How to create a simple brand roadmap using my free brand discovery workbook
This blog post is all about my freebie - the brand discovery workbook. I’ve had quite a few people contact me asking how they can actually use the questions and answers from the workbook going forward without necessarily working with a professional designer and how they can make sense of it all.
Although there will be some good takeaways in general, to get the most out of this post, I’d recommend grabbing the workbook and filling it out before reading this post. Sign up to my mailing list to grab your workbook via the button below.👇
So you’ve filled out all the answers from my freebie - the brand discovery workbook. Now what?!
Hopefully, this exercise uncovered a few things for you and was probably quite challenging in parts as well.
Why the brand discovery workbook questions are so important
Some of the content in this workbook is taken from my client homework questionnaires that I’d send out to you if you booked in for one my brand and website transformation packages; they form a really foundational part of the process. These questionnaires alone can give you so much clarity around your brand, vision, values and messaging which in turn can send your confidence soaring sky high! When you’re clear on all of these factors, it makes all other marketing and design tasks so much easier - everything from what to say in your social media posts, what blog posts to write, what to say on your website pages, what style to use when designing a flyer … the list goes on!
The workbook covers three main areas:
What - This section covers what you do in your business and all the products/services you offer. Are you a photographer, a coach, a yoga teacher? All of these things require a different direction when it comes to branding. Getting clear on your what is the first foundational step of the brand discovery process. This section gives you an opportunity to get clear on all of your offerings, and most importantly, the value you bring, the problems you solve and what sets you apart from the rest.
Why - This section really digs deep and uncovers one key question - why do you do what you do? As a small business owner, it’s so easy to get wrapped up in your business doing #allthethings. It can be really tricky to take a step back and reconnect with your why. Yet, it’s very difficult to run a business without realising why you do it. This section will also help you get clear on your goals and vision for your brand.
Our why keeps us motivated and on track with what we want to achieve which ultimately leads to success (whatever that means for you).
Who - This section delves into understanding your audience (aka your dream clients). This part of the brand discovery process is so key. Establishing the who of our business can give us clarity on these key things:
who our dream clients are
what are their values
lifestyle choices
biggest struggles and pain points
their dreams and desires
Once we’ve got clear on all of these things, this is where the magic happens. Let's get real - without a ‘who’ or a person to target, we are lacking the side of our business which actually makes us money. A business without a customer is not really a business at all - it’s just an expensive hobby.
How to get the most out of the questions in the brand discovery workbook
Be as descriptive as possible
When you go through and answer each question, try to be as descriptive and detailed as you can. When you write down an answer the chances are, there’s a deeper meaning behind it that you’re yet to uncover. I encourage you to always ask yourself ‘why?’ after each question you write down.
As a bonus to the workbook questions, I recommend you try out this simple exercise - don’t overlook this one. It’s extremely powerful and can uncover HUGE amounts about you and your business that you didn’t even know existed! Here’s how it goes:
When answering the first question under the Why section: ‘Why did you start your business?’
Take a look at your answer, then try and take that response even deeper. Why do you do the work that you do?
Then repeat again - read your answer and ask why again?
You can take this down by 5 levels and see what you uncover. Compare your first answer to your 5th one. See the difference right?!
Although it’s easy to think that the most important facet of selling our products or services is our product or service itself, your clients are ultimately attracted to the why, the heart, behind your work. People don’t buy into what you do, as much as they buy into why you do it.
Set aside some time to sit down, focus and fill out the workbook
As small business owners, we can get so wrapped up in the day to day of running our business, serving our customers and just trying to keep things ticking along. We rarely give ourselves the space or the opportunity to ask these foundational questions and work on our business rather than work in our business.
If you found the questions in this workbook surprisingly challenging to answer, then you’re not alone. This is not a process that can be rushed. If you fill out the questions in a hurry, you’ll get surface level answers that don’t get to the heart of your business (aka the good stuff). If you do find yourself short on time, just come back to it at a later date, read through your answers and ask yourself why you wrote what you did - is there a deeper meaning here?
Be honest with yourself
The answers in the brand discovery workbook aren’t for show. Your clients aren’t going to see them. So really try and be honest here. If one of the reasons you started your business was out of scarcity and a need to make ends meet then that’s just fine. Maybe ask yourself how the why behind your business has evolved over time, or what those valuable lessons in starting a business out of scarcity has taught you. Then ask yourself why? Always dig deeper and see if there were other reasons beyond the financial ones that led you to start your business journey.
