content creation. This then leads to more stress, feeling behind, rushing to get something created, and the results are subpar at best.

We have an incredible article here to help come up with consistent content ideas, but even with that help, we know creating that content takes time. Writing a great blog or making an engaging video use muscles that need to be exercised over and over again. Keeping a consistent content calendar, whatever your pace may be, helps to build that muscle plus the rest of the benefits you’ll see below!

Why is Content Marketing Important?

Content Marketing a strategic marketing approach that focuses on providing useful and informative content to potential customers, rather than directly promoting products or services. It’s a long term strategy, that when used over time, attracts, engages, and helps retain your target audience.

In our opinion, it truly is the best way to establish your business as a brand and start to build a community. These 4 key reasons though are why content creation unlocks your business’ true potential!

Increase Awareness of Your Business

Consistent content can help establish and reinforce brand identity, making it easier for customers to recognize and remember your business. By providing valuable information and solutions to the target audience, on a consistent basis your business will become a trusted resource that your audience seeks insights from.

Establish Authority

Your content gives you the opportunity for your brand to heave a voice, to make statements and to be bold. Well-executed content marketing can help a brand stand out from its competitors. By providing unique insights, perspectives, and solutions, you can position your business as a thought leader and create a competitive advantage. This builds trust and credibility with customers and prospects.

Inspire Customer Engagement

Content can and should inspire engagement! It can also keep customers engaged with the business once your audience begins to associate you with valuable education, helpful insights, and entertainment. The relevant content you create entices your audience to come back to your site time and time again, fostering loyalty, reducing customer churn, and increasing your overall customer lifetime value.

Improve Search Engine Rankings and Website Traffic

Consistent content that is optimized for search engines can help improve your visibility in search results and help drive more folks to your site. The content you create should have recurring themes and all fit a similar set of values, so it’s likely that your SEO keywords for that content will all be related or from a “keyword family”. This relationship between the SEO keywords you’re optimizing for helps search engines to better understand who to serve your content to! This approach to content makes it easier for potential customers to find you, so create a wide variety of content within your ideal audience’s interests.

If you’re feeling stuck with your content creation, let’s chat! Our Sustainable marketing practices help you develop effective strategies that are not only maintainable, but also use the most environmentally friendly and accessible techniques.

Schedule a call here!

The post 4 Key Reasons Why Consistent Content Marketing Is Important appeared first on Dandelion Branding.

Branding is a crucial aspect of business development. It is much more than spinning up a logo and a pretty website. Branding is what differentiates businesses and builds a loyal customer base.

In this article, I explore what we consider branding and how we use it together with marketing to effectively grow businesses.

What is Branding and Why is it Important?

Effective branding is important because it helps build trust and loyalty with customers while increasing brand recognition over time. It allows businesses to establish a strong presence in their market and differentiate themselves from other companies working in the same space.

Branding is the process of creating a unique identity for your business that sets it apart from competitors. While it does involve creating a name, logo, and design – afterall, the history of branding started with personalized seals (logos) on goods – we consider this an ever-evolving process for a business. Building a brand means consistently representing a company’s values, mission, and personality.

Branding in Sustainability & Regeneration

In sustainability, effective branding and communication is vital. Right now, the ‘sustainability’ market is a little bit like the wild west. There isn’t a lot of stability in the market or a ton of rules around green/eco claims (though this is changing). The language is still being developed, but customers that care about social and environmental regeneration are looking to brands to lead by example.

I speak from experience when I say that there are a ton of companies out there making a difference. When they don’t have a cohesive brand, it’s harder to earn attention and trust from potential customers and subscribers.

Here’s the worst case scenario (and one we’ve seen) when a sustainable business doesn’t put the effort into creating a brand. First, they fall prey to the green hush in their marketing. Then companies that greenwash take over their sector. This causes irreparable damage to customer expectations and lowering industry standards. The sustainable business demand decreases because their pricing is too high and they don’t communicate. And finally, the business succumbs to the pressures of fighting for sustainable change in the market.

The Difference between Branding and Marketing.

While branding and marketing are often used interchangeably, they are two distinct concepts. They are both important for building a successful business strategy, but they serve different purposes.

Traditionally, building a brand includes creating a visual identity, developing a brand voice, establishing a brand personality, and offering a user experience that your ideal audience will sincerely appreciate.

Marketing is the content creation, social media, email campaigns, and paid ads that puts your brand in front of people. Marketing changes with the times and the algorithms. Marketing is the tool that lets you effectively share your story and make sales.

Understanding how marketing and branding work together is an ever-evolving process. They’re deeply intertwined and – if you ask us – totally inseparable in practice.

The Dandelion Difference

Like I said earlier, we consider Dandelion a branding company. But we also very openly say that we are a holistic marketing agency. (I hear you shouting – “make up your mind!”)

How can we be both things?

Because when I’m asked, “what is branding?” my answer is, “Your brand is your story. Your marketing is how you tell that story.”

We always start with the story. We think through who a brand is and ask questions about what the purpose is, what the goals are, and why it matters. Then we think about who we are communicating with and what they want to hear.

That’s what makes us a branding company. We take the time to understand the brand completely before we ever start thinking about how to market it.

Then our expertise in marketing tactics steps in. We think about the best ways to get new customers with social media and SEO. Then we think about what retention looks like with email marketing or a membership community. We think (a lot) about conversion and how to optimize for the most sales. Before your eyes, we build a holistic marketing strategy tailored perfectly to your brand.

By combining both branding and marketing, we help you build a strong and recognizable brand that stands out in your industry and attracts loyal customers.

How do you combine branding and marketing? If you want to talk about what this looks like for your business, schedule a call with a Dandelion founder.

The post What is Branding to Dandelion and How it’s Different to Marketing appeared first on Dandelion Branding.

Without the right kind of communications, nonprofits will struggle to secure the necessary funds to operate their business. This puts the organization into a tough spot and can lead it to close.

On this page, you will find the most common pitfalls for nonprofits to fall into with their marketing efforts. If you’re looking for year-round fundraising ideas, find them here.

What Causes Nonprofit Marketing Trouble?

There is no singular reason a nonprofit’s marketing fail. Most of the time there are many factors that lead to sub par results. Issues with internal operations, lack of a clear goals or plans, no real marketing strategy, little to no marketing data analysis, and lack of understanding of audience bases are some common culprits.

1 – Underestimating What Nonprofit Marketing Takes

Marketing is a skill!

Yes, it can be learned, but it is a specialty. Sales reps and admins often think, “I can do it, it’s just clicking a few buttons,” but there are a TON of technical skills, strategy, and consistent education involved with being a marketer these days.

This is especially true for taking a holistic approach to marketing with a multi-channel strategy. We see this land folks in a mess later. Websites with piecemealed tech and inefficient plugins easily get unruly and outdated. If you don’t pay close attention, it will hinder your ability to grow down the line.

2 – Organizations Lack Consistent Marketing Staff

Nonprofits often rely on volunteers or temporary staff for many of their positions. We highly recommend investing in at least a part time marketing manager because marketing consistency pays for itself. On the flip side, without a marketing manager, there aren’t standard operating procedures. This leads to disjointed and inconsistent marketing efforts that end up wasting more money than if they had paid a marketing manager to keep their SOPs consistent.

We’ve seen examples of organizations that relied on yearly intern staff for all of their marketing. Each year, like clockwork, there would be trouble surrounding accesses and the transition of important data. This unfortunately led the business to lose access to important platforms and programs necessary for their business operations. There was no way to create annual marketing reports or use data to determine the best course of action. This scramble put a huge amount of unnecessary stress on the organization’s leadership.

Another issue with inconsistent staffing is inconsistent marketing materials. Cohesion and consistency build trust with your audience. Changing your brand voice or visual branding too frequently never lets a nonprofit build their identity. This can leave your audience feeling confused and paints your organization in a bad light, looking disorganized and like you don’t have a strong identity.