How to use the questions from your brand discovery workbook and put them into action:
1 | Highlight any recurring keywords and themes
Once you’ve completed the workbook, I would recommend going through all of your answers and highlighting any repeating words or themes. For example, you might notice a lot of words associated with being friendly, positive and welcoming. Or perhaps you talk a lot about being creative (like I did!) Copy and paste these highlighted words and themes into a new document so you can refer back to it later.
2 | Narrow down your recurring themes
Once you’ve got your list of recurring words and themes, try and whittle them down to the ones you feel reflect your brand and business most accurately. Which ones really strike a chord with you? Try and narrow them down to around 6 keywords. These will now be known as your ‘brand buzz words’.
3 | Highlight any recurring keywords and themes relating to your dream clients
Repeat the process for the steps 1 and 2, but only focus on the ‘who’ section of your workbook. The main goal here is to pick out keywords that sum up your dream clients. Copy and paste these highlighted words and themes into your other document so you can refer back to it later.
4 | Narrow down your recurring themes for your dream clients
Same as step 2, take a look at your dream clients keywords and narrow them down to around 6 of the strongest themes you feel encapsulates your dream client. These will now be known as your ‘dream clients’ brand buzz words’.
5 | Create a Pinterest inspiration board
Now, I invite you to hop on to Pinterest and create your own brand inspiration board. Start by taking one of the keywords from your highlighted list and put it into Pinterest. Now pair it with words such as ‘colour themes’ ‘colour palettes’ ‘interiors’ ‘logos’ ‘branding’ ‘fonts’ ‘design’ and get pinning! Pin all the things that really resonate and reflect the general vibe and mood of your brand. Remember to try and view this from a business perspective, and not just from your own personal taste (your personal taste does come into your branding to some extent, but if you can keep the focus on your keywords, and keep your dream clients in mind - you’ll ensure your pinning won’t go off piste!)
When you click on a pin you like, scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see a ‘more like this’ section with similar pins that may inspire you further.
I encourage you to pin to your little hearts content! The more you pin the better! If you get stuck - go back to the answers in your workbook and your brand + dream client buzzwords to check you’re still on the right track.
6 | Narrow down your Pins
Once you’re all pinned out, start to look through your pins and notice any recurring themes - like you did when reviewing the answers from your workbook. These themes could take the shape of many different things including:
Colours
Fonts
Photo styles
Compositions
Patterns
Mood
Shapes
Style (vintage/retro etc)
Now start to pick out the images that really resonate with your dream client and your brand the most. Which ones are your absolute faves? Aim to pick around 8-12 final images. Either pull these into a new Pinterest board, or save the images and bring them into a design programme like Canva, and lay out your images together in one document like this:
When narrowing down your Pinterest images, try and select a mixture of different types of images. For example, rather than just picking 12 images of interiors, try and select an image featuring photography, patterns, logos, typography and other things.
Congratulations - you’ve just created your brand moodboard!
A brand moodboard can serve as your visual compass for your brand - you can add the moodboard to your document with your brand buzzwords and refer back to it for everything you create for your brand going forward. It’s a really helpful tool that you can always look at to check all of your graphics, visuals and imagery for your brand feels in tune with your buzzwords and moodboard.
7 | Pick a colour scheme
Review your moodboard and start to notice any distinct colours and shades. For instance, the moodboard above has a lot of fresh, muted blues and greens with some splashes of peachy pinks and yellowy golds. You can now start to pick a colour palette for your brand. You can search back on Pinterest for this, or you can try out some of these sites for inspiration too:
My personal fave is Coolors. They have a huge library of colour palettes for inspiration and they also have this really cool feature where you can upload an image and actually select different colours from that image to form the base of your own personalised colour palette! You could upload your brand moodboard and pick colours straight from that. Pretty nifty, eh?!
Watch this quick video walkthrough showing you how to do it:
When choosing your colour palette, I’d always recommend picking at least one dark colour, one light colour, and one accent colour (this ones usually a brighter colour) to give you a versatile palette that can be used across a wide range of different media and applications. You don’t have to use all of your colours together in everything you create - you can just use 1 or 2. In fact, you’ll probably find that you naturally end up using 2-3 of them as your main colours, and the others less frequently.