3 – Nonprofit Leaders Approach Marketing Without a Long Term Strategy

Too many businesses approach marketing without a long term strategy and choose to take on their marketing on-the-fly. Though this may be able to get you some quick wins, it doesn’t bode well for your long term goals.

Marketing without a strategy is like traveling without a map. Nonprofits have too much at stake not to have a roadmap for communication. For fundraisers and campaigns to be robust and effective, they need to be planned several months in advance. We suggest creating a yearly marketing plan for fundraisers and goals.

4 – Nonprofits Try to Speak to Too Broad of an Audience

If you try to speak to everyone, you won’t speak to anyone. Too many nonprofits try to speak to everyone with their marketing.

And we get it. Finding your audience takes time and attention that you don’t have to give (see pitfall #2). It’s a constant balance – on one hand, it is tough to convert an audience that isn’t directly impacted by the work your organization does. But to grow a nonprofit you need to pull in supporters from all walks of life.

To truly connect with the right supporters you must take a deep dive into your audience. Do the work to define and understand their interests and how you can connect with them. Luckily, you’re running a nonprofit – which means you have defined goals and values already. So you can lean into your values to find the audiences that resonate with what you’re building.

It’s likely that you’ll appeal to several types of people. Your organization should be working to build a brand voice that encompasses your values and speaks to all of your audiences. When you’re armed with standards for your voice, you can develop clear messaging that attracts your ideal donors and audience members.

Check out this article with some tips for creating audience profiles!

5 – Organizations Do Not Use Content Marketing to Their Advantage

Content marketing is the best way, most natural way to communicate about your business. It gives you a stage to share your values without feeling sales-y or too pushy for donations in your nonprofit marketing. Creating a blog post coupled with email marketing and social media around a single ideal gives you the opportunity to talk about your work, your goals, and your values in a variety of ways.

You are more than just your mission statement. Prove it by creating content consistently around the same topics you will strengthen your overall brand identity, making it even easier for new potential fans to find you and connect!

Sharing the content you create not only will help broaden your audience, but it gives you the opportunity to bring value to your audience without a monetary ask. If you ask too much from your audience it’s easy for them to lose interest. Yes, what you do is important, but you still need to offer value to your audience to create a long term connection built on a foundation of trust.

Here are some great tips for coming up with a ton for relevant and interesting content ideas!

6 – Nonprofits Focus Too Much on Fundraising in their Marketing

One of the biggest missteps an organization can make is only showing up when they need funding. This usually isn’t intentional, but all of their time is dedicated elsewhere for the rest of the year.

A nonprofit can fundraise all year, if you do it right, but the timing needs to be very well planned and executed in a respectful way. If the only time you show up is to ask for funds or push products and sales, folks will lose interest quickly. Take the time to create a community built on trust and value so that when you do ask for money, your audience shows up for you!

Start by offering folks other ways to engage with your business through free offers, classes, webinars, meet-ups or other exciting events. Then use email marketing to share more about your organization and the work you do. Then, and only then should you start really asking for donations and financial support. You don’t want to lose the trust of engaged audience members by asking them for money too quickly or too frequently.

The Solution to Nonprofit Marketing Struggles

If you resonate with any of the above, it is likely time to bring in some additional help. Hiring an affordable marketing team that understands your values and your mission will get marketing operations off your hands and make it more effective long term!

Working with an agency like Dandelion Branding offers you multiple skillsets, are less risky than hiring a staff member, and are typically more affordable than a full time staff member. We encourage you to find an agency who truly understands the work you do, can build a strong brand voice, will dive deep into your audiences to foster connection, and who is well versed in content, email, SEO and social media marketing.

We’d love to be that agency for you. Click here to check our calendar and find a convenient time to chat!

The post 6 Reasons Why Nonprofit Organizations Struggle with Marketing appeared first on Dandelion Branding.

In this article, I’m going to tell you what’s changing and why. But first, I’m going to share a little bit about how we got here.

The Beginning of Dandelion Branding

Courtney and I (Aub) met in 2014 while we were working for a company called Annmarie Skin Care. We both started in customer support and worked our way into the roles we ended on – Courtney as an operations coordinator and myself as the editorial coordinator. Along the way, we became friends and we infused the idea of customer-first thinking into every process we created (which, by 2018, was basically all of them).

In 2018, I fell in love and moved to the Netherlands, leaving behind my editorial coordinator role and stepping into the great career unknown. The friendship and stability that Courtney offered me was priceless and the inspiration I offered her was what she needed. We missed our daily meetings and the high quality of work that we each bring to the table. By the end of 2018, we had decided to build a business together.

We decided on a name, Dandelion Branding, and gave a label to what we do: build holistic marketing strategies. While we have very well-rounded branding and marketing skills, the business side of things was totally out of our wheelhouses.

So we decided to follow a business course.

I’m not going to tell you the name of it because I honestly don’t want to give them your thought energy. It was an aggressive (read: ultra bro-y) sales and business mindset based on feeling like we were tricking people into being our clients. So… that ended up just being a very expensive lesson in what we don’t want to be in business.

But it didn’t exactly help us figure out how we do want to show up.

Evolution of a Brand: Finding Our Own Brand Identity

You may think, “Oh, this should be easy for you because helping businesses build a holistic brand identity is what you DO.” Heh. Can a therapist heal themselves? While we’re very well  equipped, we’re also very close to our own brand. This is a journey for us the same as it is for any brand we work with.

It starts with a few of our basic truths

• We both have bachelor degrees in interdisciplinary social sciences. Since the day we met, our conversations have always turned to the news and how we can make positive change in the world. See our 2016 “Talk Bernie to me” shirts? We made those and rallied for days.
  
• We’re ambitious and a little bit obsessive when it comes to work, and we both find it ideal if we don’t have to completely separate work life from home life to be fulfilled.
  
• We care. A lot. Particularly about the quality of our work and the relationships we build with our clients. When we take on a client, we get invested in the growth of the brand and we want to make sure that we’re more than paying for ourselves.
  
• As marketing and branding specialists, we have this operational truth: Marketing is powerful. It’s an absolute weapon when it comes to business.
  
• We have always been less focused on “how to make the most money,” than we have been on, “how do we make the largest impact.”

Choosing to Work with Sustainable Brands

After being steamrolled by business bros and recalibrating on our partnership identity, we realized that our intersecting passions lie in the sustainability sector. So we made the simple decision to become a sustainable marketing agency.

And that’s the journey we’ve been diving into since mid-2019. We have been focused on working with sustainable brands AND identifying sustainable practices for the smallest digital footprint for our clients.

Please don’t get us wrong, we absolutely LOVE the work we’re doing. We get to work with cool people and build the digital backbone of the most dedicated brands out there. We’re doing our part to help sustainable brands steward in a more conscious attitude towards consumerism. Plus – every step we take dulls the competitive edge of businesses that do harm. We feel like activists everyday.

Our Evolving Definition of Sustainability

At the end of 2020, we launched the Living Brand Directory, which is our directory of sustainability-focused brands, and we have a sustainability-focused podcast called EnvironMental with Dandelion.

The past couple of years of focusing on learning everything we can about sustainability, incorporating it into our own business model, and talking to professionals from around the world has opened our eyes to what ‘sustainability’ actually means.

Admittedly, in the beginning, we were focused predominantly on environmental and, in some ways, social sustainability. But now our conversations are turning to intersectional conversations that include climate change and the environment, but are just as much about race and class, agriculture, infrastructure, fossil fuels, personal habits, community, and the reality of a global transition. You can actually see that migration if you look close on the Living Brand Directory’s Instagram.

Learning more and diving into what “sustainable” truly means, lead us back to our basic truths. This one in particular:

We are focused on, “how do we make the largest impact.”

The Transition We’re Making Now

While we never stopped asking how to make the largest impact, we haven’t been answering it to our fullest potential. Until now, our primary focus has been on working with conscious brands that have a sustainability mission. That won’t stop – we love working with the brand owners that are motivated to invest in the growth of their business – but we are expanding our focus.