If you aim to pick between 4-6 colours that should give you a good flexible range to work with. Try not to pick too many different colours, to avoid your brand looking a bit mis-matched and incohesive.
Once you’ve created your final colour palette, save it as an image and add that to your document as well.
8 | Highlight phrases and sentences from your brand discovery workbook that light you up!
Chances are some of the questions you’ve answered really get you excited about your brand and ignite that passion inside of you! YAS! Make sure you highlight these sentences in a different colour - maybe even copy and paste them into your other document. Use these phrases and sentences to form the words on your website, your marketing and on your social media. You can use these sentences and phrases to craft words for the following things:
your mission statement / brand bio
about page introduction / bio
Once you’ve written out the words for the things listed above, you can break them down, expand on them, and use them across all areas of your marketing. Whether that’s videos, podcasts, interviews, headlines on your website, blog posts, price lists, social media posts, Instagram bios, pages on your website, consultation calls, proposals, the list goes on!
Hold up, what’s that you say?! Not exactly sure what a mission statement or a brand bio really is?! Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Let me explain…
Mission statement
Your mission statement is a few sentences that summarise the mission your brand and business is seeking to accomplish. Look back over the questions from your brand discovery workbook under the ‘why’ section. Think about your goals and vision for your brand. If your vision is the big picture dream that you’re chasing after, then think of your mission as how you’re making that happen!
Think about these key things:
Who you are + What you do + Who it’s for + How it adds value.
Brand Bio
Your brand bio is a short, concise statement (no longer than 2 sentences) that summarises what you do, who you serve and how you add value for your customers. It’s pretty much the same as your mission statement - but I like to think of your brand bio as being a bit more short and snappy - so you can use it for headlines in your social media bios and on the homepage of your website.
It’s so super simple, but don’t underestimate the power of this statement! If you can clearly communicate all of these key things to your audience in a matter of seconds - you have a much better chance of standing out, making a connection, building trust and peaking their interest enough to stick around and learn more about you. If in doubt - always try and be as clear as possible when choosing the words to put on your website and across your branding. The simpler the better.
Try out this quick exercise that I like to call the 5 second rule. If someone landed on your website today - would they be able to figure out what you do, who you serve and how you add value within 5 seconds? If not - it’s time for a re-think. Give this quick exercise a go:
Write down:
What you do
Who you serve
How you add value
(Tip - When writing down how you add value, think about how you’re different to others in your industry, what problem you solve and what key result can you get for your client. You can look back over your answers from the workbook to help you out with this.)
Here’s an example of my own brand bio! You can view it in action here.
What you do: Standout Squarespace website design & branding
Who you serve: for unique small businesses that don’t do normal.
How you add value: Want to raise your rates, book more of your dream clients, and have total confidence and clarity around your brand? Well, you’re in the right place!
Put them all together and what have you got?!?
Standout Squarespace website design & branding for unique small businesses that don’t do normal.
Want to raise your rates, book more of your dream clients, and have total confidence and clarity around your brand? Well, you’re in the right place!
BOOM! Now you’ve got your brand bio sorted - you can start using it everywhere - use it right at the top of the homepage on your website, use it on your about page, services page, include it on introductions in your freebies and all other content you put out. Consistency is key here! The more you tell people exactly what you do, who you serve and how you stand out - the more you’ll build trust, credibility and stay top of mind for your audience.
Copy and paste your brand bio over to your document - now you should have a nice simple roadmap for your brand that you can refer back to and keep you on track. If you’ve followed all the steps in this blog post, your document should include:
Brand Buzzwords
Dream Client Buzzwords
Moodboard
Colour Palette
Brand Bio
Woah there! That was a juicy one! This blog post was originally supposed to walk you through some tips for using the answers from your brand discovery workbook, but it kinda evolved into a monster of a blog post walking you through how to take those answers and develop a simple roadmap for your brand. I hope you enjoyed it!
PSST…NEED A HELPING HAND DIY'ING YOUR BRAND & WEBSITE? THE STANDOUT SQUARESPACE & CANVA TEMPLATE SHOP IS FOR YOU!
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Head on over to Creative Market to check out all the products! 👇
Big love to you all!
Did you like this post? Then pin it to Pinterest! 👇