Expanding to our Scope: From Sustainable Brands to Social Enterprises

Connecting with incredible nonprofits and socially responsible businesses has been one of our favorite parts of growing Dandelion. Over the past couple years, we have had the opportunity to work with a few nonprofits and B2B companies that are focused on social good. The experience has been phenomenal! We helped those companies grow to have their largest revenues and have amplified our own sustainable impact in the process.

So when we asked ourselves again, “how can we make the largest impact?” the answer was clear: We need to broaden our focus from “sustainable brand” to “sustainable social enterprises.”

What does that mean for us? It means we’re doing for ourselves what we do for our clients: a rebrand.

The Dandelion Rebrand

Everything we do comes back to being holistic so for us, a rebrand means that we’re going to be making a holistic change to basically everything you see coming from Dandelion

Along with the expansion of the folks we work with, we’re enlisting the help of Kelsey from Coming Up Roses to help us out with a visual shift for our brand. At the same time, we are taking the opportunity to work through our own brand identity process. This way, we get to update our voice guidelines and the type of content we’re creating. Even going so far as to completely refresh our SEO strategy and rebuild large parts of our website.

We have a goal. In Q3 of 2022 we’re going to have our new sustainable strategy in place. And in Q4, you’re going to see a completely refreshed Dandelion!

Stay tuned.

The post Evolution of a Brand: the Dandelion Rebranding appeared first on Dandelion Branding.

For us, creating a positive user experience isn’t just a goal – it’s the POINT.

What is User Experience and What Does it Have to Do With Branding?

According to Google, the definition of User Experience (UX) is, “the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use.”

Most definitions of this term will focus mostly on the tech side of things and it certainly feels quite tech-y when abbreviated to UX, but personally we think of user experience more broadly.

User Experience vs User Interface

So we don’t get lost in the sauce, let’s get that tech-y part out of the way. You’ll see user experience interchanged with user interface a lot, but there is a distinct difference between user experience vs user interface and it’s pretty significant.

User interface (UI), refers to your site, app, or platform. This is what people engage with. The interface is absolutely part of the experience – but it shouldn’t be mistaken for the whole thing.

User experience refers literally to the entire experience that your customer will have with your brand from start to finish. Anything your customers, fans, or followers interact with and how they feel about that interaction is part of the full experience. This means from the moment they’re exposed to your social media post, or the SEO title of your article, throughout the experience on your website, again when they sign up for your emails, through the entire checkout process.

And it doesn’t stop there either! Physical products are also part of the user experience your customers have with your brand. Packaging, including how the box lands on their doorstep, plays a major role in consumer decision making (especially whether they’ll purchase again) and should 100% be in line with your branding.

Are you starting to see why branding and user experience make such a great pairing?

How to Get into the UX Mindset

To get into the UX mindset when building your brand identity, consider your brand from your ideal audience’s perspective. Taking a step back and looking at your brand from the user’s perspective helps with decision making and brings clarity to your overall vision.

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to incorporate the UX mindset into every part of your brand! So this way, every time you make a post, write an article, update your product pages, or optimize for search engines, you’re going to be creating for your audience.

Here at Dandelion Branding, we focus on UX because we specialze in creating one holistic brand strategy that encompasses the full user experience. Cohesion and clarity across all of your platforms are the name of the game here. When your communication is transparent and cohesive, it’s easier for your brand to be recognized and trusted.

Branding and User Experience: 5 things to Focus On

To start, clear your mind. Put yourself in someone’s shoes who knows nothing about your brand, your offer, or your products.

Step one: individual branding and user experience questions

Look at these five parts of your brand as objectively as possible and answer the questions.

1 – Your website

• Does it communicate exactly what you do and what you sell?
• Is it representative of what you want to portray as a brand?
• Does it have enough information on it that a sustainable buyer will trust that you’re not greenwashing?
• Will your audience have an easy time understanding it?

2 – Your offer or your ordering experience

• Is it easy to understand?
• Is your checkout process simple to move through?

3 – Your ads

• Do your ads make sense for a new audience to engage with?
• Are you asking people to take a specific action too soon? (sustainable audiences often don’t impulse buy)
• Will your ads make sense for your brand – are they in your brand voice?

4 – Social media & other outward facing content

• Is your social media and your content representing your brand voice?
• Are you talking about topics that make sense for your brand?
• Are you covering information that your audience needs or wants?

5 – Physical products and Packaging

• Do your products arrive with the care that your audience expects?
• Are you in line with your brand values with the packaging that you choose?

Step two: cohesion

Here’s where we do things a little bit differently. Because we’re so focused on being holistic, we also make sure that your user experience is the same throughout your brand. Look at any two parts side by side and answer these questions:

• Is what you sell clear?
• Do both of these parts of your business use the same brand voice?
• Is it simple, clean, and easy to understand?
• Is it simple, clean, and easy to use?
• Would the same type of person be interested in these two things?
• Would a user be able to identify that both of these things came from the same brand?
• Do they (or could they) link together without being confusing?

If you answered no at any point then you may have some cohesion updates to work on. Cohesion strengthens brand identity. Building your brand identity increases the connection with your users and improves the user experience across all the aspects of your brand. It helps your audiences understand what they should expect from you – both within your content, and with the quality of your products or services.

If you’re still unsure on where to begin with your UX, please schedule a call with us.

If you don’t know who you’re speaking to and how to speak to them it doesn’t matter how much energy you put into your UX design, you won’t see results. Connecting your branding and the experience of your users is how to sustainably grow your brand.

The post What is User Experience and What Does it Have to Do With Branding? appeared first on Dandelion Branding.

Most brand owners will start to form an idea of who their customers are after they’ve seen a few sales with the idea that the people buying from them right now offer information about who will buy from them in the future.

Now, I don’t want to say this is wrong – it’s one way to approach your audience, sure – but I will say that it’s a limiting approach to who your customers can be.

Creating your ideal customer profile and building your brand voice from there is one of the most potent ways to ensure your audience is ripe with buyer intent over time. It allows for you to focus your marketing to communicate with your dream audience. (Instead of the solely audience you already have.)

The Buzz About the Ideal Customer

This is one of the most common first questions we ask people on strategy calls: WHO IS YOUR BRAND TALKING TO?

The way we see it (and the way we work with our clients) is your branding and marketing strategy should be entirely based around who you want to be talking to. NOT who you’re currently talking to. This is what makes the ideal customer such an elusive unicorn.

It can be difficult to dream a person, or thee people, to life – but that’s what we’re going to do to help you manifest the customers and clients that you deserve.

Manifest Your Audience with an Ideal Customer Profile

It’s human nature to find people like ourselves (or a version of ourselves that we want to be) to be around, online shopping is no different. People want to shop with brands that “get it”. This is especially true for the audiences of sustainable brands. Right now, sustainability is such a buzz word that buyers dedicated to changing the world through conscious consumerism are going above and beyond to pinpoint greenwashing and to find brands they can trust with their loyalty.

To manifest your dream audience, you need to show up already speaking their language and understand their desires, fears, and opinions. That will allow you to create valuable content through a brand voice that touches specific needs within your audience.

So how do you show up on the scene with a brand voice that kicks ass and gathers email addresses? By creating a detailed ideal customer profile.

How to Build Your Ideal Customer Profile

Of course, building and using your ideal customer profile is a very in depth process, so it’s not possible to fit it into a single blog post (despite what you read on the internet). You can ask us to create your ideal customer profiles and tell you how to sell to them with our Holistic Marketing Strategy project, but here are the basics.

To build your ideal customer, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your perfect buyer. I call this your, “cast of characters” because it’s likely that you’ll want to pull in a couple different types of people. I usually create three different “characters” for the brands we work with and then combine their styles to create a brand voice and content strategy guidelines.

But – let’s not get ahead of ourselves there.

Start by asking yourself a few questions to really get to know your ideal customer and what they would expect from a brand like yours. Because this is a creative process of ideals and not necessarily based on a real individual, this process can (and should) take some time. Spend that time forming a picture about who you want your customers to be, right down to the dreams they have and the socks they wear. Then, when it comes time to build your ideal customer profiles, you’ll be filled with realistic answers.

A High Level Ideal Customer Profile

This is your most basic information about your ideal customers – it’s also where most folks stop in their audience manifestation process. Your high level informational piece is where you compile information about your niche, and stuff that is likely to be true about everyone in your cast of characters. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What is your niche?
• What is happening politically, socially, sustainably in your niche this year that your customers would expect you to know about?
• What larger demographic typically buy from your niche? Note here that this is can also be non-sustainable buyers because you do compete with your less-clean alternatives.
• What problem does my product solve for my audience, generally and why do they like that?
• What are some general demographics or values that your ideal customers have in common?
  • Examples would include things like: independent thinkers, trendy, health conscious, enthusiastic/optimistic about change, they’ll spend money on quality (or not), dog lovers, future thinking, sustainability focused, educated, affluent, etc.

Having your general audience information and niche laid out allows you to start thinking about the differences between your cast of characters – and that’s where things get interesting.

Split Up Your Folks

Once you have your larger demographic, get more specific on the type of person you’d like your brand to connect with and what their underlying motivations are for loving your brand. This is where I usually split my cast of characters. Two to three people is a good number to stick with here because remember – you can’t be everything for everyone. You are going to use these few very specific ideal customer profiles to create your brand voice. Don’t make it too difficult for yourself.

For this level of details, ask yourself questions like:

• How will my product impact their life?
• What aspects of my product are they stoked on?
• What is their relationship with money?
• Do they have agency to make their own purchasing choices?
• Elaborate on how some of the features in your high level assessment show up for this character.
  • Example: if they’re down to spend money on quality products, why is that? Is it because they’re trendy and they want to show off? Or is it because they respect true craftsmanship? Or maybe it’s because their version of sustainability is buying once and using forever? THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Try to pinpoint here why this type of person would shop with your brand.

Go Deeper with Your Cast of Characters

This is the part that most business owners are missing in their ideal customer profiles. Here’s where you pinpoint why your ideal customers will love you enough to rep you – and that’s where the manifestation comes in.

Your customers are people. They have whole lives that they live 24 hours a day. They have fears, doubts, troubles, questions, needs, love, stress, reasoning, jobs, kids, families, friends—everything that you have—and if you want to manifest loyal customers, you need to communicate with these parts of your ideal audience.

It’s at this point, I give my cast of characters NAMES! I start referring to them as if they’re a person, because they are. Even if your customers aren’t exactly this profile, they can relate to these people – and they will respond to how you communicate with these people.

This is largely something you’ve got to create based on your gut, but here are a few questions to guide you to knowing these who these people truly are.

• What are they afraid of?
  • Example: Not like, “spiders” but like, “they have been experiencing intense eco-anxiety and they can’t talk about it.”
• What are their interests and guilty pleasures?
• What role do they play in their social groups?
• What relationships do they value most?
  • Example: if they value their friendships consider creating brand voice guidelines that have a friendly tone.
• Elaborate further on how some of the information you know about them generally and from their spending habits.
  • Example: If they’re down to spend money on quality products because they respect craftsmanship, why? Did they pick themselves up with their own bootstraps? Were they raised that way? etc.

Skip to the Good Part – How to Manifest and Sell to Your Ideal Customer

Okay, the trope is true here too, you can’t just skip to the manifestation part. You may be thinking, is this all really necessary? If you want to manifest your perfect customers – yes.

Because this is absolutely a case of, “build it and they will come”. Once you have your cast of characters split out, get to know them. Then create your voice, imagery, and content guidelines as if you’re the leader of a group with these people in it. Because you absolutely are.

Who is your ideal customer? Tell us about him/her in the comments.

If you need help with this, or you just want to talk about how you can use your ideal customer profiles to make your voice guidelines and content, schedule a free call with us.

The post Manifest Your Audience by Creating Your Ideal Customer Profile appeared first on Dandelion Branding.